fledgling

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

For Poefusion’s Monday Mural

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.

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.

Beauty

Like a tree in bright green bud, a child, even newly born
Delights the eyes with a simple beauty it’s hard not to adore.
Small limbs’ quest to walk and run drives a perfection of form
But growing up, they somehow learn a desperate need for more.

Struggling for light and air like jungle parasites
Beauties strive obsessively to be the fashion queen
And see the glamour of their faces lit by dazzling lights.
But envy, greed and artifice kill the beauty that is unseen.

Piercing, plucking, preening and perming, delicate daubing with dye
Gel and heat conspiring to tame long hair’s luxuriant coils
Applying torture devices even to the lashes of the eye!
All obscuring the natural beauty that time cannot despoil.

The softer light of real beauty shines gently from inside
And has nothing to do with the brilliant glare of tungsten or halide

This sonnet was inspired by the picture above, the Monday Mural at Poefusion, which is by Alizarin at Deviant Art. You can see what other poets have made of the same prompt in the comments at Poefusion.

And I’m celebrating, because I’ve completed my own NaPoWriMo – thirty-one poems in the month of July – three days early! It’s been an interesting journey to write so prolifically, but really hasn’t been a struggle, particularly with the help of some excellent prompts (look at the rainbow of prompt links in my sidebar!). Some of the poems are weaker than others, and they would all benefit from more polishing. But I’ve learnt a lot about writing in the process – and had a lot of fun expressing some ideas that interest me, or matter deeply. Which is really the point!

Nude

Sometimes life just strips you bare
With cruel words or thoughtless actions
The barren ache of a lover’s “don’t care” 
The flaying words of heightened passions.

Sometimes life just leaves you huddling
Turning your back on life and light
Hugging to yourself the sorely troubling
Anguish of your lonely plight.

Sometimes life sends you nights spent alone
Fighting the nightmares with hands cut raw
Staring into darkness as blank as bone
As your thoughts obsessively worsen the sore.

Sometimes life, like some mystic rite
Demands that you strip yourself totally bare
And face the darkness of your inner night
To discover the limits of what you can bear.

Sometimes life, through suffering, shows you
That nude can be both strong and frail 
As, through exposure, your courage grows, you
Learn naked warriors can still prevail.

 

This was inspired by the monday mural at poefusion – the evocative image above uploaded to photobucket by ncajayon4.

The women that will be

In days that I will never see
Walking tall and proud,
Quickly and securely step,
These women that will be.

Strands of gold and jewels bright
Adorn their slender forms
Their freedom constrained only
By the slender weight

Of a chatelaine chain that holds the key
(a burden serious but sweet),
freely accepted, freely worn –
Of mature responsibility

I cannot see their faces yet –
For the twining helix sentences
That one day will shape their birth
Have still not even met.

This was inspired by this week’s Monday mural at poefusion. An interesting image this week – quite abstract so difficult to know where to start. But then suddenly I saw that the shapes looked like jewels strung across a woman’s body… and the poem followed from there.

After waiting to be rescued – Monday Mural poem

After waiting to be rescued for far too many years
I feel it’s time to investigate alternative careers
I had such high expectations of the arrival of my knight
But when he finally got here, well he’s just not quite…
As shiny as I was expecting. Actually rather a feeble wreck:
One sneeze from the dragon and he was stretched out on the deck
So I picked myself up, and, though I’m not especially brave,
I triggered a neat little rockfall that sealed the dragon into its cave.
I could try to wake the knight up – I feel I ought at least to learn his name
But he’d probably find my rescuing him a source of deepest shame.
So instead I’ll head off into the world, leaving him lying here
I suspect that I will cope quite well with any perils that may appear.
And really, not much happens when you’re part of a dragon’s hoard
Whatever dangers are out there, it must be better than being bored!

 

This was inspired by the picture above, the monday mural at poefusion – the image is by pokermedic at photobucket.

I must confess that at the back of my mind I had the brilliantly funny poem “Not my best side” by Ursula A Fanthorpe, which I thoroughly recommend.

Aphrodite abandoned (Monday mural abecedarius)

Adrift among albatrosses and aurorae
Bathed in birdsong and blue beauty
Cytherea of caresses and carnality lies conquered
Dream-drowned in dark despondency.

Eons ago, Epitymbydia enamoured eternals,
Feelings flew from her free as foam.
Great gods and goddesses gladly
Had hearts hexed by her hetaira harmonies.

Interested in intimate interaction, she incarnated,
Juices joyful at joint juxtaposition
Kalligloutos convulsed in kama-sutric kaleidoscope.
Learning of love, lust, longing… and loss.

Maltreated Morpho made miserable and melancholy
Naiad negated by narcissistic nagging.
Overwhelming odium occluded Ouranos’ omnipotence
Perturbed the peace of poor plundered Pandemos.

Questioning quarrels, she quested for quietude
Ruefully reflecting on relationships’ risks.
Sobbing and sighing she sought succour
Till through trials and tears and temptations
Urania understood human unhappiness. Now

Venus voices and validates valiant valentines.
Wise and womanly (yet weeping when once again
Excruciated by exasperating ex’s xenophobia).
Yearning for youth’s yesterdays, she yields to
Zeus’ zestful zephyr’s zenith.

This poem was inspired by two prompts at poefusion. Firstly the monday mural – to write a poem based on the picture above (by lxzp at Photobucket). Secondly the challenge to write an abecedarius – a poem based around the alphabet.

Like many greek gods and goddesses, Aphrodite seems to have a lot of different or additional names, and it seemed rather fun to weave in as many of these names as I could in the appropriate lines – the ones I managed to include were Cytherea, Epitymbydia, Hetaira, Kalligloutos, Morpho, Ouranos, Panemos, Urania and Venus. (Kalligloutos, by the way, means beautiful thighs.) Naiad isn’t one of her names, but didn’t seem too inappropriate for a goddess so much associated with water.

Phoenix tears

 

On a pyre of sandalwood and aloes,
My heart burnt with bitter tears
Perfumes and dreams dwindling in smoke
In the consummation of my deepest fears.

The fire exhausts itself at last
Unable to believe in burning again.
All the brilliance of our love
Turned to ash-caked tears and pain

Yet somehow one crystal tear
Strikes fire from the vanishing sun
And in a rainbow of sudden life
A fledgling life breathes, ember-spun.

New life arises, gold and scarlet
With strength hard won from the heart of pain
Amber and indigo feathers reborn
Wings remember how to fly again.

And I awaken to glorious day
A life where hopes outshine fears.
My heart knows a mystery old as life;
I was weeping phoenix tears.

 

This poem was inspired by the monday mural at poefusion. Do visit the site and have a look at the poems other people have written based on this picture.