My favourite poem

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


Mary Oliver

Beauty Mark

I wrote this poem during one of my many inbetween moments. These moments tend to occur when I'm far far away from the telly, the internet and the kitchen. Add a bit of sunshine and a Sunday afternoon and there you have it, a glorious inbetween moment. I wrote this after listening to a song with the same title by the ethereal Charlotte Gainsbourg.I had also been on a cloud of surreal heaven after reading Haruki Murakamis Kafka on the Shore. Well, enough of the babbling, here it is.








Between the fore and the middle
I have a beauty mark,
a brown spot in a pink cradle
removed from the light.
If I spread out my fingers
I can see my secret
forgotten often and yet reminded
each time I slip on my ring
or wash each crease and crinkle
of sunless skin.

It's a feeble little keepsake really,
not one part of it sparkles
as a gem handed down and tucked away.
It doesn't rest upon my chest,
it doesn't have the dark lines of a
tattoo,
its just an inanimate mark
on the map of my skin, unamed
undiscovered and in limbo,
floating inbetween
waves of hello and farewell.

I can make whatever I want of it
like the books I read
and the photo on the refridgerator,
or the endless beating of my heart that
on some nights won't let me sleep.

At once both a sign of something precious
and something irrevelent.
So much or so little
All that meaning I could or won't give.

Novella

This is a poem I wrote about two years ago. It is a series of haikus.
Ive been writing poetry on and off for a very long time and eventually I would like to make an illustrated collection of my poetry. Bring both of my favourite things into one project.

NOVELLA


As fiction you are

Stuck on a fleeting promise

To be something real.

A paperback ride

I stumble on your sentence

Read between the lines.

To me your words are

Lifted and free from all this

Love I can't release.

So at night I have

The darkness to dissolve you

Into a thick sleep.

But I fold the page

Continue where I left you

And make love again.

And fear the yearning

When I finish reading it

To want more of this.

I can't predict it

The last line of this chapter

The end of this book.

The fact that I am

Stuck on a fleeting promise

To feel something real.

The Attic

In here there has never been light.

As I open the trapdoor

I am lifting a darkened weight.



Pressed flowers on my dress

hung up from a beam,

to find and recall,

my fingers run down it like hair.



Pale lace at the hem shifts

as its colour seeps back,

into a girl who spun around.

She is gently unravelled.



What was once my light,

is now a hardened centre,

but as I take it down,

flecks of dust rise and fall



and like tiny puppets

they dance in the light.

The Butcher

Not sure about this piece. I always feel like Im cheating in some way when I use free verse, abit like playing with words for the fun of it. Nevertheless, it feels good to get back to my attempts at writing something. Inspired by my local butcher. Just goes to show how the most mundane of activities (buying meat for the week) can spark off creative bits and pieces in my head...

Well heres a weekends worth of poetry. A grand total of two.

The Butcher

To me he could be a painter,
since his hands are always red
and their prints leave ritual marks
all over his white coat.

When he pins down his muse,
A tentative creativity rises.
The practical part begins

Like a surgeon, which he could be
inspects the mass of red matter,
fingers eager for a spectacular incision

before cutting it like a cook
as though it were a plate of butter
Laid out into a collage of pink.
A boneless work of art.

I watch him as I wait
when under the flourescent light
and the cool glass
and the hum of a man working,
A hand reaches out for the heart.

The Birdkeeper

Here I am maddened
by what he gave me.
From the fourth floor of
this spell I will make
circles in the darkness-
I won't sing.

An aimless ascent
In the mote filled air,
Beaten and stricken
with mistiming. I
flutter past his door
on a spot, home in.

a blot on the moon,
He sleeps and rises
without me.

Ribbons

A poem I wrote last week. Its about the loss of innocence, mothers and daughters, fragile belief systems and cultural superstitions.

I had a jar of satin ribbons
frayed tongues of the rainbow,
Hair oil and a comb- a girl's treasure.

All mothers would spread it's net
across lakes of growing hair,
Comb it every morning before school,

Till it bled black-
Till it spoke and spat of colour-
Till it smelled of a distant island.

Anchored down by two red ribbons,
on the glass bed I saw a fat pearl
Glaring back at me. One eyed and lost

Mothers warn against this third eye.
They say it can see every part of you
Even if you try to hide it well.

A black snake hangs down my shoulder,
Red tongue against bitten skin.
I can't tell her. I saw what it saw.

back to my first love....

 

After a cold winter hiatus, I spent a magical weekend in the sun (yes, it really was magical) with a beautiful notebook I recieved as a xmas present from a dear friend. With this I became unexpectedly inspired by my first love: poetry.
I hadn't written in soo long, that I was beginning to think it was only ever meant to be a brief creative fling. But with a little bedtime poetry reading as well as my cycles of drawing and not drawing, i suddenly found I couldnt stop writing!
Being motivated and inspired really does miracles for me. I become a very happy little bunny.By the way, this was the magical book by Ruth Padel. Shes a wonderful critic and poet herself. A useful book for those who are poetry virgins or like me, need abit of encouragement to get back to writing again. Having a gorgeous notebook does wonders too.

Abstinence (a poem I wrote about a year ago)

Last night when we sat and talked
Something watched us with a mischievous plan.

It sat waiting in the corners of your smile,
Camped out deep in the crevice of collar bone,
Covered in a delicate sheet of your skin.

It slipped into the darkness of our conversation,
Crawled through the tunnels between momentary glances,
Shrouded in a mist of unspoken feeling.

Even though you didn’t sense it I did,
It began tying up my family of thoughts into knots
Before plying them with this inebriated idea
Of mulled skin against skin.

And with the trajectory of your heart mapped out
I became unsteady
With its toxicity

I nearly gave in.

Last night I drank too much of it
And my tongue is still red with warm thoughts.
But hanging over me now
Is the abstinence from being held close.

A dull ache I can’t bear feeling this morning.

Palms

A little poem I wrote almost a year ago. I've always had poetic tendencies since forever. I was the girl with the thick glasses and braids, going to the library to borrow The Oxford Collection of Poems and limericks. Not suprisingly, I was always the last to be chosen for the school sports team.
I wrote this after noticing how transparent my hands were when I held them up against a strong ray of sunlight. It got me thinking about connections people make between light as revelation and hands as a sign of salvation, forgiveness, generosity. So this is what I managed to come up with. I've since chucked out those old glasses, but I haven't changed one bit. There's just something so intangible yet irresistable about libraries and staring at my hands for an hour... lol



When the light is strongest,
You can see capillaries of blood.
Movements you never imagined to see so clearly,
Light pushing between your fingers.
You have only a matter of seconds to touch it;
To feed on what revelation it may offer you.
The most delicate part of your wrist
Turns itself to catch the sun's descent.