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Long-Term Love Affair

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The world stopped, then changed forever. Confronted by your rare, incomparable beauty, I was seduced at first sight – yes, I admit, by your looks, those mere externals – the sleek lines of your body, your colourful presence....
I was bold. We got together. You didn't disappoint. Such skilled performance! You made everything smooth and easy. After each encounter I emerged smiling, not only satisfied but further enraptured, more and more amazed, thrilled, infatuated.
Then, at length, the rumours began – the whispers that you might be – oh no, impossible! – but yes: evil. However, I'm hooked. Won't desert you (couldn't bear to). I've grown dependent. So I turn the proverbial blind.
Easy to dismiss all such ideas of secret wrongdoing in the face of your loveliness – changing with time, yet uniquely, characteristically yours, only yours ... and the surprises you still manage, to my ongoing, my unalloyed delight.
Once, with friends around a table, one of them said your name. She and I and one other spoke with animation of yo…
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When?

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(Trying the Tetractys)


When – never? – will you feel my eyes on you, see my hands reaching before I can stop?
How can you remain always unaware? I want you to tell me of lightning now.
(Want that you know lightning.) But I suppose you are just someone who likes the quiet.

In Fussy Little Forms at 'imaginary garden with real toads' today, Marian invites us to attempt the tetractys. Mine's a triple tetractys (the idea being that one reverses the form with each new verse).


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A Poem About Running

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You sent me a poem about running which someone had written – not you – just because you liked it, and thought I might too.
Then you turned and ran far across landscape and sea, huge strides clearing the distance to a ship that sailed off without me.
The running of time is uneven with many pauses for breath. But you were quick. I don't know if you ran towards life or death.
You'd expect me to write you a poem. You know that's what I do. Here it is, if you ever come looking – a poem about running, for you.

Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Running
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Paganing

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 Poetry Month, day 30

At the final day of Thirty Poems in April for 2018, we are asked to turn nouns into verbs. What wild and wondrous metaphors that  might produce! ("If we firework, is it from rage or orgasm?" we are asked.) But poems have minds of their own, and mine took a rather more literal approach.

Paganing
I'm Samhaining tonight. No, the date's not wrong, I've Hemisphered it (Southerned it) Sabbated it to this arc of the circle where I live and witch.
Oh, there'll be plenty on the other side of the world Northerning the date – lighting fires and jumping into each other's hot arms, Beltaining the evening away.
Here, I’m ancestring. Places are set around the table: plated, cutleried, cupped, food and wine ready for those who care to come spiriting through the veil.
And not only my forebears,
those past generations – no, also my husbands (three) who unspoused me in life or death but all dead now … and certain others never wedlocked.
What kind of ritualling would it be witho…
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Away With ...

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Poetry Month, day 29
For This Is (Almost) The End at "imaginary garden with real toads" we are asked to write about that moment just before something ends. Which I did – but then I had to go on a little further to answer a question that arose.

Away With …
Strange, enchanted beings of the forest, of the dream, I know you didn't mean to break my tender heart, you simply didn't comprehend that such a thing could be.
You'd been there all my childhood in the light around the flowers, the music of the bees. It wasn't possible that no-one else could see or hear your shimmering, your song.
Playtimes full of laughter, dancing dizzy, falling down – how was I to know they could not last forever? That only for the very young your frolics are, and gifts.
But why do I remember what the others all forget? You circled me and smiled, that final afternoon. I didn't know it was goodbye, but you knew, didn't you?
And one, perhaps, felt pity for the awkward, dreamy girl too shy with other kids, so bl…
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Watching TV on a Wet Night

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Poetry Month, day 28
At "imaginary garden with real toads" the prompt is: Fashion Me Your Words to FOLD, in which we are asked to use the fold form (invented by Gillena Cox) to write about destructive weapons. The fold must also always include something about nature and its effect on the poet. 

Watching TV on a Wet Night
Now it’s falling, the steady rain we’ve needed here: a strangely hushed sound beyond my wall and window-pane, as if it whispers to the dark garden. Now it’s falling, the steady rain of death, there, on the targeted city. The silent chemicals don’t even whisper, but pain soon has the survivors crying, screaming. On yelling parents’ faces, despair is plain. Pale, shocked faces of children stare blankly, then recede from the screen.... In the background, steady rain.
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I Am Lonely

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Image
Poetry Month, day 27













In Let's Join the Children at "imaginary garden with real toads", we are invited to use one of several paintings by children as inspiration. This one was painted by a 13-year-old. After I gazed at it a while, this unknown voice spoke through me (btw it felt male):


I Am Lonely
I am lonely under the purple sunset. On black hills against the sky, I am lonely.
Music is no solace, as I am not the music. Or, in another reality, I am nothing but the music. Which I play with competence on my Baby Grand, but not with soul, not with the outrageous passion I knew when you and I were young, when you painted me in stark silhouette, here.
How did you know to paint my loneliness before it had arrived – before the silver moon rose to make us all lonely, in our separate outposts of the dark? How did you know that I would look so calm and relaxed, my foot pumping the pedal, my back straight and my hair worn in that careless ponytail?
I wanted to walk with you, in among visible trees, wit…
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