Magpie Tales#42

Willow's picture calls up memories of mind-games long past!

In cycling "time trials" competitors ride "against the clock", starting at one minute intervals to eliminate "slipstreaming" and pacemaking. In the 1950's  hundreds of these events were organised by local cycling clubs. They were described by the miles to be covered on an "out-and-home" course as "tens", "twentyfives", "fifties." etc. Hard to believe that in those days, on summer evenings or Sunday mornings, competitors rarely encountered much traffic on British roads.

Class Act at an Evening "Tens" 

"This your first shot at this, lad?" Wally sneers,

"Giving up netball for a push-bike, then?"

Wally. Iron-founder. Hard as horse shoes.

Me. Grammar School. Sixteen. In Wally's eyes

I'm toffee-nosed and wet, no match for storemen,

strong-men, welders, checking out their bikes, 

choosing the chainset that will see them fastest. 

Little upstart, me, a time-trial virgin, 

poncy, all pale knees and Latin. Wally

thinks racing's not for the likes of me, and so

his next veiled insult is my "handicap."

More than two minutes! For ten miles! Big girls'

blouses ride off less than that!  He's telling me

I might as well not start. "No one will laugh,"

he says, "if you get lost, fall off, or faint."

"Get lost yourself," I think. So I don't say

I've trained long for this "ten," and half asleep

can clock his fucking course in twenty-five.

Which is what I did. My time screwed Wally.

I won the handicap event, in fact

lopped eighteen seconds off the previous best,

hauled home their crappy little cup. Stowed it.

Never looked at it again. And Wally?

Wally never spoke to me again, because

we both well knew I should have told him.

What we both learned of class, insults and lies

that night has stayed with me, remembered

from time to time with glee and hot-faced shame.

Microfiction Monday. November 8th.

Stony River's picture prompt is this charming study of childhood.

Haiku

Kicking through autumn's
fallen gold, my child sees where
a silver coin peeps

Poetry Bus. November 8th.

Prolonged Immersion

Rebuke, or pity? Spurning all life-skill guides,

oblivious to shellfish jaws and stings that leave

sure swimmers keeling, she dived young, keen to prise,

eviscerate and string the seeds.

                                                  The first heave

mesmerised.  The seven sea-tentacles unfurled,

artful to drag her down. The laden wrecks

rebuffed her questing hands.

                                             The glass-green swirl

yawed, paused and shifted her past hope of land.

Meshed with slow swells she grins and glides,

adrift on moon-drugged tides, which at their flood

roll, roll her  shorewards, till brine cold rhythms guide

this prisoner from deeps misunderstood.

In the sea's time, formless remains are hurled

naked, flesh gorged by seabirds, spent, unpearled.

Thanks to Jessica Maybury for this week's prompt. 

Jessica seeks poems relating to the sea, swimming etc.

Magpie Tales#38

Willow offers writers another picture prompt this week, and invites more than one response if writers so wish.  Magpie writers' responses can be found HERE.

Two Poems

Memorials

Something in these slabs does not quite answer.

‘Beloved Husbands’ and ‘Beloved Wives’

chiselled in stone, overlooked by angel wings,

seek to commemorate lives shared, with bliss

the elexir of all their days.  This is

not what ephemeral records show –

their silences, rejections and the blows,

the loving husband’s dalliance, cards or drink,

the wife neglected, beaten if she thinks

to gainsay the Master of the House. Ask how

can such belovedness be buried here

interred alongside poverty, despair,

the loneliness that the ill-married share,

save that to the dead we must defer? These

grounds are no Elysian fields, rather

testaments to conflicts, tears and wounds,

till Death at last sets the survivor free,

but, visiting again in time unites -

the victor and the vanquished once more One.

Hired hands cut their pretences into stone.

After Six Days

Now lies her little casket in the ground,

six handswidths small, a hand for each brief day.

Six days their daughter’s gaze outshone their dawn.

Now is her mother’s life too short to mourn

her passing? Shall six days be her reward,

the Seventh to be given to her Lord?

Was it for this her mother lent her life

whose love will not now watch her flesh grow tall,

play with her puppy, knit a dolly’s shawl,

kiss ribboned letters, give her heart in thrall?

She learned the comfort of her mother’s breast.

She learned her fist could clutch her father’s thumb.

How could she know she gave more than she took?

How could she know they’d hardly bear to look

now on her pale, still face? Their tears nail down

the casket lid. Their grief might crack her stone.

Her life is ended here. Here two deaths start.

What else is there left now to break their hearts?

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.