Petals and Thorns

They burn, oh!

my petals burn

light has elapsed 

only these briars

glow eerily now

the setting sun

reddens the thorns,

their pointed tips

in the garden –

a garden enclosed

in dying light –

my petals flame.

Written for Micro Poetry ~ Binding with Briars at 'imaginary garden with real toads', and for facebook's The Poetry of Three. (Inspired – loosely – by Blake's 'The Garden of Love'.)

Published in HAVE YOUR CHILL, July 2018.

Full Moon, Dark Moon

The Full Moon

huge and golden

seemed to bounce

to our rhythm

as we rode

that tiny motorbike, 

hired from strangers,

fast and eager

alongside the paddies –

to make love

our first time,

in dreamy Bali.

Many months later,

back in Melbourne,

I heard you

that last time –

riding away forever,

further and further,

your own bike

large and purring

across the night,

while I lay 

awake, listening long,

at Dark Moon.

Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Dark Moon, New Moon

Also written for the facebook group THE POETRY OF THREE, Three Words Per Line

My Favourite Metaphor for You

(courtesy of 'The Little Prince')

I didn't keep

the fox poster

that spoke of

you / our love /

your death, in

a secret language

made of images.

I had written

the fox poem.

I thought that

pain enough – more

would be wallowing  –

but now seek

other fox pictures.

Their different landscapes

are immaterial. For

it's the fox

I crave, vivid

against any backdrop,

coming towards me

shy yet purposeful....

Bit by bit

I tamed you

with my words,

with my love;

but could, finally, 

not save you

from the hunters.

Written for The Poetry of Three facebook group.

Joining This Site

(Poetry of Three)

'You do know

this is not

a dating site?'

How I laughed!

Yes. Anyway, I'm 

not looking, thanks.

All the same,

a sweet fantasy:

partnering through poetry.

How utterly romantic,

if somewhat old-fashioned.

But after all –

there is that

obligatory number three.

No, better not.

Just think of

those messy, eternal 

triangles we'd generate.

'Poetry of Three' in which each line must have three words (no other restrictions) is a facebook group I just joined. They asked several leading questions including this one before accepting my application – and fair enough too, but this one did amuse me.

When I Came Here (Shadorma)

When I came

to this place of trees

their welcome

embraced me

and when I lay in your arms
enfolded us both.

Written for 'imaginary garden with real toads': Fussy Little Forms: Shadorma.

Return Journey?

"How was it, coming back

after hard adventures, 

to normal?"

                     I've never 

known normal. My path leads 

ever on; a wild track.

Games Cat

is chasing for toy,

dangling for toys.

Playmate must be me!

Solution one: there’s 

miaow. A try. Maybe even

(soon) me-against rubs.

Door. To - it - from: circles.

Chair (my): around she prowls.

Myself, I won’t risk the Her.

(Health / ill conflict ... as

food would relieve it too.)

I think she’s me-like.

She thinks me her-like.

Outside’s wet. It is.
Bored is She.

Although people enjoyed my recent poem Cat Games (because many people love cats) I myself soon came to the conclusion it was banal and boring. Under the influence of Carmen Giménez Smith's chapter, 'An Exercise in Derangement' in the book WINGBEATS II, I wrote it out backwards (incorporating two photo captions from that earlier post) and needed very few further changes to arrive at what I hope is a more dynamic poem.

In the House of Love

In the house of love 
I am but a decoration. 
I hang on the wall, 
ignored for the most part. 

When anyone does notice, 
they smile. I am pretty. 
But I count for nothing. 

I would like to be a book, 
that people would open and read, 
exchange thoughts with. 

I would like to be a spoon, 
to be dipped into food and brought back 
full of nourishment and sweet tastes. 

But I am a mere decoration, 
useless, unnecessary, 
with nothing important to do. 

Occasionally someone dusts me off. 
No-one ever applies polish. 
No-one ever takes a photo. 

They moved the mirror opposite; 
now I am even forgetting what I look like. 
I cannot see myself. I cannot hear myself. 
Perhaps I will cease to exist.


This is a fictional character, NOT autobiographical! Written in response to a prompt in a writing group, which consisted of the first two lines of this poem. They are from a piece of writing by Kyminy Cricket.

Linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #376

I Sing

I sing softly and sadly

I sing sadly and softly

I sing in the middle of your delight

and at the edge of your last anguish

I sing as if the day would never end

I sing slowly at midnight and quickly at dawn

I sing to the wind and the stars and the dark

I sing to the treetops and to their trunks

I sing to small frogs in the rainwater pipe

also to the bees that visit my clover

I sing in the cities, among their towers

I sing in rainforests and alongside rivers

I sing with the sea and with thunder

with jagged rocks and rising mountains

I sing in the language of a cat

and in the colours of a butterfly

in the pouring rain I sing

in the burning sun I sing

I will never stop singing

The Ground from Under

You are falling roses,

you are patches of darkness,

you are words unspoken.

Into the gashes between

your forms and seemings 

I plummet. Cliff walls are stone.

How can now an arrival

happen, let alone pertain?

Black and bloody, drifting,

I consign me to endless.

Slightly Broken

Slightly broken by being 

so deeply misunderstood

(divine light fractured

lying spilled on the roadway)

I crawl off into invisible.

Mixing with grass and scrub

and thick leaf-litter, lacy fragments,

torn off, remain briefly. Soon 

the weather will turn them into

part of the earth and the air.

Resting alone tempts the wounded

into further silence. Today

you become far away, you become 

the nothing you would make

of me. And I am merely gone.

Pretty Pierette

Some people hate clowns,

think them murderous 

with wide, round, staring eyes 

and crazy grins.

I, myself, despised

the lumbering, stupid

circus clowns of my childhood.

Then I found these others.

Now I am in love

with the clowns from the Carnival,

their patterned costumes,

their shapely masks.

Here at my left hand, overlooking 

the desk whereon I make poems,

there sits the loveliest of all –

a gift from a knowing friend.

Her white porcelain hands and face,

her elaborately painted eyes,

her bows and bells and glitter

show me she is beautiful but sad.

I know sad. Those frozen tears

on her blank, helpless face

remind me. They are for love lost:

remembering a different beauty.

Written for Poems of Garden Gnomes. The prompt: to write about whatever is just out of reach of one's left hand.

Also linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #389

Cat Games

She is bored.

It's wet outside.

Like me, she thinks

to relieve it with food,

but I don't inflict on her

the ill-health I risk for myself.

She prowls around my chair,

circles from it to the door,

rubs against me; soon

may even try a miaow.

There's one solution: 
I must be playmate.

Toys for dangling

Toy for chasing

Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Also linking to Monday Writes #125 and to Midweek Motif – Animals at Poets United

A Conversation with My Late Husband

He tells me, "You need 

male energy around you. It's OK

if you have new relationships. Later, 

we'll be together forever. 

But for now ..."

"Listen," I say, "I like 

being with me now. (And 

with you, still so present in spirit.)

For the rest, my little cat

is my new love, my sweet, my treasure."

Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Promises

I signed, 'Love forever'. He replied:

'Forever is a long time to love. How about, 

Love – as long as you're still

the person you are today.'

(It was a promise, not a question.)

He died soon after. 

Decades later, 

love appears to be forever ...

after all, he is still 
the person he was that day.

Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Re-reading Martin Pippin*

I have been rambling for days

in an apple orchard and a daisy field, 

in the fine company of Martin Pippin

(introduced to me by Eleanor Farjeon).

I was a lonely girl, unlike those

who stopped their play to hear these tales –

yet my childhood too, I recollect,

had its daisy chains, its golden apples. 

* "Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard" and "Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field" by Eleanor Farjeon: classics still available in print and as ebooks.

Written for a 55-word prompt.