Sitting in the ambulance

Sitting in an ambulance with your knees raised up too high.

Lurching through the traffic made me want to cry

I asked him for some water all they had was red bull beer.

I was too dehydrated to produce a single tear,

We saw the Northern suburbs0 were we going to Golders Green?

I thought we might see Jesus looking rather mean.

In my bright red handbag my phone began to ring.

I was feeling nervous so I nearly bit my tongue.

Hello my dear a woman said

We can’t see you today.

My appointment had been:been cancelled

I didn’t know what to say.

NHS unfunded do they want the Old to die?
Am I feeling anxious? Does a baby cry?

The jeans

My brothers bought some jeans.

I was practicing the piano in the front room when they came in

Mum came home later.Screamed horror.

They bolted their bedroom door while I played Mozart

She took the axe and went upstairs

Then she hit the door. It wasn’t very strong wood

I can’t remember anything else but I got very good at playing the piano.

I don’t think I have the right sort of feelings.

NYTimes: Harold Bloom, Critic Who Championed Western Canon, Dies at 89

Harold Bloom, Critic Who Championed Western Canon, Dies at 89 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/books/harold-bloom-dead.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Walking on the map

Ah,rebellious spirit wanting space


With my finger on the map I paced


I climbed Helvellyn, fell off Striding Edge


Spent a lifetime hanging off a ledge

Then there was reality to find.

Was it is in the world or in the mind?

I saw the water cascade down steep hills

Joy came through my eye without my will

I wish I was a school girl with my dreams

Life is good but love’s not what it seems

The promised land

O

Joy sings now in golden light,

Then after day comes deep,black night.

New moon is rising by grey trees,

The earth is where I want to be.
I want the day,I want the night.
I want the dark.I want the light.
I want to see and to be seen,~
And not to lose my precious  dreams

The sun has set, grey clouds turn black,

The day just gone  will not come back.

I’ll rest in quiet reverie

Until the reaper’s scythe takes me.
And then I drop and mix with dust,
Till worms and beetles sate their lust.
And fall into ten thousand motes,
And dance, in sunlight,  music’s notes.

No more striving ,no more ambition

No more fighting,no competition.

Every particle’s the same

Without even  a unique name.
And, side by side, we all are one,
The lusts of life have been and gone.
We dwell with dirt and grain and sand
At last we’ve reached the Promised Land

We call it love

I run my fingers tentatively down your cheek,

asking you a question

with my eyes.

looking at each other,

you touch me too.

This is my skin
my boundary.

Yours is thicker,
like rubber.

I run my fingers down your chin.
what is this little bone?
I like it.

I like your skin

I like your bones.

I like you.

you please me.
you are tasty.
I like your taste,

your skin,your eyelids.

I like your eye here,
and your other eye .

Nice one!

I like the hair on your head.
May I touch your hair?
do you like hair?
Hair makes me laugh.

I have a fondness for laughing.
I love to laugh.

I enjoy laughter
I love your laughter.
If not, smiling is good also.
Or a gleam in the eyes,
showing the inside smile,
the smiling heart.

I like your inside,
Outside
and possibly
your backside.
your upside and your downside.
your side sides.

I snuggle you all around with soft wool.
I knit you into my scarf.
I’ll have to wear you round my neck now!

How unusual
How flexible.
How charming.
How alarming

How creative
How interesting.

What an idea!
what a notion

but you are too big for me to knit
So I’ll just touch your hand
with my fingers.
and you touch my hand
with your fingers.

What good hands we have
with such fingers.

fingers are for touch.
fingers are keen to touch.
I like touch.

what would we do
without fingers?

I like your skin.
skin is good
We love skin
We love.

 

I want skin to be ours
and yours
is mine
and mine
is yours

where is the edge of the world?
skin has no end
it’s infinity
au naturel.
what order!
what design!
What wonder.
what awe.
where is the world’s skin?

tenderly we touch the world
as the world embraces us.

We call it love.
Love.

We call it love

Tenderly

By Katherine

Tenderly I held him took him in

As though we touched each other skin to skin

Dying is what everyone must do

Even when it splits the Me from You

What we took for granted every day

Had its end like any mortal’s play

The length of life is just enough to lie

It’s not here forever, don’t you cry

We are on no plateau but a slope

Slight at first, so we don’t see and note

Gently we are led to where it ends

Beautiful and foolish like ourselves

How can we be split when we are one?

In deep darkness dies the winter sun

Copyright © Katherine Braithwaite |



Across the desert grey

So you are gone  who once declared your love
For that phantasm conjured in your mind
For onto me you brought down from above
A torment bitter and   some words unkind.

Used to  friendship from within your books

You did not understand that I was real
Irritation grew as you did look;
You threw your poisoned  arrows  at my heel.

What once you loved then you began to hate
If not perfect then intolerable I must be
And then you cursed me with this  sorry fate
Our child was born and him you’ll never see.

Illegitimate and born in desert grey.
I carried him alone from death’s dark way.