A WITCH'S BALLAD

She's stolen my man
just because she can.
For me he was the only one,
for her simply a bit of fun.
Turning from pink to green - now red:
a shape-shifting Dragon who'll fill her with dread.
I want to burn her quite to death
with my devouring fiery breath.
But, alas, she hides well out of reach
behind high gates I cannot breach,
while lording it over her willing slaves
in a mansion built on my Ancestor's graves.
Oh yes,
she's the one who has ruined my life.
Now it's her turn to suffer dark strife.

Watching her everywhere she goes.
Gosh how she's keeping me on my toes!
A new lover here, a fresh beau there,
all soon discarded without a care
once they've served their purpose for her -
endless supplies of diamonds and fur.
Oh what a thoroughly self-centred bitch
whose life runs smoothly without a hitch.
Well I vow here and now I'll be the last one.
Soon she'll find her power undone.

So returning to my cave beneath Cheddar Gorge,
I begin a silver amulet to forge.
A five-pointed star within a band,
engraved with a language she won't understand.
I pass it through Earth, Air and Water
and then through Fire for this devil's daughter.
Now while gazing deep into darkened mirror,
I bring her image nearer and clearer
until that supercilious face
is fully defined in this magical space.
And with potent herbs I bind her here
until the consequences are clear
of who she's become and what she's done.
The mirror ripples. It has begun...



A week later she passes me by
as if in a trance, her clothes all awry.
Her boys, I hear, have run for the hills
and the only things keeping her sane are pills.
Her beauty has faded in record time
so none now desire her: oh such a crime
that this should happen to a babe like me!
is all she can think. Still she cannot see
that Universal Laws can never be cheated
and all those who try will be defeated.

So unconditional love I send.
Oh it's hard to do, but I have to bend,
or else I'll become as sad as she
then neither of our Souls will ever be free.
So forgiving all the pain she's inflicted,
I probe her mind - she's been addicted
to ego's dictates that she couldn't resist:
unless centre of attention, she couldn't exist.
So I cast a spell to clarify her mind
and help her to deep within herself find
a better path to true self-worth
without having to other's weaknesses unearth.
All those husbands and lovers she's stolen away,
well it's come back to haunt her upon this day.
She's been living in fear of single males -
oh horror of horrors, what if it fails
and she be discarded for someone else...
is this beginning to ring any bells?
Well isn't this what she's inflicted on us?
Such hypocrisy is preposterous!

Oh awareness just dawned - I feel it all.
So now her future is solely her call...😉😉

FROG DROPPED BY A HAWK

On R.V. roof with sun and rain
worked into the dulling aluminium,
a black frog lay in the groove

motionless as a rubber toy; deceased
and stiff as wood, one leg
broken and half missing. Remaining

tiny toes tear-jerking somehow.
Into my heart I took him.
His little sunken eyes

no longer moist and darting
absorbed instead of reflecting light;
a piece of paper I burnt once

looked a lot like that.
Pollen dulled his back to ochre
the way mold encrusts a stale cheese.

Yet his belly retained it's luminosity
away from U.V. rays;
the life once dwelling there

in each silvery body scale: like
candle flame observed through a moonstone.
And I saw thread-like rents there

in the swollen dark bruise
where beak or talon had sliced
painfully into tender flesh.

So sad. It hurt to look.
Slaughtered for what? Not even
sustenance for the marauding hawk.

REVELATION

Because the text absconded
somewhere between phone and mast,
because you had no way of knowing
I'd been held up at the meeting,
you waited in vain. The train from King's Cross
arrived and departed and I wasn't on it.
I can clearly picture the scenario:
your altercation with the porter - probably loud,
describing me in detail and insisting
that he must have seen me leaving the platform
(amongst all those thousands of faces a day??).
It was ten o'clock on a Friday evening
and I appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth.
In denial of having no control over the situation -
a position wholly alien to you - you stood quite still,
stifling the urge to race off up the high street, where
you were certain I must be wandering, lost and bewildered
as I had no knowledge of Guildford whatsoever.
But you wouldn't have found me there.
I was sitting quietly, deeply immersed in a novel,
in my comfortable seat on the later train
that was just pulling into the station.
Someone had suggested I may have caught a later train. So
when I finally alighted, expecting to find you
still there waiting for me, I  was confronted instead
by a frantic whirl of activity from the far end if the station,
followed by a figure swiftly zig-zagging his way
through the flow of oncoming passengers.
Then your livid face, your furious eyes
and your harsh recriminations, "What the hell are you playing at?"
Followed by your crushing embrace,
as if I had been resurrected from the grave
when all hope, all possibility, had been lost.
Then suddenly you were laughing, tears welling up in your eyes -
although you were quick to explain them away as particles of dust.
It was so surreal.
And just behind you stood your saviour,
smiling like a small Leprechaun
to see an Englishman being so un-English:
a mass of frenzied anxiety - and you had
opened your heart to him, asking him what to do
and to help you find me -
and then to succeed in your quest, thanks to his advice.
What a revelation!!
I, who had always firmly believed
that "macho" men like you only faked love
in order to find sex, now presented
with a different truth altogether -
a truth I'd always hoped for.
Your deep concern.
Your across Guildford, fear of having lost me, dash.
And then your relief engulfing me
like a soft warm fluffy blanket;
like a mother hen's protectiveness
of her newly hatched chicks.
Such totally unexpected tenderness.
So I must mean something to you after all.
Could this really be love?
Yes, I am loved.