Poetry and Art
I often feel the need to write poetry to accompany my artworks. Here is a small sample, based on personal experiences.
After the Storm
The storm paints its oath in Payne’s Grey skies,
a frown to its encumbered heaviness;
yet lovers’ knots entwine in muted light,
and suffering walks barefoot, her pain to quell.
The wind’s last breath writes prayers in stone
that bear the sea’s unbroken swell.
Searching beyond the dark-blue seam of depth,
a patient vigil quietly kept.
Behind rise ancient cliffs, all-knowing,
lichened gold, scored by the hands of time …
A witness to kingdoms rise and fall,
yet still they guard the sea’s unbroken rhyme.
A sea that holds a vast remembering breath
and whispers truth to those who venture on its tides:
for lovers born to earth must learn to weep,
and hope is love’s last prayer upon the deep.
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobic mantle descends without warning
An ill fitting garment, paid for with blood
There’s no escape
Iron mask of fear plain to the eye
And yet invisible to the deaf
Becoming in a perverse fashion
Dog like
I rebound off the walls in kennel-stress
Pacing, counting, avoiding the cracks
Time and motion become disjointed, as
Abstract fingers probe the locks hidden deep like old wounds
Trembling on the doorstep
Hampered by nails digging in my palms
Unzip the phone, it’s unhealthy clang a distant echo imprinted on muslin walls,
Stab the doorway with stitches worked in metal lace
I encounter
Knitted boxes piled high with unremembered madness
Knit one, pearl one, they open, despite the orthodontic braces
Set to straighten
Counting stitches deliberately worked or dropped
To keep me in
Or you out?
Heart beats a velvet retreat in hollow cowardice
Deafening in the fortified woven hollow
Falling
Yet defying gravity
On a thread
Escape beckons within
Retreating deeper and deeper into smaller spaces
Bursting with agitated chaos
I lay face up
Stranded beetle like on my back
Unbuttoning more of me
Than I remember …
Unwelcome Contradictions
Cystic Hydroma,
A fancy name for death …
It trips off the tongue with a leaden lightness
And the sickness spreads,
Crippling and warm
As chill hands twist in painful recognition
Forcing you on your tortuous journey
White coats a ghostly vigil … in suspended animation
Cleaving fast
And yet plucked
Like a smooth brown limpet from a rock
… you slip from the grasp
call to god! And god, for help!
And yet you come …
All brittle bones and waxing skin
Cocktails of drugs replacing nature in clinical fascination
Towards the inevitable death
Crashing cymbals in the mind
As they tear pale flesh … from secret parts
And the clock ticks on …
Midwife in cryptic apology averts her gaze
She cannot breath life into senseless flesh
And takes you away in a steel tray
Like a Christmas turkey
Cold …
As lifeless in birth
As in death
You don’t complain
Numbed in stock
And ice cold stare
At crisp white sheets
Stained a ruddy complexion
On which god
In playful jealousy
Crushed the brittle clay … that was my Adam …