Half Agony, Half Hope

Wasps

Wasps,

with barbed-wire stings,

Huddle

in their comb.

Waiting,

for Winter’s water,

To wash away,

           Summer’s sticky heat. 

Branches

Branches

Clawing at me,

        Ripping my dress,

               Piercing my skin with wicked-witch nails

On knuckled fingers

      That interlock, block 

The pebbled path. 

                                  Ploughed field on the other side.

                                                                       Soft, flat, neat

         Toasted by the sun’s golden tongue. 

Restrained by the black thickets.

                        I peek, through a chink,

    as the hedge grows

                            bushier;

A keyhole?

                                              A looking glass?

The clearing fills:

         Chaotic blooms of daisies and bluebells,

                     Elderflowers giving advice when they’re 

                                                                                 Just as lost. 

                                                            

Rose

The Rose

Stands out 

From dull dandelions.

Weeds with crisp,

Brown edges

Withered

By the sun.

The brightest red 

in a monochrome field.

The one you frame 

in gilded gold.

The softest petals,

Luscious,

Red velvet,

Seductive.

But the sharpest thorns

Lay beneath.

She’s not: 

the crimson of royalty,

the blush of innocent romance. 

She’s a red cap goblin

Soaked in the blood 

Of her enemies.

An old hag; 

Black, wrinkled,

Clinging to a beautiful façade,

Trying to conceal 

The decay inside. 

Novel

I lay open, 

Discarded on a shelf,

Ribbon just falling off the page,

I want to tell you my story,

I want you to listen. 

Where I’ve come from, 

What I’ve seen. 

I want to show you,

The gleaming boats, that glide, 

Past waving crowds on the river bank,

The letter that changed a life, a lover’s leaflet;

The adventure he embarked on, go with him. 

I call out to you! Listen to me,

Listen to them: 

I want you to smile because she said something funny,

And not understand how it was a hundred years ago. 

I want them to live on in you.

When they made me wet with their tears,

And told me what they couldn’t tell anyone else. 

Come back to me and listen. 

Spend the time, 

to love me, look at me,

and not just the cover. 

Inside, get to know me well,

And I can know you too.

Spend the time, 

To envelop yourself,

Lose yourself in me;

Feel. 

The Red Forest

The forest is red.

Not a golden, autumnal red,

The red of ambulance sirens, donor pouches, 

And surgical instruments scraping metal dishes/trays.

Its branches make a circuit; aorta – vena cava:

So fragile, fundamental; so terrifying

As they intertwine, wrap like fingers around my wrists.

The forest is a labyrinth.

Mind-games and word-tricks trapping 

Me in thickets,

The Royal Blue and the oxygenated red

Red! Red!

Flashing in my mind,  

Veins in my neck, wrists,

Crimson trees towering round me,

Scarlet canopy sinking down, 

I crouch, head in red hands. 

Spinning in the blurred blood room,

Yellow now, spotting up in the 

Red lorry yellow lorry red lolly

Black. 

Saplings

Six little saplings

Cry, shoulder upon shoulder,

Branch-hugs and intertwined roots,

Tears that shed their youth and

Help them climb. 

Fresh green stalks; weak.

One grows taller than the others.

Casts eclipsing shadows,

Burns, breaks, bends, withers

with the weight of dejection. 

The young stalk browns,

Crisps; a wrinkled crack

For every unshed tear.

For the others? enriched soil. 

They climb, a little less sturdy,

The odd leaf crisps up and falls,

Lightly, to the soil beneath. 

Their stalks turn a little bit brown

Every time they hear the crack

of a splitting trunk, the moan

of the creaking roots that try to steady it.

By watering themselves every day,

They reach an unclouded canopy,

Drawing succulent happiness

From the fountains of past pain. 

Longing for Outside

My novel lays abandoned 

On the blanket I just made. 

The mug of tea that warmed my hands is stewed;

Instead, I freeze my fingers to chilblains

On ice-cube glass,

Wipe a gap on the frosty pane,

And stare, longing for outside. 

Outside is clean white snow,  

Leaves that crackle beneath 

sand-coloured boots.

I run,

Past the waft of pease pudding from the oven,

The warm milk with its tiny trail of steam,

The soft-yak jumper pulled over my head,

The tinkling keys that draw back my ears,

Like a dog, 

That hears the jingle of the lead, 

And yearns 

No! I have to go. I have to live. 

I want to. 

I pull my scarf tighter and tighter, 

Stuck on the hook of the door,

Tie myself to outside – the ropes,

Block out the calling sirens with headphones – the wax,

Jump on my boat-shoes and row. 

I want the Lewis forests and the Tolkien hills,

I want to go to Troy, if it takes me twenty years to get home. 

Family tree

Starting thick and strong, they spread out far

Thinning as they go, further further.

I try to climb across to where you are

But is the branch a strong and sturdy one?

Or does it weaken as I try to climb?

The trunk is just a phone pole now,

The cables thin and wobbling like my voice;

So scared that they will snap at your request.

Call too much and will the cable snap?

Not enough and will the branch collapse?

I want it to stay green and young like us,

The kids that used to hide in wicker tubs,

Or under beds with grinning faces wide,

Or in the wardrobe where I’d find the woods

And you would play along but now you won’t. 

Now we only speak through wavy lines.

A pixel face,

When you’re free from work,

Glitching on a cracked black screen.

Your words are sparse and awkward. But I still

Cling    to    every    one.

I still need to add two more poems to my compilation, alongside editing some of these. I also need to work on the order of the poems within the collection, including making Novel and Longing for Outside into a sequence along with another poem.

This is not the latest version of every poem as I wanted to document the development of the collection as a whole, this is my second draft of the whole compilation.