What is Success?

Success
is a quiet lake inside.
Only a breeze ruffles the water,
whispering,
"I did it!"

Weighing Anchors

Memory
Memory is an anchor.
It is your choice
Whether to let it hold you in place,
Or to pull free,
And carry it with you
As you journey onward.

The Worth of a Picture

A picture pulls a thousand heartstrings,
when words meant less than nothing.
And yet - without words, the picture
cannot speak.

Day 30

Bounded by beauty
and battered by strain.
Inside with a book.
Out there in the rain.

Beyond all the fences
and all through the wood,
to drop all the messages
that demand that you "should".

Bound and beholden
to being myself.
I stand and deliver
my books on my shelf.

Day 29

No further

Wide as the widest ocean
Is the gulf between you and me.
Wider still than many, and one
In blood and flesh and bone.

Deep as the deepest sea
Is the pit I'm climbing from.
Of deepest hate, that you dug for me,
And dare to now deny.

Strong as kevlar fibre
Are the boundaries that I raise,
To block the striking viper
And your twisting, winding ways.

Day 28

Dancing with Dragons

Chaos compounded
Dragons battle
Red against white
North against south.

Golden Princess
Defends herself
Bringing them tame
To her hand.

Day 27

Dreams
are dewdrops,
agleam on
the spider's web
of life.

Day 26

I am the bird upon the wing.
I am the breeze that makes the grasses sing.
I am the foam upon the shore.
I am the waves that rolled before.
I am the thunder before dawn.
I am the rose. Behold my thorns.

Day 25

Bright lights shimmer
like glossy silk
against a velvet sky.
Bright as love
in closed windows
in closed doors
in eyes that see only each other.
While I stand outside,
and the lights dance
inside my eyelids,
like fallen stars.

Day 24

Oh for a muse

Oh for a muse of fire that would ascend
The humming laptop of invention
Pages to scroll through, printers to produce
And readers to behold the swelling scene.
Think when I talk of wordage that you see it
Dancing its dark pixels across the screen
For tis these thoughts that now must spark my verse,
Spilling it here and there, leaping the obstacles,
To bind elusive words into an hourglass.
For the which supply, I raid from home
Swiftly to form, on parody shelf, a poem.

Day 23

The carded fleece of winter
Hides a land drawn down to bones.
An aching jaggedness of life,
Where a sharpened spinning wheel waits.
Beyond the bones, beyond the stones,
A box without a lock resides.
Pandora's box where hunger rises,
Thirst and sickness, war and grief,
And trapped beyond reach,
Lost in some forgotten corner,
Hope.

Day 22

Survival

I am the tree that bends, but does not break.
I am the ice upon the frozen lake.
I am the hawk, high in the sky.
I am the vixen's high-pitched cry.
I am the stars that shine so bright.
I am a ray, a drop of light.
I am the stone beneath your shoe.
I shall endure, whatever you do.

Day 21

The Joy of Shopping

Bright eyes dancing
To the bottom shelf
To the bargains
Counting each packet
In its turn
Into the basket

Day 20

(TW: violence, death, bereavement)






Lullaby

Soon the sun will rise again
Sings the mother in despair
To the son being slowly, brutally, executed.
A lullaby that once sang him to sleep
Now singing him away once more
Between hammered nails and silent tears.

Day 19

Late, as usual

One month
Two months
Still I wait
No given time
It's past the date
One month
Two months
Running late

Day 18

Faster

Faster than steeples.
Faster than clocks.
Faster than water
Tumbles down over rocks.

Out of the dawn
And into the night,
The message flies onward,
Faster than light.

Day 17

Too many nights
I dream of distant worlds,
rising in this one,
enervated
drawn back into my dreams

In Thanks

Review: Liberating Earth

 This latest Faction Paradox collection is a series of short stories, the whole collection written exclusively by women, this shows as predominately strong women are the main protagonists.  The stories themselves have a linking narrative whereby the history of Earth is manipulated over and over to create new realities...

 A review for an anthology that includes one of my stories. Thanks!

Day 16

My mind sputters
Like a pen run out of ink.
The poem refuses
To form on the paper.
Caught in traffic, I think.

Day 15

Cool breeze brushes me
bringing scent from furled flowers
petal by petal

Day 14

Cat on my bed at midnight
Cat on my head at dawn
Cat is purring fit to burst
I wish that he was gone!

Day 13

Last Orders

Do not steal and do not kill.
Do not climb upon my hill.
Do not scowl and do not swear.
Do not breathe my personal air.
Bow to me, once more, with feeling.
Do not crack my nice glass ceiling.
Do not frown, or stamp, or shout -
I'll let you make your own way out.

Day 12

Say Cheese!

Double Gloucester
Edam
Gorgonzola
And ham

Mozzarella
Soft brie
Mexican cheddar
Spicy!

Applewood
Boursin
Wensleydale
And - fin!

Day 11

Testing testing, 1 2 3
Booms the speaker right by me.
Tasting tasting, om nom nom
Fancy food, all cooked by Mom.
Testy testy, are you there?
No! I'm sleeping, like a bear!

Day 10

They say
on their blog,
typed across the screen,
"Nobody reads anything these days,
because of the Internet."
I read it
and I wonder.
Does that mean
they won't read
my response?

Day 9

Moonlight

Silver sanctum in the night
Waxing like cheese
To full
Then
Waning
To a thin sliver
In an ancient dance of light

Day 8

Listen to me

Eyes - open
Ears - open
Mind - open
Mouth - shut

I see what I see
I hear what I hear
I know what I know
I speak - silence.

But there are many kinds of silence.
So, my eyes speak for me
My hands speak for me
While my heart holds the words close.

Day 7

The sun rises once more,
banishing sleep
and plagues
of bad dreams
to the starry pastures
of the night.

Day 6

I am the dragon, stone-skinned,
wound,
around half-hidden spires.
I am dragonfire, gleaming,
under lidded eyes,
on whispered tongue,
in hidden heart.
I am the phoenix,
launched on dragonfire,
ablaze
against the dark.

Dragons drift in slumber,
unseen, unheard.
The phoenix is ever reborn.

Day 5

The Moon

Ghostly galleons
tossed on cloudy seas.
The palest gold
of a just-baked cracker,
waiting for the man there
to nibble it away.

Day 4

The blind moon shines on, regardless,
Silvering happy houses full
of sleeping families.
Mother. Father. Son. Daughter.
Sound and strong and whole,
the way that tales insist:
They lived happily ever after.

And yet

By day I go out among them.
When I walk among them beneath the sun,
Bright and light and smiling -
Bared teeth to hide my pain -
they see me as no different to themselves.
"Hello! How are you!"
"Fine," I say smiling. "And you?"
"Fine, thank you. Just fine..."

Day 3

Starbright, starlight,
tantalisingly close.
Arcing across my
rain-spattered window

Day 2

You seek to hammer me
into compliance,
misaking me for soft iron,
swiftly moulded,
to a pleasing shape.

In truth
I am the anvil,
rooted deep in the ground.
Battered.
Beaten.
Beyond change.

NaPoWriMo Day 1

 I'm going to be doing, or at least attempting, NapoWriMo this year, which involves writing a poem a day throughout April.


Day 1
Tap. Tap.
A branch on the window,
wind-whipped, beckoning
to distant green hills.
Yet I stand,
watching the hills recede,
breathing the wind,
until the sun breaks through.
Like hope after a dark night.

Back

I lost access to this for a while.

Back now, at least intermittently.