Electrical charge

Tonight dVerse Poets has laid down the topic of ‘vampires’. I thought of writing something from an obtuse angle, but decided to have fun and go straight for the jugular ….

Go on lady, vamp it up,
pout your blood red lips,
let those glitter-eyes
strip aside my defences.
Gently toss that tumbling
sea of raven hair.

Throw the switch,
release the electric charge
so it pulses through
my nerve streams,
melting every atom
in my emotional fusebox.

Then and only then
when I’m in a state
of frozen fascination,
part your mouth, bare
your teeth, blinding
me in a whiteout.

Draw close to me, let
your scent fill the air
petrifying my impulses.
And as you lower lips
to back of my neck,
a scream –

slices through everything.
I wake up sweating
and curse my weakness.

Love gone bad

Today dVerse Poets, has us focusing on allegory – an interesting challenge!  Here is a simple observation. The message is in the title, the symbolism is in the blackberries rotted on the bushes.

Blackberries now live up to their name.
Shrivelled remains of onyx fruit
blasted in autumnal heat
raging through hedgerows.

Leaves have become the glory,
a firestorm of red and bronze.
Flames among brittle thorns, but
the cindered fruits are long past
their sell-by date.

The whole truth

For dverse poets pub night

A poem in response to In My Wildest Jeans by Hugo Williams

Hugo rattled on about his fat arse
and iron filings on his chin,

but that was only the half of it.
Age rages through your body.

It doesn’t need your permission.
It’s immune to dreams – and only

dreams – of fitness regimes. Walks across
the fields to Hughenden are no barrier

as the whole body transforms before
your mirrored eyes.

Aches and pains arrive
without the need for exercise.

Eyebrows and ears sprout hair at an
alarming rate and don’t mention those

I miss at the base of my throat when I shave.
Then there’s the mind.

Easy surrender, drawing
back from busyness and innovation.

Just a spurt of cerebral vigour
from time to time.

And unease at the
slow disintegration measured

in the mirror, in the mind.
Only the power of words still flourish,

muscular, lean. Still fighting to
harness something of myself.

But I still forgive Hugo for not telling the whole truth.
He did sign his poetry book for me.

 

Harvest for the taxman

1) This is in response to this week’s poetic prompt on ‘taxes, duties, obligations etc’ at http://dversepoets.com/this-is-us/

2) At the Tate Modern’s Paul Gauguin exhibition was a painting ‘Harvest Le Pouldu’ that had the following note: Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to Tate Gallery’

The Brittany sea is not blue, not really.
Peer close and you see brush strokes
in its surface. A multitude of strokes and
colours. Not just hues of blues, but a pallet
embracing purple and lavender that
flow out from the headland at Le Pouldu.

Blocks of colour; sombre deep greens and
bolshie browns jut out from the land and only
then do you catch a glimpse of black-masted
yachts lost at sea. But it’s the heart of the scene
that steals the show, sweeping its way across
the canvas, a swathe of yellow to root the eye.

A harvest of brush strokes nudging
the coastline, ripe for reaping. And as
a blue clad figure toils away going about
their business, Gaugin’s red fox looks at
you looking in on this corner of France.

The brush-stroked colours ebb and flow, but
it’s the note on the gallery wall that steals
my eye and raises a question. Did you beggar
yourself before handing this over to the taxman?

Please don’t tell me there was a roof over your head,
a car in the garage, food in your fridge, before
you parted with this window on Brittany.

Tell me you were destitute.

Tell me that tears of blue, purple, lavender and yellow
tumbled down your face as it was packed away.

Tell me your begging bowl was empty as you sat on
the street, as your final harvest was gathered in.

Simplicity of birds

This is in response to: http://kellieelmore.com/2012/04/20/fwf-free-write-friday-photo-prompt/
and this is the prompt photo

There you are. In a scrubland,
below scumbling clouds.
Dried grasses flexing, bone trees
scribbling against sky. Simplicity,

but it’s fractured. Life complexities,
demands calling out, songs pulling at
you – oh so many directions. You
stand facing a mess of confusion.

Above, in a wing beat, you missed
the birds following instinct.
An ancient pressure coursing
through hollowed bones. In

their fragility, arrowing on following
a single sign. Taking flight, the mysterious
migration. Choosing a path laid down
on natural history’s airways.

But you face a zigzag.
Tracking back and forward,
balance and counter-balance.
All those simplicites

going different ways.

Gambler’s moment in history

A screwed up ball of paper speaks
of failed choices and now he holds
a second sheet, glasses perched on
eyebrows, peering through a

magnifying glass. Studied concentration,
coffee chilling at his right hand, chatter
bouncing round him. A sharp
nod of the head, specs hit the bridge

of his nose, but still he peers through
myopic lense, head swaying gently
between paper slip and the Daily Mirror’s
racing page. Then a tidal wave of decision;

list of selections tucked into tan
leather wallet. Quickly he strides out
of coffee shop, in his wake half drunk
drink and the Mirror. Already

today’s news
has become history.