Safe from Storm

Here we are again, 

me and my small black cat.

She is licking her tail,

one leg stuck up high

beside her head …

now she is scratching

briskly behind an ear.

We are in our garden.

It is not yet wet,

but rain threatens to fall

from the closing-in sky.

Everything is still, in a dead

pause, as if fetching

power out of the air.

As without, not within!

I give her a pat,

watch her uncoil.

We know, by and by

the sky will rain hard,

make thunder. But, watching,

by then we’ll be inside our door.

She is enough companion

to soothe my heart

and keep it sweetly full.

I hope that also I

fulfil her deepest need.

Contentment is catching,

I trust, for me and for her.

I Can Hear the Music

Behind the high fence

he plays his radio loud.

In the late afternoon sun,

gone from hot to warm,

I'm happy to listen unseen

to music I also like.

The wall of sound is dense.

I feel like one of the crowd

at a live concert – not here alone

in sprawling ease. To him

I'm invisible, unheard. My garden

is over the fence. He won't look.

It would make no sense

to him that my tastes are broad.

Advanced years like mine

enjoying hard rock, he can't fathom.

'Boyo,' I think, 'My generation –

we're the ones who invented rock!'

I restrain the urge to dance.

At the same time, I'm glad

that lively impulse hasn't gone.

Instead I unearth a poem;

it gives a cheeky grin
as it chooses the shape to take.

Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Music.

Some Scars

Some scars I wear proudly 

on the surface, bold.

Others are deeper, 

unseen and untold,

buried under layers 

of thickening years.

The long-ago rivers 

of painful tears

at last stopped flowing

and finally dried.

Only I know the poison 

still infects my blood.

Another for Quadrille #22: scars, at dVerse

Celebrating Sanaa

She wishes to make the world beautiful

And uses the weaving of words –

Not, perhaps, her first language, but one 

Adopted in olden ways she makes new

And rapidly masters, becoming adept.

Right now the world has circled the sun

In joyous return to the date of her birth.

Zealously we accept her poetic invitation,

Very glad to know her and wish for her – in verse,

In all ways: a Happy, splendid, beauteous Birthday!



Sanna Rizvi, who blogs at A Dash of Sunny and hosts weekly prompt nights there, this week invites fellow-poets to celebrate her birthday with poetic wishes. Not a problem; she has become a much-loved member of the poetic blogosphere!  Find more birthday poems here.

An Imperfect Coupl(et)ing

I think I’ll abandon the landay.

Harsh and witty not my forté, it quite forsakes me!

Landay: Poem comprised of self-contained couplets–as few as one couplet will do. ... Landays tend to reveal harsh truths using wit.  – Robert Lee Brewer

Stormscare

Or, The Play Of Scars

Now is wild summer.

Storms carve the sky

with sharp light; 

thunderous drumrolls

reverberate.

Small cat is careful, 

places herself underneath 

my big wooden table, 

folds herself smaller still.

Memories carry

two other cats

who crouched, gazing,

in the open doorway,
revelling in storms.

Another piece for dVerse's Quadrille #22. This time the obligatory word 'scar' is hidden – four times.

All His Life

From ten years old

twice daily

my Dad's injured shin,

open to the bone,

was dressed in red 

mercurochrome

and re-bandaged.

Above this gaudy wound –

more horrifying  

to child me –

on his smooth, pale knee

a dimpled scar

gouged  
(like a blinded eye).

For quadrille #22 at dVerse we are asked to include the word 'scar'. It brought back a vivid memory.

(Dad's legs were almost unnaturally smooth and pale, as he always wore long trousers to conceal the large bandage. Years of attempted skin grafts never took. The deep scar on the knee was from the same 10-year-old accident.)

Choices

The next war: USA and China,

writes journalist Pilger, shared by a friend on facebook.

That Pilger! Always so confronting.

I put the article aside, make myself some toast

turn on the TV, not for the news

(who wants to watch angst and horror?) but Cirque du Soleil.

Robert Lee Brewer at Poetic Asides offers a new form challenge for December: the landay. As regular readers will know, I enjoy trying new forms, especially with such an opportunity to keep practising them, so you may expect to see a few more efforts here.

Note: It is clear from comments here and elsewhere that this one is not working satirically as intended, so it will need a massive rewrite later. (I greatly admire and trust Pilger, I never miss watching a serious version of the nightly news, and I do NOT recommend turning to 'bread and circuses' instead of confronting reality. [I do love Cirque du Soleil, and probably should have chosen something less beautiful and uplifting to try and make my point.])

Obliteration

He thinks to wipe his face away,

making pain a mask. Not play

but anguish prompts this frantic task.

Obliteration? He would ask

not to hide, rather reveal

the ugliness he cannot heal,

imposing inner truth upon

the human face he wishes gone –

exposing self as mask of pain

over, over, and over again.

Written for Flash 55 PLUS (Dec. 3, 2016) at 'imaginary garden with real toads' – the 'PLUS' being a response to this video:

Early Summer

The day, hot blue,

smells of earth.

The sky stills;

clouds, hills, horizon blur.

Hear the silence: 

afternoon, 

the little town by the river

slowing down in the heat.

Somewhere a smell 

of sunscreen – 

warm brown skin, 

bare feet.

Tempted to Tell

It was a good dinner.

Afterwards we settled back

over coffee, and one said:

‘I sometimes think ETs

must have discovered us

by now – don't you?’

How that triggered my inner

cringing fear. Feeling a little sick

I kept so quiet, the dead

might have been more voluble. Jeez!

How could I say I knew this,

and very personally too?

I have been called a sinner

full of wicked lies, my soul black.

And worse than that: raving mad.

After enough reactions like these,

you learn the ways to pass

for normal – never mind what’s true.

************

A little green man? No, taller and thinner.

Limbless, featureless, my friend Kondark

resembled a floating column; had

a good brain though. But please,

where do you find a physicist who’d choose

to telepathise with an alien. Like who?

So he went back home, no-one a winner.

He’d wanted to help us, but needed to talk

with a fellow-scientist. That sort of head,

on earth, does not tend to telepathise

with alien visitors – can’t encompass

that reality, even though it’s not new.

And who could I have told? The stigma

is still too strong. They remain in the dark

the rationalists (so-called) – still led

by terror of the unknown. They’d seize

me and shut me up in the nut-house.…

(Yes I kid you, of course; you know I do.)

Written in response to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Social Stigma. 

The Mind an Astrolabe

After Dransfield

The night, cool green,

tastes of air.

The sea moves beneath;

waves wind and tide coordinate.

Sniff the bougainvillea:

the South Pacific, 

the purple islands.

A cloud ... a beach....

Something about wine – 

and already the stones 

of court and temple

different, mourning.

At dVerse Poetics – Covers we are asked to do a 'cover' of someone else's poem, using their words but in some way making them one's own. I wanted to pay tribute to Michael Dransfield, but it was hard – his poems are all so perfect just as they are. In the end I decided on an erasure poem taken from my favourite, 'Patricia's Raga', using part of its subtitle as my title. (And I slightly changed the last word.) It still feels rather sacrilegious! But I hope it leads you to the hauntingly beautiful original.