The garden

Yoga Prescribed

What a joy my garden has been for me during this pandemic lockdown. I have really enjoyed getting to know each plant personally. They have become friends. I care for them, nurture them, appreciate them. I have 19 roses and this year they have been utterly stunning. Most of them have been given to me as presents. I have a ‘Pride and Prejudice’ rose which my daughter gave to me. This celebrates my great love of Jane Austen, and is a delicate apricot colour. It’s been set off beautifully in its terracotta pot by a profusion of pansies. We have a Silver Wedding rose, which is sturdy, white and tall, a deep red rose which our kids gave us for our Ruby Wedding Anniversary, a Peace rose which embodies my devotion to yoga. It’s voluptuous, pink and lemon – just spellbinding. We have a Chinatown rose, which reminds me of…

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Suspense

via Suspense


Dreich

via Dreich


My daughter’s smudge

One wet finger
of my free hand
Wet from baby formula
Hits letters on the keyboard
to type these words
My baby nestled
in the crook
The crook of my left shoulder
The suck suck suck
dummy noise
Reminds me of Maggie Simpson
I can barely read these words
These one wet fingered words
Through my daughters curious smudge
My daughters smudge on my glasses
Sometimes that dummy gets boring
Sometimes you just need to
smudge something
Something, anything,

with wet fingers.


On the shelf.

You’re late again.

The smell of old books

on your breath.

Once a reader

always a reader..

So I’ve been told.

The ink smudges on your collar

give you away.

But I only have myself

to blame,

I don’t keep books at home.


Dry

My unsaturated glass glared
undrenchedly from the shelf,
Light reflected dryly from its
Empty twisted curvatures
And inflicted its dullness
Upon the room.

Fuck you glass.

And you, my carefully crafted
Decanter. Enjoy the stale air.
Meditate upon your own transparency.
Your vacuousness insults the room,
And I shall retort by saying;

“You do look much better full.”

Its true.

I know I shouldn’t judge you
On looks, but on character.
On what you are made of.
To be shallow is one thing,
But empty is quite another..

Although in your case, Mr Glass
Your looks reveal your true humbled state,
your momentous worthlessness
And, yes, I can already hear
Your positive fucking spin on it;

I’m full of potential,
I’m a blank canvas..
I’m free of attachments..
I’ve simplified my life…”

But in reality..

you are
just
an
empty
glass.

Aren’t you?

You don’t hear people wistfully,
Or romantically, wondering
If their significant other
is a glass totally empty
type of person, do you?
Or do you?

Even profoundly pessimistic
People have a half empty glass
As their mascot. Even them.
(A mascot, by the way, which is identical
to their more optimistic opposites).

A container is what you are,
Mr Glass. I would say nothing more,
Nothing less.
But a container containing
Nothing is most definitely less
Than a container.

To be defined by ones intended
purpose and then remain redundant,
That is true failure.
But failure for which I alone
Must take responsibility for.

I have left you unfilled,
High and dry,
And empty.
I have done this to you.

Temporarily.


Weave

A mooring perhaps, and held..

Entangled, knotted like rope

Gypsy lines on your palm find mine

We grip

Fingers as roots seek water

Cracking concrete

Destabilising buildings

Knuckle and joints weave until whole

Just this now

Just one spidery smooth lock remains

As blocks of tower topple

And new worlds grow.


Silent fight

wineThe breezy bush distracted us

Made her break her apple green stare

And look away to the pavement

To the beat of my feet

 

Crisp salad leaves crunched my wet fork

Whilst the check of the tablecloth

Engulfed the wine bottle in squares

And the metred beat froze

 

Time is no match for a redhead

Her red rhythm leaps like scared deer

While time ticks regular like rain

And the beat carries on

 

A clink of glass returns her stare

Less appley than before, more pear

Bright sunshine helps her pierce my mind

I drop the beat this time

 

Lover’s lunches in clockwork fights

Both restricted and protected

By fellow diners who listen

To our out of time beat

 

 


I Heard Her

The door gave way on the third kick. I wished that it hadn’t as soon as the smell hit me. The notion of what a smell is will never fully explain what entered my nostrils that day. She had been there for three days, windows shut, in the dry Sri Lankan heat.
Her position was familiar, sitting in her favourite chair, facing the television.  Her shorts and T-shirt seemed almost inappropriate for the situation. She was there, but gone.
The arc of blood up the wall behind her was brown now. A death rainbow, and at the end of it there was no pot of gold. The air was me, and I was the air. I breathed her decomposition.
I spent years thinking that she had been murdered. The Colombo murder squad hinted at the boys from the beach. They insinuated that she was a prostitute, that one thing had led to another. She was just another victim of just another brutal robbery in a poor country. Now I’m not so sure. Something happens to you when you discover a dead body. There is an interaction, even though one of you is no longer there. She told me something that day. It has taken me a long time to hear it but I hear it now.

I hear her pain, her disappointment, her release of expectation. I hear her dreams slowly disappearing as her heart hardened.

I hear her locking the door from the inside.


Rare, please.

heartThis pounded meat

Bruise-veined and scarred

Caged in red white bone

I butcher it to feel

Scar it to remember

Untwist its bloody tendered weave

And tear it once again

 

Pain or perfection?

I raise a bottle to the pain.

The dull ache tightly clamps the rusty

Blunt blade of connection.

Hold fast if you like.

But the slow pull will always win.

 

Serrated edges create their own crimson exit

Faster now.

A dizzy agony of goodbye frees the mottled sword.

Frees me.

I remember now, how to stitch.

How to mend.

How to prepare this scarred pounded meat

For another cook.