Month: July 2016

Black Narcissus

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Remnants of love
are the last breaths
of the narcissus:
lifeless, black petals,
eyes gouged red from crying,
and inked pitch stains from dying…

Flowers drift and flowers sigh, all erstwhile
emotion from wilting lies that leave signals in the thorns
below that prick at tender lesions to show wherein deceit
and disease has spread to choke a love as yet unwed.

Scattered petals bare no perfume just cluttered haste
of abandonment strewn like sadness across a waste ground’s gloom
in the clinging vines of ivy rose – your stinging charms
still suffocate and presuppose, squeezing the life from all that’s new,
leaving nothing behind but necrotic hue.

Naivety lost and innocence shed makes me the bud
whose sorrowful dread was nurtured and revitalised, but far too late
I realised; so take these dew drops cried anew to moisten
seeded ground for you, to tend, to fret to watch them grow,
and when full bloom of youthful woe is within your grasping
hand, I will return in spirit like a flame’s nebulous  glow –
to fire this, Svengali’s land.

 

Proof

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Hold that smile,
hold the pose
in these weird days
that hold our breath the most:
awkward posture, selfish guises,
bulging eyes strung out on technology.
With our free hand
we raise a glass to future’s past
toasting
the ghosts that couldn’t
make it.

Downed in one
tenuous gulp
makes cheers last longer,
to smooth over doubts and fears
as froth dribbles down the chins
and glasses
set to rest on crisp
white linen’s
cracked sneer –
all aimed at the ghosts
who fake it.

Toasts drown
out the background noise
of irony
as we drink to our health;
it’s part of the game –
we drink to drown our sorrows.
Intoxication is such
that we need it so much.
In limbo we stand bereft
and shaking;
all acceptable,
and very appealing
since life can be unbearable
with little consolation
in healing.
We drink by ourselves
and ogle ourselves
in full fascination
of ourselves –
the future ghosts
that won’t make it.

Cast adrift among
the bubbles –
we are remote and detached
in its liquid
arms to brew animosity
and anonymity –
cast adrift only a short time
before we collide
and we burst; spewed out
but still trapped inside,
we become the toasts
oblivious to the ghosts
who can’t take it

 

Showing Barney

dolphins

(Picture: SWNS)

Inspiration: Lisa Lancaster:  Author

Sea blue sky was surf unbroken
above playful cause within
the order of cetaceans –
strokes of teal skim waters
crazy with the wind’s swirled particles
inside waves’ distant beginnings,
echoes crash on beach cusps –
whitewater ridges release beach leeches
to the backwash and black knights
ride the breakers of surreal.

 

 

Article – A Grim Fairy Tale

dodoexpress

The Dodo Express has just posted another piece of mine, ‘A Grim Fairy Tale’ and I’d love for you to go there to read it (it isn’t long) and look around – perhaps ‘follow’ to stay up to date and lend your support or be inspired by the work they are trying to do all in the name of conservation. Along with many they are trying to put right all the things that are wrong with our world today in this arena.

If any of you would be up for re-blogging any of their featured pieces to spread this concern wider and adding more voices to stifle atrocity then that would also be hugely appreciated.

 

Thank you so much.

Tiger, Tiger…

tiger

Can sadness leak
its dripping tears
as if it could
escape by proxy
through half inch wounds
then out through the knotted
wooden floor’s gaping remnants
of ancient times
and trees
torn limb from limb?
Imposters: damp and warped,
stiffened – dead grasslands
for clumsy walks,
prowls cut short by meagre
perimeters,
metal boundaries,
but there is no bounding,
no hunt, no chase, no kill
no cubs, no family,
but plenty of abandoned scent.
I smell fear and weakness,
greedy consumers,
glaring customers
disturbed human sweat
and cruel tamers
wielding lashes and prods,
sawdust,
chains and vicious collars.
Vices and weakness,
I see those – they smell
of commercialism
and exploitation; even my water
smells of death.
My tired body aches, its atrophy
longs to be beyond the wire mesh
and cruel, sadistic pleasure
in the vertical hold of cold steel.
I need to be
free
I need to run and run and run.
I mourn my invisible cubs,
and their schooling,
and being there to let them go
to let them live, love, hunt,
stalk, kill, sleep, dream
and survive.
I miss them.
I miss
living.

 

Merciless

plastic in sea

Rise before the fall of nature
writhing limply with battle torn scars,
lashed by ill will and merciless intent;
too busy to heal whilst fighting.

Cries reach the air stagnated in pools
of toxic vapour; condensing from breath
too dulled and throwaway to replenish;
or be plunged into primal seas, reprise.