A variety of inspirations (including someone else’s mis-spelling of the word “wipe”...) led me to this poem:

Come To Me

And let me summon out your fears,
Stroke pain up to the surface
To flow away in tears.

Come to me,
And let me control your breath,
The gasps of your disgrace
That leads to little deaths

Come to me,
And let me be the one,
The face of all you hold in thrall
Who'll clasp you when you're done.

Come to me,
And let me make you raw;
The one whom you can beg,
The one who holds the door.

Come to me,
And let me be the voice
Commanding you to take the pain
Because I am your choice.

So come to me, my dear,
It's better now you did;
The way before is scoured clear
Of all that I forbid.

Unusually, a rhyming one for once...

Those of you who know my work will know that I like to play with mythological reference and (sometimes obscure) plays on words. This is one of them, and written for someone (several of them, actually) who’ll likely never see this:

Fate On Hold

And do you know him?
Sure, you must have seen him
Even met him, or his kin.
Not a quiet life, his – soaring and diving
On a platform made of fear and desire
Clinging to the gifts his father gave him
Tattered now, but still part of his definition.

He knows the wet and angry depths,
The steps that falter down
In the wake of flight,
And the moans that escape
Biting his tongue too late
As the fall pulls bile from his wretched throat,
Poison pouring out, thick as blood,
Tearing tender membranes,
Scorching the fingers of those he falls through.

So he thinks: soar! Get as high as you can.
Gall falls transformed from burning heights,
Lights those up-turned faces,
Graces them with the gift of altitudes
While they’re glued to the ground,
Impounded by a lack of wings.

He sings, striving higher,
Feeling as though his sins are scoured
By speed, the shriek of winds,
The glare of the sun.

Never look down,
Eyes fixed on a prize
Eluding fingertips,
Slipping like ice as the heights turn cold,
Boldness freezes in thin air and, hanging there,
Before the wind-rush returns
He’ll hear, like crystal, his father’s voice,
Feel the weight of its message.

But he waves it off, flailing at the words buzzing
And broken he plummets, eyes burning,
Hands clasped to block out the sounds,
The screams he sees as laughter,
The sighs he knows as judgement,
And after: as the waves close over his head
Again, he drowns in the echoes of his own regrets
Until he kicks free of weeds,
To try again to tread the paths
That only Hermes sees,
Heedless of the voice that tells him:
Be a man, and all a man can be.
It is enough.

I spent most of my growing up in South Wales, and my ancestors are light-eyed Celts and Danes (with the occasional West Midlands Saxon and dark-eyed Scot thrown in). What I’m trying to say is that I was designed for dark, cold, wet weather, and for the most part I cope better with that than hot, dry, panting summer days.

However, for one week of the year - the darkest one - I get S.A.D. I can only begin to comprehend what it must be like for people who have this for three-four months of the year, but - bearing in mind I was limping through the dark and cold with a cane at the time - I wrote this at the Midwinter Solstice for me, and for them:

Sol Invictus

So. It’s that time of year
And for once,
Instead of limping and cursing
I’m trying to embrace it
Rather than disgrace myself

It’s hard.
I’m fighting urges deep ingrained
This is a time for flight —
Migration stilled as we
Lost our wings,
Burrowed deep.

But even sleep’s denied;
Hibernation fit only
For those that still
Shit in the woods
And so I rise
Quipping,
Chipping away at my nature
Chasing sunrise
With lights and social media,
Beating back the dark grey,
The mutterings that twine my head
Bury them in tea and time-checks,
Pleasant alarms and obsessive preparations.

All this dark week I will be
Blessing radiators,
Instant porridge and herbal infusions,
The passionate profusion of Twitter,
My East-facing bird-songed garden,
Where I turn my clanging head
To witness his return.

And, in turn, I’ll celebrate
The long nights,
These flights into the dark,
Where bright words and music
Clap fear into submission,
And love can warm us all the more.

Happy Yule, everyone.

Glass

We used to feel like one,
A name spoken of two parts;
Him my dragon,
I his heroine.

But then another sound clouded us,
Broke the rhythm.
I used to waltz,
but now the beats aren’t even,
Him dancing from my grasp;
gasping that new name,
Doubled on the floor
by himself,
Our house become a theatre.

Truth’s a different kind of medicine.
I ask him if he’s had enough.
“No,” he groans, folded over and over
into that strange embrace,
mouthing his graceless catechisms.
“No,” again, he mutters, “never enough.”

And it is never enough,
As he becomes the hunger,
Too deep inside, where I can’t touch him
Through a pain of plain glass, thicker every day.

No, not enough,
I’ll never be enough.
I’m in a dry place, withering alone;
If I enter that embrace I’ll never find him,
and be lost myself.

Time tightens a spiral grip,
and I’m slipping, weary of the lonely ache,
until I think:
Only diseased limbs feel no pain.
Time for surgery.

The first two times I performed this, I got a hissed intake of breath from the audience at the last line - way beyond what I was expecting...!

This one’s been through a few iterations, but still remains a good “introductory” poem to people who don’t necessarily like poetry...

I Hope I’m (in) Clover

Some people are like the plants
the gardener never intended.
And I mean that in a
whole host of ways.

Like the bright-tongued
dandelion people.
Putting down roots deep in
Other people’s pastures
Networking on every breath of wind.

Bramble folk sprawl, broad-shouldered
Laughing sharply at attempts to move them
Shifting to block your way
At every turn.

Still others lurk on the borders
Pale and weak-looking,
No barbs or stings, just a quiet rustling...
And yet every day... There are more of them...

I knew a woman once like rosebay willowherb
Thriving on the sites of disasters
Softening sharp shrapnel edges
With a laugh like a flamboyant velvet splash.
Incongruous purple boa
Among the widow weeds.

 

This, like “Breath of the Soul”, was written for the live event surrounding the James Lee Byars exhibition (see that post for details).

Turning Point

And so the longest day of the year sped by
Lifted on the smiling backs of gulls
And tugged on by the breeze that graced us
There on our hill, watching the sky wheel overhead.

My flesh still warms to that sun’s caress
on your skin.
My smile still remembers your hand -
Heavy with the softness of you.

There was a kite
And the crash of surf below us.
There were distant shouts,
And the brief, wet nose of a questing dog.
There were the scents of crushed grass
And your hair - spun glass on the breeze
Reaching out.

I’ll swear we passed a lifetime there,
In that echoing day that rushed past us,
Taken on the tide of words spoken
And words silent.
And I’ll swear at the last your dandelion breath
Puffed the summer stars into the hushing sky.

The force that pricked them through it
Pushed me to my back
Where the earth gently gifted me the day’s heat
And I, awed, wept for it all
Two tiny tears I hid in hayfever.

We left before the night grew cold.
And you believed me.

The bedrock of my soul
Still gives back the heat of that day
I only have to close my eyes
And I’m half-blinded again by midsummer sunlight,
Lost in the place of the new colours
Seen obliquely by the sun through your eyes.

I cannot remember one word of that day.
Not even your name.
And so its treasure is secure.
High on its everlasting hillside.

This poem was one of a set commissioned for “Bardcore” to be written for the James Lee Byars exhibition in Milton Keynes Gallery as a result of being commissioned as part of Poetry Kapow to write and perform poetry for an open arts event at the Gallery run by Lost & Found. The piece that particularly caught me was “The Breath of the Soul” (a large, hand-carved sphere of white marble) and the direction of the piece developed, I’ve no doubt, as a result of a friend passing on.

The Breath of the Soul

The breath of the soul is flawed,
Scored with all the indentations that caressed,
That brought it here, that made it what it is.

The sigh that is stone rolls, as it must
Making tracks, as it goes, in the dust -
Black and white and, later, gold.

The essence of the stone is the groans heaved
In its weaving, the sweat poured,
The flesh and blood beaten against its surface,
The heart worn with each sharp stroke
Shaping the whole, bestowing grace,
Carving a face into this change of nature.

And when the last stroke is taken,
The stone rolls to the centre of the room
Where all turns on its axis for a while.
A sweet and bitter while.
Until time passes and dust falls,
Changing its shape again, softening its shadow.

For perfection is in the making
And when the breath stops...
The sigh is still.
And all that is left of the stone
Are the tracks that it made as it passed
through the dust of a world
Which keeps on turning.