on the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
it’s a nice day for
white weddings and black faces
for once, not the help
Royal catch
Category: poetry
Siren
listen:
you break on me like a wave
a swell of careless seduction
drawn to dangerously calm waters
pulled under a riptide of love
you snatch my breath clean away and still
I laugh
lending you the heat of passion
holding close to my cold and slippery siren
Night moves
Every single night he calls me–
Let’s play hide and seek.
Stepping just ahead so slowly,
close your eyes, don’t peek.
If you look beyond the shadow
past the weary ghost
see, right there. I really do know
what you need the most.
Oh I know he doesn’t mean it
fooled me yet again.
Never catch him for a minute;
sleep’s a losing game.
Judas
listen:
I have only myself to blame. And you of course, but you’re not here, are you? I walk alone with my thoughts and self-recriminations.
You fell in step with me and we walked a path, uncertain but less perilous because we were together. I believed we were equals.
I should not have listened.
My history, yes, I thought that sack of stones was behind me, sorted and catalogued, stripped of hurt.
I should have remembered.
A pat on the back, a smile, a confidence shared. Comrades, or so I thought. A friend’s blow unseen until the final moment, sharp blade sliding into exposed skin.
I should not have dropped my guard.
(A gasp, not a scream, because this cannot be happening.)
Ruby drops pump from my scandalised heart onto stony ground. No pain, just numbing cold as you step away, carelessly wiping my blood from your hands.
Now you seek a safer harbour. Take your traitorous smile and self-serving machinations, go where you will.
I am the strength that protected you, but in the end you gave me nothing but a wound.
Another scar. I walk on alone.
One day, I will learn.
Commit
listen:
it will turn out fine
if you only will commit;
always hold the line.
Thoughts at three
listen:
I’m longing for oblivion, a temporary respite
from all the stuff that’s spinning through my brain, night after night.
What can I do when nothing seems to help me slip away
from everything that clutters up my mind, day after day?
I’ve tried all of the recommended old wives tales and tips.
From four o’clock no caffeine is allowed to pass my lips
but white noise drives me crazy, so warm bath and black eye mask
is what I tried. Alas no luck. Is it too much to ask
for a few hours escape from all the worries that I’m feeling
that keep me far from sleep, as I stare up at the dark ceiling?
Fire at sunset
kiss me at sunset
light up my secret places
with blazing passion
Yellow
poem #5 in the colour series
listen:
Cheerful daisies turn their faces upwards.
Big sun, bright heart reflected in egg yolk centres
And mirrored in the humblest things.
Life energy lights the sky
and falls to earth, yet not diminished.
Instead its littler twin multiplies its force.
As above, so below.
For what I see, I can be.
And though I am ever so small
the universe
is contained within me.
Doldrums
listen here:
The old storm has abated and the next, not yet arrived.
Did I throw out my oars in despair, or were they ripped from aching hands at the height of the tempest?
Adrift, bearing unknown, the lighthouse blind and dark,
clouds obscure the sun and hide the stars alike.
I drift
rudder splintered, compass shattered.
I hold my breath, not daring to inhale the leaden, empty air
no land in sight.
The waters shift below, yet no kindly current arises, lost here in the doldrums of life.
A heartbeat, then another, the only timepiece in this forgotten space
an unreliable machine, prone to error
incapable of solving the riddle, the longitude of my soul.
Aimless, unmapped blankness branded on my skin.
disconnected
drifting
Under a crying sky
listen to this poem:
See there, the sunny uplands
of what could be
see here, the barren wasteland
of what came to be
the space between, under a crying sky
is brim full of splintered dreams, of lost hopes
and bitter grains of disappointment
of what will never be