Tag: free verse

Were you not soldiers too,fighting for the right to breathe?

The protesting world

cries out like a trumpet

playing “The last post.”

The eyes of the lost ask me to tell

what is unspeakable,

but I have nothing

except to ask why bugles are not played for you

at Remembrance Ceremonies.

Were you not soldiers too,

fighting for the right to breathe?

The “right to life,”

As you dragged yourself off the truck

Not quite believing but

Yet,yes,believing,paradoxically that

Soon you would be silent amd still.

Your teeth carefully taken for gold”

Yes,they were green alright

Recycling was very important to the Nazi..

One might almost say they were the pioneers here of what we do today

So was hygiene. They practised so well

How to wash their hands clean from guilt,

So much soap they needed

So they could play Mozart

and tenderly touch their children

Then sleep on clean linen enjoying such dreams.

Soon the world would be perfect.

all in order,all tidied away,

Unique,complete, orderly ,dead..

Yes, death of everything w as the real final solution.

All packed away in boxes,

Waiting for the Resurrrection.

How far is it to heaven from where we started?

Would Jesus like to meet you now,to greet you,

So pure,clean and perfect?

You have cut out your own heart with the breadknife

Because it troubled you so,beating like that.

When you were only doing your duty.

Doing what men have to do.

A dove flew up as the agnostic man comforted the

frightened boy

And hand in hand they died right there

At the foot of the Cross.

Which you revered,I believe.

But it was God’s son hanging there

And you all knew.

Is today the day?

Wandering through galleries,4785799_f260
Sepia paintings of pines

And faces

Pain came to the emptiness once my heart,

I sat picturing screaming Popes and babies.
Eastward, looking for fresh instruction,
My mind unpleated,like a pair of curtains
~Hung out to dry in equinoxal gales.
The bells of Satan’s cell phone
Rang again,startling in this silence.
“You had your smear done yet?”
“It’s me,hinny”
“I’m having coffee here in “Costa’s.”
Then I awoke,a man appeared.
How apposite,I need you,Ludwig!
I can’t fly my kite.

In the Science Museum,the mirror cracked
And from it stars flew out,
Adorning cars and bicycles and buses.
The building gently fell into its own reflection.
People flew out like gasping rockets,
Illuminating the blankness,
Calling “Is today the day?.”

If only life could be captured

How beautiful it was when the sun shone

And I walked with you,my dear husband, through the gardens.

How happy I was to sit with you by the lake

and to hear the water from the fountain splash.

It’s our our favourite music now we cannot visit the sea

To hear the tide rush in,then fall sucking on the shingley beach.

But I see it in my minds eye.

Aldeburgh,the fishing boats go out at sunrise.

I awoke early and saw the sun across the sea

and the boats setting out in the soft light.

Dunwich,the heath filled with birds

the cliff and the beach where sometimes one can find marble

from one of the many churches washed away by the encroaching sea.

And Southwold,the marsh so quiet I heard crickets.

We went across the Blyth in the rowing boat

And saw the place from which our picture of Walberswick was painted…

If only life could be captured,slowed, for a few minutes

for us to receive the beauty and hear the sound of the sea

The everlasting music of the heart ,

Rhythm and pulse,the wet sand sliding under my barefeet

amongst those tiny sea shells.

I shall remember

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.

We.

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.

It’s called love.
Love.

It’s called love

My own blood

When the windows shattered
And the splinters flew in
You just made for the back door
And left me
not knowing where I could begin.

When the shards of glass hit me
And pierced my vulnerable skin
You were already going,
Leaving me
feeling you were an inhuman being.

When I fell down, covered in glass and bleeding,
And the storm raged on,
I didn’t look round because
I knew,I knew,I knew,
I knew you would be gone.
Gone.Gone.

Suddenly peace came,storm had quite
disappeared..
It was all over so quickly
Not as terrible as I feared.
My wounds were bad,I have to confess.
I had no bandage
Nothing with which to dress.

Gently I washed away the blood

Now I just have bruises

And a  dark shape

On the floor,where  you stood

Since that day,no storms have  come this way.
My wounds are healing
I have just one thing to say.
When the storm was so bad
You left me all alone…

but strangely since then
all is peace and calm.
Your absence has become
almost a balm.

But I hear stories of fierce storms rising up
In towns and villages
Not too far from here,where a dark man appears.

Seems like he’s running to get away
From some storm
But the storm’s inside him…
He gives it form.

So when the windows crashed in
And glass flew at my face
He left me all alone
In what, he thought,
was a very dangerous place.

Did he not pick me up
and carry me outside?
No,my darlings, he left me alone;
I might have died.

But since then
I lost a great burden…
And I lost a great feeling of shame.

Rise up,you women,bleeding and torn.
For on days like that,a new resolve is born.

While you live don’t accept all the blame.
Don’t live so long  in fear and in shame.
Rise up and find that calm
In the eye of the storm…
On days like this
a new woman’s soul is born.

My mind unpleated

Watching Plato shining torches into blackness,
Wandering through the galleries,
Sepia paintings of pines,
Pain came to the emptiness once my heart,
I sat picturing screaming Popes and babies.
Eastward, looking for fresh instruction,
My mind unpleated,like a pair of curtains
Hung out to dry in equinoxal gales.
The bells of Satan’s cell phone
Rang again,startling in this silence.
“You had your smear done yet?”
“It’s me,hinny”
“I’m having coffee here in “Costa’s.”
Then I awoke,a man appeared.
How apposite,I need you,Ludwig!
I can’t fly my kite.

In the Science Museum,the mirror cracked
And from it stars flew out,
Adorning cars and bicycles and buses.
The building gently fell into its own reflection.
People flew out like gasping rockets,
Illuminating the blankness,
Crying

“Is today the day?

If I go

If I go I won’t tell you.
I’ll just disappear one day.
Like when a cigarette ,which seemed so long,
suddenly has become smaller
and you never noticed it
because you were talking
about the meaning of life
while life was somewhere else
blown away with your smoke
into the sky
and then dispersed
never quite visible again
but still floating on the breeze
hoping to be caught
in a butterfly net
but unable to communicate
except by flying.
If I go it will not be today
but it will be an ordinary day
no one will realise
that it’s that day
that the bird flies
from her nest
to go to a new place
only seeing the deserted nest
he realises,
my bird has flown

A lamb dies; call him Abel

I am able I am assembled
I aim able.To kill Abel.
I blame Abel,I.
Am I emblematic
Of blame?
Abel,am I to blame?
At home,I am
Unable to tell.
A lamb is an emblem.
I am unable to help Abel.
Help me ,Abel,are you able?
My name is unable to be,
I mean I am unnameable.
I am Abel,I am an object
Of fraternal hate.
Love was unable
to be,to embrace. Enmity and time
Beat me.Killed me.
Dead.
They aim to disable,
A lamb dies.Call him
Abel.
I am bereft, for hate
Was able
To destroy amiability.

I aimed hate at my brother,Abel.
Hate will be unable in the
End to win.

I miss you, Abel.
My brother.
I miserable,Abel.
I am unable ,Abel,
To live,to love.
Abel,I bad.
No balm,no love,
I unable.
I un…
Un,undone.
Oh, Abel.
I bereaved myself,
Unable,
blind.
I lost,ability,
Love.
I live not.Yet
Not able
To die.
Unable.
Undone.
Done for.
Cain.
No brother.
No cousin.
Noone left but me
Who am not Abel.
Disabled

My own Creator

When you struck me,i vibrated like a kettle drum
then as smaller percussions and repercussions
echoing from all the glassy surfaces
creating a balletic geometry of sound tracks
in space and time.

When you knocked me down,
I fell against her and her and her;
we were like a row of skittles
and we all went down with the lifeboat;
the infinite chain of being is.

When you hit me,the Fall spread across the world
Now there is no Vertical
All is undivine and graceless.
By the Rod it’s ruled

When you left me,I left myself,the world,the rocks,dry land
I weighed down sank to the ocean bed
with coral eyes
gazing.

When you struck my mind
I became an instrument of a foreign power
Singing a song I didn’t kmow.

When the glass was smashed
the splinters flew into all our hearts.
You didn’t know what we couldn’t see.

I lay on barren ground and gave birth
To my own Creator in the desert.
He was not dead at all.

Did you kill him?