WOOD NYMPH

I disguise myself as bark of tree
and silently lie in wait...
There is no malice in what I do.
It is my nature to lead astray
the unsuspecting hiker, lost
in the forest depths; to play my game
of hide and seek that lures him deep
into thicket and brier, nettle and Fairy Ring;
where visions compelling as empyrean dreams
slowly possess his mind...

I never deceive. The mistake is his
if he desires me as ideal mate,
then follows his delusion with lustful leer
that ravenously devours every womanly curve,
a heavenly face and eyes that draw him
to my Otherworldly domain where the compass spins
and time plays peculiar tricks: where a midday sun
bleeds to death in the western sky
and his lifespan concludes in the blink of an eye.
But oh why do I have to watch him die?

Try to see that I have no choice:
being hybrid of woman and tree,
I've no stomach for Sunday roast - no, not I.
My sustenance is limited to the Souls of men.
Yet it gives me no joy to see my half-cousins
sacrificed to keep me immortal.
So heed my warning when I tell you I'm trouble...
and if ever you wander alone in my Forest
be sure to stay focused on the path ahead
and hurry, hurry home.

ELECTION DAY

Oh what a drag!

Election day is here again.
For who to vote, I'm racking my brain.
While sifting through each canvassing flyer,
I find of their blarney I rapidly tire.
Such extravagant claims each one makes
in an effort to top popularity stakes.
It's strange how they promise the world to us
when they call at our homes and make such a fuss
of each and everyone living there,
and offer to our burdens personally bear.
For our champions they suddenly claim to be -
yes, today they're devoted to you and me,
whereas only yesterday in the street
they would cross the road rather than meet
our gaze in case we should ask them why
last campaign's promises were allowed to die.
But now they expect us to believe
from society's troubles they'll bring reprieve.
Come on guys - we're not stupid you know,
the trick you're playing is oh so low!
We're aware your ambition is personal glory,
whether Labour, Lib. Dem., or even Tory.
Is it any wonder the turnout's so poor,
in spite of your chauffeuring us door-to-door?
Can you really not see we've had enough
of your endless policies that turn out to be duff?
So give us a break and for once tell the truth.
We're sick of false hope - now how about some proof?

Oh what a drag!

OLD MOVIES

They take over my mind. It isn't enough
to simply sit and watch from opening credits
to final scene. I want to absorb them all,
to let them fill the empty spaces in my life,
to race across the moor to Wuthering Heights;
soaked in  heavy rain and cold sweat
as I breathe in the moisture laden air and run
through purple heather with Cathy:
two manic Souls on a shared quest
to find the impossible,
as wild as the hills beneath our feet.
An intoxicated brain longs to bring my body too,
to make it my story
and carve my initials on a thorn tree, beside a date
that even Cathy cannot touch...

It would be simple if this were the only one.
But there are so many - a hundred at least -
each someone else's brainchild, manifested
into old video cassettes that I can handle
and absorb into my being through nerve endings
made hypersensitive by life-long addiction.
Aah...the sensuous smell of those tapes
makes me dizzy with euphoria:
I often wish I could unravel
then re-arrange my molecules into a long
ribbon-like form and wind myself around two spools.

The first time I felt this way
was when I discovered Ryan's Daughter.
Something like an express train slammed into me
and smashed right through those deep seated repressions
that society instills into us in the name of "morals"
in it's attempt to curb our innate natural drives.
Oh I realise it was considered wrong, what they did,
but how it set my pulses racing
to observe them together in that emerald forest.
I became the voyeur no longer able to bear exclusion.
I had to be a part of it, to slip within the experience
and feel my body tingle from the touch of his fingertips...

Then someone called me "Rose"
and I found myself in Major Doryan's arms
and we fucked all afternoon.
Oh such indescribable bliss...

I thought I must be dreaming.
Then I noticed my life story playing out
in moving pictures on my skin.

CHECO

For Sergio Perez...



He's on another planet, feeling nothing
but the slipstream of the Williams in front of him.
He pulls out to overtake, gives it all he's got:
pedal to the floor, he's unstoppable today.
His nostrils flare with exhilaration.
He was born for this.
See how the spray from his tyres
gripping rain-drenched track
plumes into a rainbow arc,
while his eyes narrow in concentrated determination.

He sails by as if in a powerboat,
boring fearlessly through the tightest of gaps...
again...and again,
leaves the rest standing:
from eighteenth on the starting grid
to third in the final lap.
See his Force India's red tail light flashing
as he takes the chequered flag.

How his loyal fans roar in admiration
as he takes third place trophy on the podium.
But I guess he'll never know
of this pair of adoring eyes
at home, watching on a TV screen.
Nor of a silent heart-felt wish
to step up there,
to hug him
and kiss him on the cheek...

A MAY SHOWER

A May shower. A single drop
absorbing into parched leather sleeve.
Downpour. Tender spring leaves
dancing to it's tune.

Deluge. Running down
the back of your collar.
Heavy drops colliding
with concrete path:
an explosion of tiny droplets
leaping at the sky.
Laburnum flowers shudder
as if to dinosaur footfalls,
while curls in human hair
stretch and unravel.

There is power in heavy rain,
in it's ability to change things:
to evacuate the park, to empty streets
into bus shelters and shop doorways.
A car door slams and a man runs out
under a giant black umbrella.
By a wooden fence a wild orchid
absorbs the rain thirstily,
it's intricately spotted leaves like tongues
swallowing, savouring the moment.

Rumble of thunder.
Two young lovers kissing
under an Oak tree, trembling with emotion.
Windscreens of parked cars
are patterned with yellow tide marks
of wasted pollen, just as
black mascara has reinvented my face,
mimicing the hand of Picasso.

CLIMBING MOUNT SNOWDON

Remember how we raced each other to the summit,
clinging on for dear life
as we navigated the almost vertical bits,
stomachs turning over
when heavy boots lost their footing
and sent loose rocks plummeting
to shatter nearly four thousand feet below?

Inexperienced climbers, our kit was basic.
Who was the most scared? Our nervous jokes
diverted attention from the constant possibility
of judgement error and certain death.
Oh it was definitely me:
in the shadows between those jagged rocks
I perceived hunched demons, presided over
by Death's own Black Angel.
And shivers ran down my spine.

You bravely tackled the Saddle,
while I clung, terror-frozen, to an outcrop;
desperately trying to suck the too thin air
into starving asthmatic lungs.
Suddenly enshrouded in thick cloud,
I lost sight of you.
PANIC...
A strange phosphorescence -
the angle of the Sun, maybe,
or something much more sinister?
My fingers, clinging to cold rock,
turned white as bone.
And the wind hummed a menacing lament.

A sudden chink in the cloud:
Llyn Llydow lay directly below,
a mere half inch in diameter.
INSTANT VERTIGO...
a chilling inner voice challenged me:
Just step off the edge
and into this fascinating miniature world.
It's easy!
But logic intervened:
No. Remember how far up you are.
At this height, things only appear to be close.
You'd be killed for sure.

An abrupt vertical movement to my left.
A badly smashed sheep lay whimpering and twitching
in a rapidly spreading pool of blood
on a narrow ledge below.
I felt sick.
The shadow demons shifted
to enclose the unfortunate animal,
as if moving in for the kill.
A selfish euphoria gripped me:
It was clearly their chosen sacrifice,
not us.
We would be safe now!

A narrow shaft of sunlight
swept across the sharp tooth-like
edges of the summit,
sending those terrifying entities
flitting off into the ether
like the last wispy strands
of a retreating storm cloud.
Just then, I saw you
scrambling back to me
across that deadly Saddle
that has claimed so many lives.
Please be careful I mentally beseeched you,
then my gaze was drawn again to that poor sheep.
It now lay silent and still,
but it was a stillness totally devoid of peace.
I strongly sensed a Soul in purgatory,
desperate for a safe refuge:
felt it bolt into my aura,
where it resides in me still...

MESSENGER

Echoes of Emily Bronte...


The blank white page appears to issue
a challenge - Emily sits frowning at it as if
caught up in some major inner conflict.

Their lives are so discordant,
these inhabitants of Gondal:
it's illustrious emperor, Julius Brenzaida
and his unfaithful married lover, Augusta Geraldine Almeda.

Although mere figments of a fertile imagination,
they have begun to elude Emily's pencil of late
and to take on a life of their own.
She no longer has power over them, can only observe
then record their epic adventures...
and today she is devastated.
She hadn't foreseen this:
the great Julius is no more.
His assassination has rocked the very foundations
of Gondal's great dynasty.
Augusta's numerous casual lovers are cast aside
as she mourns her one true love.
But it is Emily's heart that is breaking
as Augusta kneels, weeping, at his graveside
on that bleak northern Angora shore...

The page is no longer blank - it is filled
with words scrawled in unfamiliar handwriting.
She has no idea where they came from,
nor who wrote them here.
There is only the slightest recollection
somewhere at the back of her mind
of having temporarily escaped the confines
of Howarth's dreary Parsonage -
oh such a feeling of liberation, of utter bliss...

The clock in the hall chimes four times.
It is time to prepare dinner
for Papa, Aunt Bramwell, and her siblings.
As Emily clears her writing bureau,
she notices that the point of her pencil
is worn down flat to the wood...
yet she hasn't written a single word today.