WILL O' THE WISP

A golden band wearing thin,
restless discontent within.
The gloomy city and monotonous years
had led to bickering and crocodile tears.

Longing to escape to Never land,
for I knew he'd never understand
when time runs out on unfulfilled plans
a gloomy fog your future spans.

I asked him, "What is happening to us?"
He replied, "It's only a blip, no fuss!
Go spend some time with old friends
and I'll see you again when summer ends.

You know most couples need time apart
to bring them closer, heart-to-heart."
But love, it appeared, had it's own agenda:
best laid plans et cetera, et cetera...

Then just by co-incidence you were there
taking in the bracing sea air
in a quaint little cottage on cobbled hill.
That Bohemian lifestyle - such a thrill!



Clovelly is now a distant memory:
one forbidden night of rapturous fantasy
in late June, so long ago -
and the searing spark that set us aglow.

It could have turned our lives to steel,
but we were careful not to feel
too much and only rainbows touch.
Yet still that night I relive too much...

A LIFE

For my daughter Toyah, 14.06.89 - 28.06.89.
In memoriam, with all my love...


This hurt has lingered so long,
re-intensifying with each new day.
The rising of the sun a stark reminder
of what should have been...


The team forms a semi-circle around the bed.
The Paediatrician's smile is jarring, inappropriate
as he tells me she has a mere fifty/fifty chance
of survival.
Am I alone with such agony?
I cannot read
their faces of stone.

The door - I want to run,
to escape harrowing reality,
to throw myself under a train.
The pain is debilitating:
twelve long hours,
all labour long...
then she's carved by a surgeon's scalpel.
Then deep coma...


Two long weeks pass
while I search her face
for signs of life.
But there is nothing:
no movement, no sound
to cling to,
only a ghastly silence.

My precious first-born,
limp like a rag doll.
Beloved dust
slipping through my fingers,
turning to rust.

No time for bonding,
for tender caresses
nor words of love.
In fact, no time for anything.
Just a tiny white coffin
slipping into eternity...


Here in the darkness,
endlessly yearning for the light.
But it never comes - only
another morning and birdsong:
that bittersweet serenade
to a broken heart
and the end of motherhood.

LUCIDITY

This dream's steeped in mystical nostalgia,
it's visions clear as day-sight. I have returned
to childhood country home, driven
I suspect, by the monotony of stagnant inertia.

Naked, I stand, without embarrassment
outside the hand crafted garden gate
painted forest green by Father's hand,
and each post adorned by a carved ornament.

Nothing has changed: laburnum arch, all summer
a profusion of blossoms the colour of sun,
giving way to flower beds, vegetable gardens, then woodland.
Such an idyllic scene flares irresistible to this dreamer.

At the very tips of lofty fir trees, buzzards circling.
Below, King George's playing field, where we four
used to play our legendary games in uncut grass:
childhood's magical heyday, imaginations free-running.

With sun sinking low, my Mother's voice
calling me home for bed.
And I hide again - just as I did then, in the undergrowth
forcing her to come seek me. Proving, I guess, that I have a choice.

Oh the bliss of re-living that distant innocence:
I, no longer naked, but draped in daisy chains and buttercups,
dancing among the trees and ivy - a latter-day Wood Nymph
spiralling, spiralling, all the way around our boundary fence.

Brown as a berry from all summer outdoors,
I squat behind the giant gnarled Oak under cover of ferns.
But my Mother's hawk-eyes still miss not a thing:
with reddening buttocks, in floods of tears, I'm roughly man-handled indoors.



I am taking a couple of weeks off to go touring, so will catch up with you again soon.
Until then...Happy Blogging! *smiles* xoxoxo

DEAD FISH

For Freddie...with deepest compassion


Dying fish floating
                          on the water.
See the cracks forming
                          there in the ground.
Weren't they there a year ago?


Sacrifices for the lives
                          we're living.
Nirvana for the special one
                           who dares
feel it all and change his ways?


The blame collectively becoming our Karma,
                           descendants' lives in the palm of our hands.
Don't we care about the planet we live on,
                           or don't we understand?


See the dead fish floating
                           on the water.
See the cracks spreading
                           deep underground.
Didn't you see them years ago?


Now the lights are going out over London,
                           New York, Paris and then Hong Kong...
soon the whole world will be gone.

THE TOUR GUIDE

Today in medieval manor,
                          do you remember me I wonder?

Do my eyes call
                          from portraits on the wall?

Then when they swap the pictures round
                          does my gaze go to ground,

or do you see me anyway
                          in the memory of that April day?



And does my voice fill your head
                          with every single word I said

echoing around the panelling
                          old carved oak now channeling

these restless thoughts and forbidden dreams
                          that inspire in you impossible schemes?

Oh through those sunlit stained glass windows,
                          feel my impassioned caress in rainbows!



You're leading yet another tour -
                          all new faces, never a bore.

But can so much as a single one
                          ignite your slumbering inner sun?

Oh please let it be the flitting image
                          of my face that incites such rage -

like mine - of ravenous core-heat
                          and maddest wildest heartbeat.



Home alone now my thoughts roam free,
                          nothing but the TV for company.

Somerset countryside on the screen,
                          a part of the county I've never been.

Amid those rolling hills of green
                          flash of retro-vision seen:

this, I recall, is your home shire -
                          and it sets imagination on fire.



When gazing from your highest window
                          to Glastonbury Tor where the west winds blow,

does it bring to mind green eyes
                          and stirrings you're afraid to recognise?

Then attempting to drown forbidden needs,
                          do you turn to your collection of foreign meads

and gulp them down in haste -
                          but my perfume's in the after-taste?



Oh am I just a deluded fool
                          to hope you also felt it all?

When our eyes met
                          over that faded Gazette

and you stealthily breached Pandora's Box
                          with the dusky reclining nude on top

just for me...
                          God, how you set my fantasies free!



Even today it still tortures me,
                          this knowing what can never be.



                          

SCORPIONS' TAILS

Your repressed indignation had barred her
from eternal slumber. She could not believe
the wounds she'd inflicted had pierced that deeply.
Where did you get such thoughts
if not from scorpions' tails?
For others, unconditional forgiveness.
For her, unending resentment.
The tables turned:
helpless to close immaterial ears,
voiceless in self-defence,
she had to experience it all
driven into the centre of her being -
had to feel the blade,
not through her non-existent heart, but there on the walls
through her paintings, in dark thought-forms
piercing her talent with poison arrows
in their ornate frames of gold leaf -
why did her work take pride of place
whilst yours, unframed, lay gathering dust
in a neglected corner of the attic?

Did your cry of deliverance
resound in her open grave? Each arrow
nailing her to the earth taking on
the form of a beautiful healing Angel.
In stark contrast: the ugliness of her harsh criticism
that rendered you just as ugly,
like a cancer cell eating away
at your spiritual body, gradually depleting
Higher Self.
Mother-in-Law's disparaging tongue
no longer to be borne. Your hidden relief
became an exorcism, ridding you
with something approaching euphoria
of years of humiliation.

Healed, the lighter you rose above
the monumental
contorted form
of your injury: Mum-in-Law's tongue
pinned down by your arrows...
but it was your blood that oozed
from the corners of her mouth.

PREMONITION

A fisherman's widow scans the horizon
from Port Quin's shore in eighteen-fifteen,
and tonight I stand here beside her fretting,
battered by gales and forty foot waves.

The centuries between us dissolve before dawn
as The Voyager head-butts the ocean floor.
Oh the news when it comes is a foregone conclusion -
I knew when I saw her I'd see him no more...