Poetry Bus. 25th October.

The License to Apply for a Ticket on the Bus this week is HERE, inspired by Argent, who asks for poems relating to MEETINGS.


Revenant


At parting, saying -
"Let us agree we both prefer
'Goodbye' to tears.  Learn to accept
and not condemn. The past
never was the future's stage."
A carriage window sliced this valediction.

Work, infidelities and towns
slipped by to undiscovered ends,
while the unquiet ghost for half a lifetime
turned triumph - yes, even that - to puffs of smoke -
(Mists laid on English shires at twilight,
fingers on a candid lip in sleep . . . )

Then in some undistinguished capital,
Buda?  Trieste? - in just that sort
of backwater cafe where conversations
hatched against despair
stutter towards another rented pillow,
the smoky lights revealed -
skin no longer absolutely young,
the smile that lay in wait -
a dress that could not - surely -  be the same?

"No logic, dearest, please,
or laying blame.  I answered only
the motiveless appeal of happiness . . "
(Quoting another poet! At such a meeting!
I should have . . . )
Ah, but her fingers, placed
with such complicity, such care,
placed where the bloodstroke like a habit burns,
sought my acceptance of her affirmation.

My actress on her stage,
ageless and English,
her tear precluding tears.

Magpie Tales#37

Thanks once more to Willow for a prompt to reflect upon.

Last Night

This is where they lead, the wordless bargains

struck for this brief respite from despair.

Muttered endearments, dear to neither, fall

between these bought, uncaring lips and mine

onto these rented pillows. But ever,

with the act that’s no more than acting done

and the bedside clock sheds desolation

drop by drop, another’s breath is heard

in the sleepless dark. Yes, all unbidden

another whispers of an older passion

never mirrored in its simulacrum,

however red the mouth, however sweet

the practised kisses, however loving

seem the unloving arms. Then these tossed sheets
cannot spread wide enough to dry my tears.

Poetry Bus. 18th October.

NanU encourages us to leave our writing room to pen this week's poem.

Springs Eternal


Alone in the gap between two stools
where lovers fall - (the fools!), in the space
between devotion's rock and the hard place
of your disdain; between Old Devil
yearning and Love's deep-sea blues,
I'm learning patience. In time my lines will spark
poems from the stony chambers of your heart.

Magpie Tales#33

This week, Willow's picture prompt has a unique fragrance, in Etheree(*) form

HOTEL

Your

perfume 

drew me on

down corridors,

past half-open doors,

to yours, and your one line -

"Just for a week, dear, no more."

- a nightdress, warm with your fragrance.

Who would have thought then that seven days

would last forever, but the scent not fade?

(*) Ten lines. One syllable in the first, then one more in each succeeding line. 

Poetry Bus Challenge. September 20th.

The challenge this week is to write a poem suitable for a non-denominational wedding.

Avowal

I marry you with this ring of white gold

I marry you with every circling star.

I marry you with crowns of laurel leaves.

I marry you each day for all you are.

I will walk with you the labyrinth of days.

The days before you came will be forgot.

There’ll be no roads to separate our ways.

There’ll be no joy for me where you are not.

And at the end, as some day end must be

And we, our leaves and stars and rings grown old

I still will bless you for the road I take

this day. I wed you, Love, with love, with gold. 

The Poetry Bus. September 13th.

The prompt, from  MARION, is to write a poem based on a colour.
Well, there's millions to choose from on a hi-res PC screen.

To a Woman at her Mirror

Say Titian with his powders, pestel, oils,
had honed his palette down and limited
his choices to the plays of antlered flame
on burnished amulets and copperware?

Or Newton with his prism and silent face

had forsworn prima vera, summer skies, 

the sapphire's mineral gaze, and had confined

his rainbow to the glints that evening sun 

wakens from snow-capped peaks, that candlelight

spills on the contours of a violin?

Or, ask what might their canvasses have been 

if Turner and Van Gogh had chanced to see
New England beech and maple in the Fall?
A subtler jar of sunflowers perhaps?
Bolder brushstrokes where sea and sunset meet?

Well may theses daubers and dabblers spare
no effort, but their efforts don't compare
to the gold cascade when she combs out her hair.

SHRIEK

That Thing passed through my window

as if no glass were there,

my window just like air. And now

the Thing is out there, waiting –

Child, we say ‘by’ not ‘through’.

a window. What thing?

I seemed to hear it shriek -

and look at its gloomy cowl.

I cannot see which way it faces -

the stars, or scowling in at me.
Oh, don’t remove your cowl,

you Thing, so still and silent.

I will be good if you don’t lift your cowl.

You Silly! Are you fevered?

It was you who shrieked. You had

a silly dream. And what’s this cowl?

Let me feel your brow . .

Don’t . . don’t let it touch me! Don’t

let the Thing come in.

Enough .Go back to  sleep. Why do you stare

so at the window? There’s nothing there.

Only the trees and stars.  It stood

by my bed where you are. It’s awful hand 

appeared from under its white cloak.

Its fingers were all bone. They pointed,

pointed their bones at me. And then it shrieked.

Bone fingers! Tut! What nonsense!

Now, lie down again. You are quite

shaking.  I wish I had curtains

so it could not see.  Do you think

Things like that can pass through curtains?

Really, Child! Goodnight!

Oh please, please - don’t put out the light!

Please, don’t put out the light.

VISITOR

The barn-owl's wing is shaped for silence.

Her quarry will not know.

Out of the heedless night

His Fate drops slow.

What startled me awake?

A branch on the window pane?

A quaking dream? The sudden chill

of winter coming on?

None of these. There at my casement sill,

a tawny shape. The latch!  Her wing brushed past.

"At last!  I know your little room

under your lovely eaves.

Unclasp my feathers, slip

into something warm like skin,

and shake your pillows straight."
Her talons rasped like silk.

Her bite was soft as rain

while stars drew their silent circles, and

night passed on silent wings.

A September sun comes low

above the frosted garden. Beyond

the open window, fields stretch to the line

of hills. Beyond the hills, the wingless sky.

Sun, garden, frosting fields, hills, sky . . .

none of these matter now.

The barn-owl's wing is shaped for silence.

Her victim will not know.

Dreams, Endings and Disasters

Doc Williams, (nicknamed “Steamboat”) – he could teach.

But how to concentrate on ‘Faustus’, when

through the glass double-doors, beyond our reach

sat Hazel from the Girls’ End, playing Bach.

Remember Hazel? Heavenhazeled eyes,

hair like Golden Syrup, her sure touch

wasted, WASTED! on some baroque dirge

while twenty love-lorns, eager to explore the surg-

ing Terra Incognita of her bust,

hazeled, half-crazed with half-formed Sixth Form lust,

tried to read ‘Faustus.’?  “Westwood!”  “Me sir? Well -

‘Bell, Book and Candle. Candle, Book and Bell,

forward and backward goes Hazel . .’ “Oh hell,

Steamb . . Sorry! Mean ‘Sir’, Sir.” Come, Lustrous! Make

tracks for this fumbling schoolboy’s fiercest ache.

My mouth read ‘Faustus’, but my mind went blank,

apart from Hazel, giving me a - “Thank

You, Westwood. With luck you’ll get an E.”

Hazel completes her Prelude. Book One, in C,

rises, loosens her blouse top button – WOW -

takes a waist-deep, exaggerated bow,

sticks out her tongue – this behind Steamboat’s back.

But we read you, Hazel!  Your brassiere is black.

She stows her music, jams her beret on,

closes the lid, waves, turns - and  then is gone.

Leavers’ service in the paneled Hall.

Fox-trotting Hazel at the Leavers’ Ball,

her dancer’s cheek this close . . . her shoulders bare,

her long, smooth long smooth longsmooth polished hair . . .

“Your playing. Really good!” Callow, I croaked.

“My Bach’s worse than my Bitehoven,” she joked,

and kissed my on my rugby-crooked nose.

“Westy – you’ll be O.K.”  Well . . . I suppose.

And that was that. Goodbye School, Hello Life.

Uni. Job. Twins. Car. Satisfactory wife.

But . . hearing Bach, whose fingers stroked the keys

playing back Faustus, Steamboat, School, to tease . . ?

Years on, I heard she’d had a child.  One day

she slashed her wrists when Steamboat walked away.

Full Circle

It is as you said. The beacon

from the promontory beyond the wetlands

visits your little room and wakes

a shadow dance along the mantle.

A cut flower artless in a jar.  The clock.

A bowl of nectarines.  A snap-shot - you and I

ringed in some distant calendar.

And I,  and you, love, now in this veering light

have come to terms at last,

each by each forgiven and reprieved.

I cannot say how long the pact will keep.

for now trust only that our mood

has turned full circle -  or perhaps

we see where lifetimes of wan hopes 

have run aground.  I will not ask.

I will dim the lamp and watch

your beauty wrap itself in sleep,

beyond the urge of flesh or gravity,

free from your questing fevers.

The forgotten yet familiar makes us weep -

that blemish in the cusp where neck meets shoulder,

eyelids I somehow never quite believed,

the fragment of my name, the way you stir

and turn and like the beam that sweeps the sea,

beckon and pardon us, and guide us home.