A Sunday Afternoon in March

My dear and lovely friend Jacqueline, who happens to be a follower of this blog, indeed was my first follower, is helping me edit some of my poems ready for publishing.  I've decided my Golden Year will be celebrated by me getting a book of poetry together.  I'm so grateful for her precise and clearsighted expertise, her ability to correct my somewhat slapdash punctuation and her belief in my writing.

She tells me the poems I have shown her via email this afternoon should go on the blog.  So they will. With her editing.  Enjoy.

Meal Time

How does it feel to be swallowed,
Consumed, savoured, adored?
Giving in that ecstasy of arrival,
Departure through the door marked ‘escape’.

But odd how one room looks like another,
When you are fattened, fed and adored;
Endlessly savoured.
But who’s swallowed, who’s eaten,
Who’s empty, who’s fed;
And who has the key to the door marked ‘Escape’?

08/10/2008

The Fix

I have to rid myself of my addiction.
I have to sweat out every thought and touch,
Moment and memory.
They have to go.

The completeness I feel near him
Will be my destruction.
The high
Will not set me free.

Just look what he has done,
What he thought you were worth.
He left you for an easier life.
Can’t you see what this man is
And what you mean to him?

But still I find myself alive with him,
A living shell without.
The pain fades: all is simple, all is clear.

And then he goes to her;
Where he wants to be.

And I come down and realise I am tethered to a demon,
But still dream for the fix.

14/02/2008

Stupid Days

On stupid days I think I can do this.
Ride out the storm,
Believe it wasn’t my fault
That I have been unloved and used.
Discarded.
That I have a future;
Look up and smile.

But really, honestly
Amazing what you can tell yourself on stupid days.
Certain in your love,
Wrapped in a coat of care:
A tissue coat,
Light and pretty.

On stupid days you never see
How wrong you are,
Entranced by the soft and crinkly flowers.
Fakes.
As was the love that made it.

But how to go on?
When you have lived a life of stupid days
In a tissue coat.

20/06/2008

Jigsaw

Pieces slotted into place
Make good and quiet companions
That slide beneath your hand
And all you feel
Is smoothness
In the strange directions
The pieces turn together.
And looked on from above,
The picture formed
Makes sense to all who see it.

My mother said a jigsaw
Should be started from the edges
And filled in.
But what of clouds and sky
That challenge so?
Or edges that could fit either way,
Or corners that are not there,
Just wished for to make
A form
That seems complete from above;
And yet is not a pattern
Of smooth and quiet pleasure
For the pieces
That slide beneath your hand.

Jerez de la Frontera
1st August 2010

Travels

The tracks are laid
For me to run
A life successful.

I must have friends,
I must have friends,
Who I am if I don’t
Have friends?

I need to pass,
I need to pass,
To get to uni
I need to pass.

I need to love,
I need to love,
Am I good enough
If I don't have love?

I want a wedding,
My friends will see,
I’ve made the grade,
They’re just like me.

I must have children,
I must have children,
What I am if I don’t have children?

The bigger house,
The bigger house,
I’m part of things
With that bigger house.

And now the train
Is off its tracks
I lie alone,
As they rush past.

And see the flowers
Pushing through
The thawing ground.
I never knew

It was so cold
Just rushing past,
Onwards on those rails.

Not seeing trucks
Along the way,
Dislodged by things
That went astray

And stopped the journey
Forced to the ground,
To think again
Of what was found,

Along the tracks and rails.

3/20/2011