Clean up

Regular check ups were a must, he knew
Regular clean ups keep the apples sparkling
Waxed off
Polishing the simplicity
helps rid you all layers of memorable waste.

Blackbirds

"The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. 
It was a small part of the pantomime." Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

In a row of five red brick houses,
The only moving thing was just a white van, a bald man
and the head of a careless, ground bound blackbird.

© Alice Y, Canon Eos 550D, 300 Panasonic, golden hour.

Reader's Attention

Readers of today,
Readers of tomorrow,
Those who just passed here
Those who lingered
To those who shouldered support in all its forms
from the ghost of this blog, its writer allow me to take a moment to say:

Thank you for stopping by for tea,
I hope the biscuits were up to your taste
I will be patiently awaiting your next visit.

The permanent members of the household, la familia are special too:
Insiders, seniors, friends, family and colleagues,
You know
You don't need to call or text if you want to pass by,
the door is always open for a chat
Though we might run out of chocolates, sometimes.

Tango

It takes two feet to tango,
It takes two to tango,
An unhealed, misplaced presence
tripped the river over a gravel, breaking the rhythm

Capabilities

Capability, not ability
It is a flaming pink  flamingo, balancing on one leg
Digging the mucky river for fish
Then standing again, two footed before
Taking flight...

In absentia

Merciless
It is absence,
A rainless thunder.

Escapes

Run away and you are weak

Escape is a sign of the weak

he had said

a moment before bolting out of the door

As the watermelon rose from the table.

Control

Taken in, control
Take away, control
Watch the thoughts as they fall, control
The exposure of teeth, control
The touch of color, control
The feet where they go, control
The pen where it bleeds, control
The wounds not to fester or rot, control
The others, the other, the one, you, control
Those who find peace in what they control, have once-
 At least once lost reign to all.

Noble steam

Forgetting, forgetting 
She craves
The train arrives
'Mind the step',
Do I? I don't know--
To forgetfulness and laughter
Carry her
 Noble steam.

Dance like no one is watching but your neighbor

Five empty cups,
Five pints and three shots left near the fireplace
And the man waltzes in the dim lit corridors
his partner: a brown patched kitten.

Crow Callings

“Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more then I am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being.” ―Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights 

K.E.

Crows call once, twice
Winds rustle between the grassy moors
Thunder, thunder screams into the ears,
Bows piercing her heart, Katherine.

H.C.

Cathy, do you hear me? I come here for you-
I cry, for her I've always cried
Amid the noisy clamor
I wear the feathers of a crow, a mask
The pitfall of rain over my grave burns
Burns again as I scream once more: Cathy.

K.E.

No he shall not enter
not beneath the layers of my soul
O, I am well an oyster
I am well, this is my kingdom: he, my eternal slave.

H.C.

You, are the eternal ghost of my soul.

K.E.

Nelly, Nelly come patch my wounds
Silver and gold wrap my finger,
Emerald turns over my body
But Nelly I am Heathcliff
The hole inside me opens up
His face, his thick brow, his mischievous smile
Oh Nelly, he is me, I am him.

H.C.

I am Katherine, I am the ghost
But then I am the one who blew her candles
I plucked her heart, crushed it
I crushed her being and smiled in the mirror
And now I shall carry this darkness onward, like a mole on my face
No, like a red festering scar,
My Cathy

Then
They roamed the streets for too long, till they could no more
The walked and then began to soar,
They roamed the skies,
Two crows crying, crying, crying
Till the end of time.....

Ouse muses

Here you go, L'ove
There you take me card if you need it
Yet here I am love
Down the Ouse, like Virginia Woolf

More than a sign

Wheels of iron, clutch to  heeled leather shoes

Rods, needles and water drip life out of your songs

I stand , I push it all away 

But cancer is not just an astrological sign. 

Duckies

A trail of little ducks
pull into the water
one after the other
like pearls on a necklace

Needlestick

Needles stick
out of the pictures, without a sound
The bee, so cruel
Why does it stick onto those who move?

Haul

Bags they held,
buffed like the Andes with streams
of hangers and bar codes
Exploding
Too many rainbow winged butterflies flew away.

Plum trees

A kaleidoscope streams through

The window

It is tall and airy

Who glued these blossoms on the plum tree?

Wagons

No silence and no play,
No one talks along this hunger,
Who's leading that horse driven wagon?.
I wonder 

A is for Apple

The cloud

 receives his gaze

Apples roll underneath the leafless tree 

Writing like Shadows

The name on my phone,

Flickers, like a summer wind between the leaves-

In a whim I scribble my thoughts like a shadow is following me 

into a small corner of a Parisian alley

Self

What happens when the self-less
turns selfish?, no less is more now--
Why does a fish tail dangle from the self, splashing the others away?

Holes

Void,
Thick, like no lines of poetry
Like a day with no tomorrow
Away from familiarity, faces, sounds, smiles
There lands a black hole sucking away light, terming itself
the edge
of
emptiness.

Goodbyes

Closing a page,
Closing the book
A chapter flies madly by
One fact hides: I am the worst with goodbyes.

Helios

Slide on rays,
Past nineteen degrees, past the newly blossomed shoot
Past the daffodils, green patches and swinging kids
See that horizon?
It is there I buried winter.

Relics

Unclear pieces of history;
Pieces of china, disfigured bodies
Eroded wood, limestone and paint
Five pairs of eyes and a mummy stare from behind the glass

A Day for Women

Blown, shredded, pieced
They like razor bladed grass
 had withered
For them, a day was attributed;
A day for my mother,
A day for my teacher,
A day for the ladies on the fields with hay sewn baskets
Chanting, rivers running beneath their toes
A day for those in front of the mirror
For those who are behind the mirror
A day for those who have no mirrors but
Wake up flawless,
Bees in their hair, dirt beneath the nails,
And a few potatoes for countless open mouths
A day for those in patches,
Patches of need, or bruises or failings of men.
A day for those on desks,
and those beneath the florescent,
Dissecting the pain away--
with frail fingers painting out of blood a Mona Lisa.
A day, just one day was coined,
For wombs,
For breasts,
For nurturing hands
For rough skin
For raising minds,
One day for not being a man,
Triumph! Triumph some would shout!.

A day was coined for them,
Myself included,
A day for us was named: Congratulations you are a woman.
The world says like it is an achievement
To negate and include a man:
Inside you,
Beside you,
Behind you (quiet possibly)
Today the world reminds you, this day is yours:
Yours to exercise shopping bag lifting
To grab a medal for heaving emotions
To glaze a smile for a blaring dish
To dance to the melodies of nocturnal cries--
and it is yours to blow out a the minds with
Your talk, or walk or your brain.
Today is yours, so smile, you woman.

Passivity

State of the body,
State of the brain,
State of the bodily- brain;
The brainy-body
State of the day: inactive.

Violence

Red,

Trickling and sliding

Out of the frame. 

If one tumbles...

The pot whistles, four times,
A Reminder of Thomas Edison!
Edison! Hateful physics--
It whistles again-- enough to cut her thoughts out
They needn't bleed, they'd generate new limbs, new eyes.
Now the mushrooms smell of oregano, cream and cheese
A tinge of the forbidden fruit, forbidden fruit smells sweeter:
Like starry summer nights, like newly baked cake, like smiles.
In the room, outside of her the laughter rises,
In the room, the subject buds out-
or flowers,
or nestles
or day dreams of exotic land
Exotic can be us, the exotic can be what's not us--
She doesn't fully hear and comments
She hears and no meaningful comments or thoughts are needed tonight
Relax, let go, smile:
The wine turns,
Like a dervish it moves
Round and round: silent with a million laughs

They tunnel toward her
She prays and vows to make it count
No one hears her, she talks to herself
Now she remembers ancestors
Making their way around soup
With a stone at the bottom of the pot
But life is not always that hard.

Around her they smile,
They offer a train of pinky fingers
Pinky-promise chain;
If one tumbles everyone falls
In the cold, the petals of darkness fume
Moss of Greek gods;
Lighter, airy, higher
The rest falls into sight,
If one tumbles everyone falls
The rest fall out of sight,
She fades out on tiptoes and dancers 'pointe'
in a musical living room,
She stands to wonder, how like a long letter, like promises and fruit on trees:
If one tumbles
Everyone
Falls.

an image floats out of my head...

Tapping, like dance

Dancing, like Wordsworth daffodils

I give birth to words

You sleep in my poems tucked softly between the vowels

Covering up only by a few syllables. 

Inspired

A refugee's tear
An armless photograph;
Life is about perspective, not prospective timeless time
A tune they played,
A beat they cracked
A plea for humanity, for us
That was all they lived for, a proof of action against other people's preaching
To second chances and to tears shed on empty theater seats
They rose, she among them
A standing ovation to ideal
Life.

Illustrations are copyrights of artist George Butler, seen on exhibition at the University of Warwick 2-3-2014.

Words

Shaped;

Words are made from letters

Fire, hail and a tinge of Holy water

Mine are made of syllables, heartbeats and crunched leaves.