fledgling

At the other end of silence
my pen perches, heavy with stories,
and eager to fly again.

For Poefusion’s Monday Mural

Unsent letters

tears mixed with the ink
make tender words fade
into vague memory as
with the passing of time
memory hardens into
unchallengeable myth
and all that bright hope
of healing these rifts is
silenced.

This was inspired by a Poefusion prompt -to write a poem starting from the lines “Women in the silence”. And by the memory of several unsent letters I have written in my life, one of which began:

“I almost certainly will never be able to share this with you. But I have written it as a letter to you because do I want you to understand, and because I think that it would help you too, if you are ever able to open your defences sufficiently to read this with an open heart.” (me, 28 November 2008)

My muse isn’t very talkative just now, and I haven’t the time to court her. But this came to me and seemed worth sharing.

Winter morning

I jounce past the birse
Of hedges griseous with frost
Where cold throstles sike.

This haiku is based on the friday five at poefusion, where Michelle is challenging us to write a poem with the following rather unusual words:

jounce – to move with a jolting motion
birse – bristle or bristles
griseous – dappled with grey
throstle – a thrush
sike – to sigh (among other things)

Song of fragility

These precious wooden eggshells
Out of their tough cases they are vulnerable
But locked away they cannot sing -
when singing is their reason for being.

There is always a tender tension
in a good musician whose instrument
is resting on a chair
even as he chats with colleagues
in an orchestral teabreak.
part of the mind is always attentive
to the fragility he has drawn
out of its case. An attention
not guilty, but born of gratitude
for the open trust
that allows them to sing together.

The defenceless fragility of the walls
is what allows them to vibrate.
The strength of a tree planed down
to this delicate membrane of music.
And something is betrayed when these
fragile cocoons of sound
are ruptured by carelessness or spite.

My body is a dusty guitar
strung by the hair that falls
past the curve of my waist.
Wounds patched, barely visible now,
wholeness restored by patient hours of healing
until the intact walls are ready
to sing again. Yet still the dust lies thick,
undisturbed by the waves of emotion
that once shrugged away both dust and time
The waves of emotion that used to make me tremble
flowing up the shell of me and coming out in sound.
The waves that were stranded in the doldrums
when the songs of my heart
and my body
were silenced by the pain of love’s abandonment.

Unplayed, an instrument
grows stiff, loses its sweetness
must be coaxed back by the gentleness
of patient fingers. As if the wood
knows how fragile its defences are
and fears to once again
be twisted to play uncongenial tunes
by hands that force its fragile walls
not to resonate
but distort.

Yet a body that has once known the joy of song
will always yearn to sing again.
And the music that is in me
cannot be silenced
for long.

This responds to two prompts – the picture above, by crzycowgrl046 at photobucket, which is the Monday Mural at Poefusion, and this week’s prompt at One Single Impression – defences down.

Experience

 

From the dents of life
a strange alchemy creates
personality.

For Poefusion’s Monday Mural. The picture is by juggle5 on flickr.

Hormonal winter

The bleak, black land
is stormridden with tears
that do not irrigate the earth
but fall helplessly
from bruise-heavy skies.

To the mist-clogged senses
trees appear like monsters
with ravening branches.
Friends have the faces of enemies.
And reason is too exhausted
to deny these illusions
the belief that nourishes
their tormenting forms.

The bright galloping of life
is mired. And even if hope
does not sink forever
its flanks are stained by
the suction of despair.

Here the ghosts walk,
their magnified voices
turned harsh and cruel
by the echoing loneliness
of this deep chasm
between unscalable cliffs.

The wanderer knows
the valley will end
in a bright hot tide.
Yet that’s poor consolation
to feet still waterlogged,
plodding on through the dark
of grey mud
and tears.

Still, the feet plod.

This responds to the Tuesday Title prompt at Poefusion. I’ve had some very bad episodes of PMT, of the depressed rather than irritable variety. One day I would be fine, the next day it would be as if the sky had fallen on my head. And I wanted to capture something of how it feels to have your moods overcome by negativity that is too pervasive to fight, even when you know exactly what is happening and why you are reacting in that way.

Enthralled heart

I look back at memories blurred by long-ago tears
And cannot recall why my heart was so eager
To trap itself in a cage of hopes and fears
In the hope of a reward that now appears so meagre

Locked up my willpower, threw away the key
Abandoned my self esteem for the poor substitute
Of glittering compliments that seemed as true to me
As the later criticism I gave up the power to refute

And peering back at those tear-faded remembrances
I feel pity and anger for him as well as for me
For the fear and confusion that were such hindrances
That they ended our love short of what we dreamed it could be

But even after months of working to free my heart from pain
Still there’s a part of me that longs to be enthralled again.

Why is it that, even when we know how painful being in love can be, we still want to fall in love again? Of course our wants change – I certainly don’t want to end up feeling so trapped and helpless again. And I’d happily swap the dizzy happiness of love’s intoxication for the stability that was so lacking in my last relationship.

But still there’s part of me that hankers for that intoxication. Those days when the world just seems brilliant with emotion. I don’t know how to explain its attraction – but I know that while the wiser part of me is cautious, there is still a part of me that longs to be enthralled again. (Enthralled seems the perfect word for this blissful imprisonment!) I suppose part-cautious, part-hopeful is a good position to be in, given the pain and the happiness that relationships can bring.

For the monday mural at poefusion – artwork by Brian at photobucket.

Pickpocket time

Swift-handed pickpocket time
Tries to steal the spring from my step
And the smile from my face

I must constantly refurbish my soul
Worn down by the endless ticking-off
Of swift-handed pickpocket time

The world proposes skin-deep remedies
Vainly promising to lift the weight of days
That steal the spring from my step

But alone in dark hours, my patient soul
Meditates with ink and paper
Until a smile returns to my face

Swift-handed pickpocket time
May steal the spring from my step
But not the smile from my face

For poefusion – firstly the friday five (pickpocket, heal, refurbish, propose, face), and secondly the form of a cascade poem. I’ve played around quite a lot with the lines, and added an extra verse that’s very close to the first one, but I think I’ve still kept the basic feel of a cascade.

Sage and brushstrokes

Blankness does not frighten her.
Complexity just an amusing toy,
abandoned long ago

Her palsied hand is steadier
than the giddy universe
whose constellations are here distilled
in the meeting of mineral, wood and water.

Blue-clouded eyes look inwards, yet
breath flows like light
through infinities of space
and time.

The slowest of brushstrokes
caresses the receptive page,
and galaxies are consummated
in a gentle sigh of ink.

For poefusion‘s Tuesday title prompt – to write a poem with the title “Sage and brushstrokes”.

The picture above is actually a photo, Grass Blades in Snow, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven. But to me it looked like a zen brush painting – and a perfect companion for this poem!

Awkward doubts – two poems

Awkward questions

I was once a rather quiet sceptic.
Tolerant of others’ cherished illusions,
(even those that seemed rather septic)
and unwilling to provoke confusion.
Why should I dampen their enthusiasm
with awkward questions and doubts
that might perhaps reveal the chasm
between what their faith made them shout
and what, meanwhile, I quietly thought.
But it always seemed that their credulity
was far too easily bought.
And having once let faith make a fool of me,
I know that faith that’s blind is no harmless charm
and I’ve heard too often of beliefs having effects that are fatal.
(If you doubt that belief can do active harm
Consider Nicaragua’s mortality rates – maternal and pre-natal).
So I find I must, politely but firmly, refuse
to tolerate sermonising in dissenting silence
(however good may appear the sermon’s news)
And so, without resorting to violence
I now ensure my doubts get said.
I try not to let dogma thrive uninterrupted,
or tacitly permit narrow-mindedness to spread.
And though it can sometimes seem disruptive,
I won’t believe someone’s words just because
they claim that they have seen the light.
When someone preaches fanatically about the wonders of Oz
I’d rather mention their emerald specs than be dishonestly polite!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Doubt and fear

Even when my eyes were damp with tears
You wouldn’t hold me close. Left me lonely.
I, the sceptic who wanted to believe in you.

For you feared my doubts would interfere
With the strange things you needed to believe.
You, who told me I was afraid of what was true.

But it was not my awkward doubts, but your tearing fears
That in the end were fatal to our love. How we grieved!
We, who had not imagined the pain our love could turn into.

And so you rejected me, and disappeared
To chase your illusions uninterrupted. With only
They who would not challenge your strange world view.

Mere differences of opinion can’t tear friends or lovers apart
It is only fear that has the power to choke the loving heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These two poems were written for the Friday Five at Poefusion – to write a poem including the words sceptic, awkward, uninterrupted, fatal, damp.

The first one is roughly clerihewish – deliberately using clumsy or eccentric rhymes and odd line lengths, which seemed to support the idea of awkwardness. The reference to Nicaragua was inspired by this article.

The second poem is more or less a sonnet – though the rhyme scheme (ABC ADC ADC ABC EE) isn’t typical. And I’ve thrown in a pronoun pattern too. I did wonder whether it would be better to use just the first twelve lines without the “moral” at the end – what do you think?

Though they may seem very different in mood, there is a definite connection between the events in the second poem and the attitude expressed in the first.