Amber

You take my flesh in hand and start to score.
You press with gentle force to mark a seam.
You know the path, you’ve traced its route before:
this armour guards a softness, lush as dreams.

This task takes patience, time, and outright skill;
first layer gone and now the harder part:
a thin, tight membrane keeps you from your fill,
so lift the bitter, taste my sweeter heart.

The air sings, tartly, beckoning your tongue;
and busy fingers blush, juice running free.
Impediments are done, the feast’s begun;
my core surrendered, you devouring me.

The fresh scent lingers, memories kept real;
ripe flesh is worth the challenge of the peel.

This sonnet was written as part of #NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) 2017. It's one of my traditions to try to write a #sonnet every April. This has since shifted as, 2019, I often write 7 sonnets every February, as part of the #28SonnetsLater challenge. You can see previous attempts of mine during NaPoWriMo on my dedicated blog. And this sketch is another colour piece! I'm clearly enjoying the challenge. Usually later in the process than with black-and-white sketches, it must be said... 

Ceci est seulement une orange

Sentinel

The sky shifts over the
skirling hills,
the wilful wind sinks,
and my shadow
slips to drink.

You have discovered me
again, and my vows are
renewed –
memories echo in me
as you carry me home.

I am the beckoning,
tectonic,
pinning spirits
to now, from then
to ever.

Not for me the gorsedd –
eisteddwch,
tawelwch yn canu;
listen and remember
under the bell of sunset.

I hide, unmoving shape-shifter,
one note in
the song of ever,
sipping from the sky
until you come again.

Sentinel is about the standing stone in the Brecon Beacons (a national park of rolling hills in South Wales) called Maen Llia. It’s said that the stone sometimes goes wandering down to the nearby river to drink at sunset... This piece was originally a commission for an elderly Welsh gentleman who came by our Poetry To Go stall at RHS Wisley’s Arts Festival and wanted a poem for this feature, describing in achingly evocative detail how the stone appears as if from nowhere when you walk the Beacons. The piece appears in the Nature/ The Sea section of Spectral next year.

Another foray into colour. Not easy, this one, but I’m glad I persevered! I was particularly taken with how the paths and scars on the hill are echoed on the menhir at this angle.
Source image from Wikipedia: Photograph by Immanuel Giel

Compound Rhythm

We have tried to fit you in,
lumbering you with familiar names,
shamelessly labelling you:
plodder, late-comer,
wobbly moss-beast.

Sky-divers, galaxy-striders,
depth-riders, you can leap
from sauna to ice bath,
without shrinking,
in the wink of an eye.

And foolishly, we write rules
that don’t apply to you,
radiating cool, defying filing,
to stride, pioneers hitching wagons
to a new star, taking the next slow,
sturdy steps into ubiquity.

Clio of the Depths

I have cast off weight to glide,
lost light in the undersky.
Where my cousins plod,
I rainbow arc,
backlit swiftness,
sleek among the butterflies.

Close to grace, I open,
lotus-like,
a fine fruit,
toothsome,
its bruised flesh threshed
by my winnowing maw.

Gorged, I sheathe my
glass scimitars, and
weave into darkness,
seeking further sweetness.

This piece was written in October 2017, from an Allographic workshop about animal poetry with Robin Lamboll. Sea Angels are, essentially, marine snails that ditched their shells a long time ago to glide through the water with their "wings". (Well, sort of – read the Wikipedia article for more details...)

Look out for this and its Lesser Spotted friends in Spectral next year!

I enjoyed drawing this - the first time I've used colours since I started drawing last year. Source image by Alexander Semenov.

Diurnal

fayroberts · Diurnal

This is one of those days:
the euphemistically entitled
Bad Pain Days
where someone was careless
with the ground glass,
let it infest my joints,
make its stuttering way
through every vein.

This is one of those days:
a make-do viewpoint
dominating,
a day when the dishes wait,
patient as the grave,
for my hands and knees
to deflate,
for irritation at the unfinished
to trump rest or relaxation.

This is one of those days:
every socket sprung,
alignment a myth,
grimacing at the bitter
brilliance of:
Remember when it all worked
properly, and jocularity
wasn’t a prop to dismiss
the head-tilt of sympathy?
(Wit serving in place of wisdom.)

This is one of those days:
the grating sounds along every
nerve-ending,
the light beaten into
a bludgeon for my skull,
where unpleasant textures
seem endless, 
and scents invade,
the vanguard of unwanted
stimulus.

This is one of those days,
and I’m sorry to say
that my scale has shifted lately
(like the Overton Window),
the baseline now sitting where
Oww! used to reside,
beckoning simpering gratitude
that it’s an interlude
between these days:
the New Bad Days,
the refactoring of fractions days.

This is one of those days
where self-talk is a brace,
where hope of a hiatus
has to cease;
stopping indefinitely
not an option because
life’s a relentless motherfucker
and you have responsibilities
that are also a pivot for
continued existence,
but at least you’ve found a way to say:
you don’t get deft from me today
to those who matter.

This is one of those days,
and I don’t mind. Not really.
It means that I have stood
against gravity, championing
my ongoing rights to independence,
setting foot on the foothills,
that will see me,
however slowly, arrhythmically,
to a good view of all that’s been,
and some of what’s to be…
But you need to know,
because I need a hand
to make it to my feet
on days like these.

Image: Full Lunar Eclipse Progression by Jean Beaufort

Abstract from a paper written by a self-made expert

Or: Let’s stay friends. 

He pronounces on gender, says the construct is wide
He talks of time in the trenches, when the songs were sung
He says he knows the key is what’s on the inside
I anticipate the first blow is about to be swung.

He talks of time in the trenches, when the songs were sung
He expounds on the realities of biology
I anticipate the first blow is about to be swung...
He announces that reproduction is our ideology.

He expounds on the “realities” of biology:
Unless we’re replicating, alive is what we’re not
He announces that reproduction is our ideology
He tells me what’s important: he used to think me hot.

Unless we’ve replicated, alive is what we’re not
He says he knows the key is what’s on the inside
(He tells me what’s important: he used to think me hot)
He pronounces on sex, says the construct is wide.

(On second thoughts: maybe this should just be entitled Entitled.)