End of the Line

Your bed is empty and bathed in an eerie moon glow.
Like an altar
with shadows of a darkened hospital ward fretting at its edges.

Silence

No-one at the desk.

For that one moment I am all life
mocked by the death I was too late to reach.
Another evening dash which this time missed its connection.
You never waited

for one final stilted conversation

one final goodbye

one last chance for me to chisel through your granite layers
and touch the beat of your heart.

Left behind is this cathedral space
still not big enough
for a hundred questions.
A thousand regrets.

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Zola Budd’s hyenas and her day at Sedgemoor services

Surreal and fun workshop last night at Juncture 25 (our group of performing poets). We were given a list of people, list of places and list of situations had to chose one from each and then write a poem in 40 minutes! A point of note: Zola Budd was a South African who became a British citizen and was the world’s leading women’s middle distance runner in the mid 1980’s. She always ran barefoot.

She stands waif-like between a morose AA man
and the West Country Cornish pasty mobile.
It’s been raining.
Coming down like lions and hyenas,
she tells one disinterested traveller.
At least he was until he heard her say that.
What?
Lions and hyenas.
Don’t you mean cats and dogs?
He regrets the words before they leave his mouth,
sees the trap of the surreal opening up before him.
He learns where she comes from,
it obviously rains lions and hyenas.
Then he notices a bucket full of sorry looking flowers.
Rained on, they bow mournfully over the edge.
Red blooms, yellows and night blues
bleeding rain onto the floor by the door.
How much, he asks.
But he’s not prepared for the comeback.
Whatever you think they’re worth. She shrugs her bony shoulders.
Grabbing a handful, he jams a tenner in her fist,
walks off shaking his head.
Taking pity on the flower girl
who has no shoes.

Silence

Tonight at dVerse we are looking at love poetry without using ‘that’ word! Sometimes love needs no words at all ~ just being together is enough.

Snow suffocates the shuffling of nature.
No longer can wind worry at autumn’s leafy remnants.
All loose ends are tied up,
neatly buried in a new world that’s stealthed
in under cover of darkness.
In this wire taut quiet
my hearing is keening at the silence.
Just your steady breathing
breaching my ears.

Radio interview

This is a recording from the 10Radio programme Talking Books when Suzie Grogan invited me to read my work and requests from her listeners. It was wonderful fun.

You can check out Suzie’s blog here http://nowrigglingoutofwriting.wordpress.com/

Deaf to everything

In this semi-silence,
a world of whispers and distant thrumming
tries to seep in.
But my ear’s not open for business.
It isn’t just outside either,
there’s all that internal static and rumble.
No out, no in.

Meeting a solid barrier,
sound beats against the drum.
Rebounds, thunders round
and rebounds again.
This is the constant rhythm rolling
on a shore rebuking all waves
until they’re left seeking another listening post.

On reading a piece of poetry appreciation that is full of obscure words

This is from last night’s poetry workshop at Juncture 25 where we had to take someone elses idea for a poem they never got around to writing! Thanks to Jinny Fisher for this! And of course today is World Poetry Day – happy scribbling and reading.

I understand the letters.
They line up like
a familiar terraced street.
Those geometric lines,
curves and bends greet me.
We’re very old friends.

Jostling into line, they paint a picture,
talking to me in a language I can hear.
It’s smooth as my eyes
sweep steadily from left to right.
Soundlessly words floating
through my ear.

But I obviously missed the warning sign.
Didn’t see the pole, the red triangle,
those familiar letters joining together:
speed bumps ahead.

I hit eldritch hard,
was still braking when
crustose bruised my mind
and before stopping, koan
had unshipped my chain.

Now all that eloquence is lying
like shattered stones.
Letters wander off,
a geometric divagation
dissolving into a muttering cloud.