poppy-poetry-scraps

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An Evening at the Esplanade

(yet another instance of dancing as poetry)

We don’t shake hands before the dance.

As the tempo rises, I do my best to keep up, Eventually to shake my limbs into some sort of beauty that would be my own. The details are not pretty. The sweat, the sting of gel that makes my hands slip. One turn wrong and my nails (a delicate gunmetal grey) scratch new lines into your palm. When I can, I steal looks at my shadow to see what others see. Only then can I picture my chance at the beautiful. From the sidelines, I watch the others, fluid, their steps almost silent in the early fall evening. The sky is a heavy drum whose beats raise charcoal dust, the light is

An oppressive orange. This is pleasure still. As I vacillate into a half-etched pose, he says

See? That’s why I never care about the end

(I would like that too)

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Sea

See the broken mirror that shrouds the edge of the sky.

Now look back to the land. To the sea never more –

She whispers lies to poets.

How many boys have gone beyond her steel-grey veil, looking for some speechless love?

gold – fame – seaweed women with stormy limbs –

So many quests. They rot themselves to sand now, their memory corpses for waves to feast on.

 The sea took my bird-grey shawl, gifted by my love. My love she took too.

For my widow’s dowry, she gave me

her grief-grey veil to share

her mirror-shard water to comb my hair

her winds to dry my tears. She almost held me like he had.

 Months later, the sea gave me back my love.

He had no face.

Drenched wool spelled out his name.

  I tore the sea’s grief-grey veil. I took my tears by fistfuls, flung them til the sun shone no more.

I cried a flood of rage to drown the sea.

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Ain’t it love? When all those you’re beautiful disappear And the sadness and dreams weep dry

I hate that we held goodbye so close Oh, say we’re satisfied Ain’t those still nights good? Ain’t money smoke in our eyes?

No coats come from kisses, baby but everywhere you remember our loving I can whisper, sweet woman

We tried to be a love they can’t lead

Our souls seemed to be alive

---

This poem was written by using only the lyrics to ‘Angie’ by the Rolling Stones. Not quite blackout poetry, more like patchwork poetry, but we’re getting there.

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running three times around Saint Mary’s Chapel

I told you about it one evening; the story gifted to me by a taxi-cab driver after a long night full of booze. About Saint Mary’s, a pointy, dark thing squatting somewhere near home, and about his grandfather, one run away from facing the Devil himself.

We laughed at his fear – bright and young in the dark of the backseat, unafraid, bold in the face of the ancient tales we didn’t care to understand.

we should do it, I said three times as fast as life for a glimpse of the Beast, for a thrill.

has anyone really done it ?

To burn your lungs with life                   (you light a cigarette) just for a glimpse of death ?

to revel in irreverence, utterly, to bask in the light granted only by sublime foolishness

to see how Evil looks when it isn’t scattered in dirty bills and drugged bruises.

I left the city before I could.

The Black Church remains, round the corner of inglorious ruins, a pointy, dark thing squatting somewhere in Dubliners’ lives waiting for those who will trade their soul with three turns, for a thrill.

                       if you want, if you can, do it for me ?

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I opened my ask box if any of you lovely folks want to send me some feedback or inspiration!

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Persephone Days

The kitchen knife is dull, and flush with fuschia.

I struggle a little as I turn it around the fruit.

The crisp sound of breaking flesh – the cool surprise

of pomegranate juice on my cheek.

Without a mirror to greet my Sunday morning self, I like to imagine

the splash of pink freckles it might have left.

I adorn my breakfast with garnet beads, I adore

creating pretty things to look and taste at.

It isn’t much : a few glistening seeds scattered across the gray end of morning.

Still, I understand Persephone

and her hands stained with sweetness, bringing color

into an ashen world.

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Seal Tattoo

How beautiful ! The moving lines of a body

moving lines of somebody

else’s art.

At ten, I squinted and winked

and the metal tube on the bus seat hopped

from left                to right,

to reveal

the faded lines of a hammer and sickle, sickly pin-pricked

on an old man’s bicep.

At thirteen, I filled in for the third time in a week

a single drop of garish blood, more pink than red

stuck in time between my index nail and the pentacle crudely traced on the back of my hand.

In the shower, I watched

As the water brought life to this still trickle.

At sixteen, I played with my skin,

with the echoes of moans mirrored in bruises and pecks

on my back and neck.

At nineteen I kissed

The ink and the warmth of a summer night’s lover.

At twenty,

I want to pin a pinniped in the folds of the arm

and make it dance with every shake

of the blubber of my biceps.

My skin is bare, but it’s already there.

This tattoo’s a seal

– of the art that I’ve seen

lipstick red, hickey purple, the never-quite-black tattoo blue

Adorning the living vellum of people's skin.

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I love

My name, the way it rings with things from long ago.

I love

How it got me reading tales, how it made me wise.

I love its beauty, when people tell me

I love your name. So do I.

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I'm not dead, my dears

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Writing update

I might not be posting much here but it doesn't mean that I'm not writing anything. I'm working on a series of texts for a musical collaboration and I'd rather not put them here right away!

I'm very excited to be taking part in such a project and I'll post some poems (unfinished for now) that aren't related to it soon.

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My softness –

It has been rubbed raw

By the concrete knots in my belly. I am

Tired

Too much so, too tired to

Write what I cannot cry out down.

So I drown

 lonelessly

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Carnets de voyage n°2

L'Etna.

Des fantômes d'arbres rampent dans la brume, nos pas sont noirs dans la cendre noire.

Au détour d'une colline, des escaliers moussus.

C'est là que pousse la dentelle blanche des branches, seule relique d'un hiver invisible.

Je me suis crue en été trop de fois.

Le volcan est un vieil ami; je pense

à l'océan d'hommes qu'il a connu qu'ils ont connu

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Carnets de voyage n°1

Fragment: Syracuse

Comme une beauté de verre révélée par les vagues,

Syracuse,

Tu jettes les copeaux de tes façades roses dans la mer de décembre.

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The dull thrumming pulse of a train passing by ours; then nothing. It is not unlike meeting a stranger.

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I often read the lovely comments you all put in the tags when you reblog my poems. Whether they're analysis, comments on the parts you like best or just a few nonsensical (yet very meaningful) keysmashes, just know that I'm grateful for each and every one of them.

Thank you ❤

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September 30

October creeps in tonight, and there’s nothing I can do. I can grasp the cold that comes in to stick to my back through the cracks around the window. I feel alone. Something evokes death – a voice from long ago. The dread of a moment like a candle’s flicker has frozen my ankles. I want to light candles. Turn my room, its lack of colors too cool in the growing darkness, into a constellation where I can warm my hands. I never want to blow them out.

October is creeping in tonight, and though I love autumn’s fire, I can only see the damp film that covers the red yellow orange of leaves as they rot.