Day: May 11, 2016

Seems like the ice is inside me

Air,bitter they call it,whispers to the sweet planes of my face,
Shrieks shrill to my cavities,ears,mouth and nose;penetrates all that’s open;
Probing like a surgeon’s knife,to see what healing damage it might do.
A frozen finger touches my heart;
Seems like the ice is inside me sending urgent warnings.

On that high inner mountain,you’ll feel nothing at all…
You’ll be the snowman, a bloody icicle;
An Old Testament of Endurance;
A legend like the pale polar bears, snuffling uneasily around the summit
Touching a woman’s heart is the quickest way to gain her attention
I’m looking at you;you’re in pieces.You’re a puzzle,a jigsaw with two double dynamos;
A broken racing bicycle crossed with two ice skates.
Ten motorboats crashed into a yacht and abandoned on a Swiss lake in winter.
Can I leave you scattered like this?

 

You’re a man in a penguin suit;
Diplomatic, attached with the coldest reserves.
You’re a spy from the court of the Vatican City
A screaming Pope;
An unbaptized demon.
A lost angel with no hands;
A half hung side of meat;
An unbroken rampant horse deluded by winds east.

 

We were split,one from another;
Split in ourselves too–thoughts and emotions
Are raw like meat,weeping as they are pulled apart into islands.

 

I see there’s a cold window between us.
I rub it with my damp coat sleeve,like children do,licking on it;
And see your eyes gleam in hope like greenish diamonds.
Yet I can’t touch you, until we learn how to melt glass.
Are you trying too as you smile weakly,
desperately holding onto this impossible slippery glass?
We’ll try  to reach you at the bottom of whatever frozen ocean you sigh in. to

 

Here you are,a flat and two-dimensional Prospero.
You rise like a non-U-boat already firing at the upper orders.
Here you are walking through what seemed like ruins
And you are not just alive, but burning.

Owl

My husband came from Durham so I was fascinated by this owl.One of his friends said he had some in a holly tree outside his bedroom window when he was a child

magnolia. 23 jpg
short-eared durham owl
meditating over the dale's edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.

on windside,careful sight,
may swoop to prey
and away.

your yellow broad-eyed look,
at once both sharp and distant,
holds me.
oh,silence,
oh,wind on green,
oh, earth,
sky.

immense your held vision;
sphere without centre,
pied geometer of flight,
sketch your descent and ascent.

trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home.

Turn the key

How a writer works
Is  God  turns their key
Then their eyes open
They say,I am me

How a writer writes
Is they  move their hands
Words form sentences
The flame is fanned

The hand and the mind
Connect   and words flow
The eyes look inwards
Where fertile winds blow

Land of images.
Starry skies and frost
Curious creatures
Unicorns long lost

A little white horse
O’Faolain saw.
I was riding it
I was filled with joy

 

I choose an image
Or it chooses me
Symbols  are  like wells
We dip and we see

Bring up the bucket
Let’s see what we caught
A starfish,a jewel,
No-one ever bought.
What is their story?
A starfish from sea.
Let’s move the jewel
Setting it free.

A child,a starfish;
A jewel ,a lady;
Lend me your ears
Come along with me

Children like to play
But ladies adorn
Themselves with treasure,
A man,  child is born?

 
Are eyes not jewels,
Long hair not  silk rain?
When the  man appears
Their love is unfeigned.
A white horse will dance
The pale strand is mine
Sunlit sea turquoise
The earth is divine

I am their star-child
Love gave birth to me
I am their jewel
Watch  me and you’ll see

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Against that we should rage

Ancient I may be, but I’m not old
I learn new skills and  see in different ways
My heart is kind and never is  it cold
My mind still functions and I’ve much to say

But company is difficult to find
Especially for those handicapped by pain
We all need others outside our own minds
Though loss has struck we look for friends again

I’d like to roam across  the woods and   hills
A gypsy free of home and bills and rules
But in the climate of the British isles
I’d soon be sick and labelled as a fool.

Let’s not accept too many laws of age
As Dylan said, against that we should rage

 

,

 

 

Love itself

Next year in  Eden  sweet I  hope to  be.
Tasting pears and apples in delight,
Or fruits exotic I have not yet seen
And other glories now hidden from sight.

Yet, for now, I struggle on my way
As if  uncertain whether it is right.
Must I ,alone, decide the price to pay,
And stumble in the weeds in dim twilight?

At times I search  my dreams   for their insight
Or, as if blind, ignore a potent sign.
Anxiety and doubt bring me no light.
To shades and shadows I must be resigned.

Faith and hope we keep  or we shall die.
Can Love itself be nothing but a li

And cultivate my hatred with my tears

Shall I give home to grievance and  to woe

And cultivate my hatred with my tears?

Shall I remember  carefully each blow,

And add this sorrow to my anxious fear?

 

I  thought by hating you I would have peace;

And surely I had reason without doubt.

Yet  rumination  gave me no  release..

For wisdom and compassion it did flout

 

I remembered then  past love and  shared sweet words

I gave  them freedom in my anguished heart.

I did it for your sake, yet then occurred

A sweetness, joy and gladness in all parts.

 

To  forgive,repent and  let go of such grief

Helps us more than hatred’s legal briefs

I wave and then I particle again

2012-01-20 14.44.54

Oh,take me hold me,love me like you do

With kisses sweet commend me  to your heart,

Love me like  a tea of finest brew.

Love me like a coxes pippin tart.

oh,dance  me,swing  me, let me feel alive.

And let me feel your melody anew.

We get what we desire yet don’t deserve.

When one  is made from  love between the two.

Oh. lend me your  maths textbooks for   a while

I love  irrational numbers like a child.

And transcendental  pies do me beguile

i  feel tonight  my numbers dancing wild.

So ambiguous is  my attitude to men

I wave and then I particle again

Moses was an eruption

Freud wrote a book called Moses and Monotheism during the transition he was forced to make  to the UK from Vienna  owing to fear of Nazi arrest and its consequences.His four sisters all died in those Concentration Camps.In this book he apparently suggests that Moses was Egyptian.Edward Said has also written a book about Moses.Some people say he was a ruler in Egypt who had to leave for political reasons….He was obviously very talented.

trees swirl

Moses was an Eruption I hear.So he had to be kept warm in a basket.
Then Foureyes daughter let him gloat  down on the  River Nile…till a bull rushed him
Then he turned into a shrew and found God.. or God found him
But God would not let him find Galilee so he found Emilee ,Loelee and Phoeebilee linstead.
He had many children such as Matthew,Hark,Look and Gone.They were all men and had more children with no wives.They didn’t have any women so who did Cain and Abel marry?Eve?
Is this what Freud never realized… men used to marry their mothers and later their daughters who were also their sisters,Crikey,what a blunder
Blimey what is this Bible?Libel?
As we were taught in school Daniel lived with a lion and a lamb.I’m unsure if they had children…. it might explain a lot if they did.
And finally Solomon was very wise.It was easier then when there was no judge or jury to stop him cutting a baby in two… well, he was just pretending.
I say,the Shrews were very shrewd and clever.Like who told Adam and Eve what to do before Masters and Johnson wrote that book..  Human Textual Despondency?
In any case ,Adam could not read.In fact, they didn’t write either.And to think children here can write so young.Adam and Eve were a bit lacking but they have lots of family
Everybody on Earth… pity they are dead and can’t see us though Goodness knows they’d be shocked if they saw our behaviour with our family

 

She’s my mother

 

The good things my mother taught me

are too numerous to list

here or even on a large hoarding

I could rent for a week by the train station.

She gave me my blue eyes and my love of stories

and tolerated the fact that, I like my dad I would learn

for the sake of it and not with a view to earning money.

She praised my sense of colour though not my three-year research

scholarship to a place of higher learning

would rather I curled my hair and smiled a little at boys.

But my destiny was determined by the fact that I never could

master that Singer sewing machine she had

so I had to learn Theoretical Physics to make up for it.

And here I am now,thinking of her homemade bread

her showing me how to read music

and the names of the keys on the piano.

I know I was a big disappointment in not marrying into money

or becoming a saint or virgin and martyr ,well martyr anyway

She always believed me to be a virgin, even after marriage;

and it’s true I was a virgin with regard to common sense

getting on in society and all related issues.

Some ordinary female knowledge never penetrated me

so I’d sit in the rain wondering what tolerance was

or how Pascal got to lie in bed so much,and whether I could too

because I got creative ideas in bed—

not what you may be thinking of—–

She always changed the sheets and washed our clothes, however, short of money we were…

And made us dresses from scraps of fabric

That’s how we learned geometry,with the trapeze dress……

Numbers we learned from the stars and excitement from playing with the boys in that old brickfield.where they went into kilns

Strange what makes us who we are,but

the biggest contribution comes from mothers

and just to please her I hope as well as all my academic success

one day I’ll make myself a dress out of some rare print

embodying simultaneously both male and female design and shape

And she’ll look down and say,

She always had her head in the clouds,in a book,in the smoke

patterns from Dad’s cigarettes, in a dream and a whirl,in a puzzle

but she did have a good sense of color.

Yeah,she is my daughter

Yeah,once I imagined I must be adopted but

Yeah.I’m her daughter.

She’s my mother.

My mother

Kathryn Braithwaite's photo.