Our Dad’s Soul

is both a mountain and a boiler room.
Our dad helped hospitals and schools
to breathe healthy, designed heating
and ventilation systems to reuse waste
heat and air to give folk clean
so they may learn and get better.

Learned his trade, scrubbed inland boilers
National Serviced ships boilers
in the clank of hot oiled, greased
and asbestosed merchant ship engine rooms
Whilst in sweltered India or Borneo.

 

Tops and tails his life with mountains.
Ascends Moel Famau, the Hill
of the Mothers, with his friend
who teaches him to paint. Later,
in retirement conquers Scafell Pike.
Now struggles with loss of breath
Up each rise on his stairs.

Later he will reach the port
Embark on his final voyage,
My sister, his mam and dad
wait on the quayside
for his ship to dock,
probably after he has inspected
the vessels engine room.

She Civilises Wild

In this untime
she teaches me the alphabet
of her body so I can read
as I enter her
I write in my head
she encircles
me in warm water hug

inspired by her sweet breath
on my lifted hairs
I smooth unblemished
light that covers her curves

She slows my rough thrust
learnt among the wild
Of hand and skin until
my fingers follow her furrows
a gentle plowshare
details her age
gently plays her treeclock

her maidenhood,
motherhood,
cronehood
bare skin
words come
Hi
warm sun in the dark
soft pressure drums
out my release makes
of her a mother, marks

a straight passage
for sunlight
as it rises
between stone
along the soil

I touch the earth with words
The wild run away from me.
She brings me into a city.

Ships Of

the dead

slosh at anchor in this port of souls,
The Naglfar made of the untrimmed
nails of the dead,
Charon’s obol made of coins stamped
with dolphins in open wooden eyes,
Many nameless vessels that get
a name from their passengers.
Last to leave was The Refugees.

 

From the quay sail the ships
of remembered souls,
who look at their reflection
in the ocean of forgotten souls.

The ships sail on the ocean
of the unremembered
Who keep the ship afloat,
Provide passage from one port
to another and know passengers
and crew have destinations.

This Soul Nonsense

Writers use the word without thought.
Expect readers to know what they mean.

 

Never define the word in their work.
A throw away word to mean something deep.

Used without care a word out of place
repeated so often it is meaningless.

Air, ether, fire or light once thought
incorporeal. If air perhaps our breath

actions at a distance. Breathe in spirit.
Perhaps we refer to our emotions.

Endeavour to give them gravity.
Don’t throw away, pick carefully.

Alexander’s Voices

are eyeballs in the soil
where animals go to ground.

The eyes follow thin twigs
of his demons as they caper
with hardened veins of blood
pulled from his live pumped body

and armed with blackthorn spikes.

are one book twice a persons size
he lugs, back and knees bent,
with each step he takes
another page is added to the volume.

Were once satirical, light hearted
lithographs of student life.
Those voices are distant now.

Den’s and set holes follow
him without a blink.

 

via The Taste of Baklava, a poem … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

Warlord

loves to be entertained.
After a battle where skulls are blown apart
he sits and laughs at Anthem For Doomed Youth.

After a skirmish in which men are screaming
With half a leg or arm bone shattered
By shrapnel, he guffaws at  Dulce Decorum Est.

The more graphic, the more comic to him.
He says if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.
Laughter is healthy. Laughter is human.

Laughter affirms life, essential before
a fight amidst bullets, stabs and snipers.

“Oh What A Lovely War”, is his favourite film.
“All Quiet On The Western Front” a comic classic.

He knows we laugh at what we fear most.
War is like great stand up when you can barely

Breathe for laughter, your sides hurt
as if they need stiches. War is medicinal.

via “Identical with a Twig” … and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“Grief Is” my seventeenth ekphrastic response for National Poetry Month prompted by another painting showing the verve of Marcel Herms.

Grief Is

a merciless hunter
who lives in the forest of our hearts
Terrorises the birds and animals
who live there.

Grief goes out into the forest every morning
with a stick and net. One day, it throws its net
traps a female pigeon in it. Soon, thick and black clouds appear in the sky. It rains  Scared and shivering Grief looks for shelter and finds it under a huge oak tree. Rain and gust stop.. Skies clear, stars shine. Grief says loudly,

“If there is anyone on the tree, I seek shelter and food from them. I’m hungry and may faint any moment. Please save me.”

A pigeon that nests on the same tree worries that his wife has gone out and not come back. It prays to Gods that his wife not come to any harm in this gust and rain.

Pigeon agreed with his wife that
even at the cost of their own lives they must rescue those who seek shelter. Serve those in need with devotion. Don’t hate them.

Pigeon tells Grief, “Welcome to our modest home. Please let me know what I can do for you. Treat this as own home and feel free to command me.

Grief tells the pigeon that he suffers from cold and needs relief. Pigeon flies out, brings fire from somewhere and a lights a small fire with dry twigs asks Grief to warm itself.

Pigeon tells Grief, “Because of my past deeds, I’m born poor and unfortunate and dont have enough to feed myself. What is life if you can’t entertain a guest?

Pigeon tells  Grief to wait a while
it’ll have food.  Pigeon circles the fire,
Jumps into the fire it lit for the benefit of Grief

Grief tells itself, “Pigeon is a great soul, its shown me. I’ll give up all. Nothing, neither cold nor blaze nor gust, matter to me. I’ll fast and see my slow finish.”
It releases the female pigeon from its net.

Life without her husband is worse than death,
She leaps into the same fire.

Grief shuns worldly pleasures,
burns itself in the forest fire of our hearts

“She Sharts Us” my sixteenth ekphrastic response for National Poetry Month prompted by another painting showing the vivacity of Marcel Herms.

“She Sharts Us”

Received English

Bawling Bertha
Loud Lucy
Foghorn Fanny

First time we met
she shouted me over
with “On your own.
You’ll do for me!”

She can’t keep anything quiet.
First night together she said

“You going to use that
small thing to have sex with me?”
so loud the rest of the street
could hear.

Then its ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
out open windows
she insisted on.

Carerwauling Kate
Loud Hailer Hettie
Sharting Cheryl

I’m speaking normal volume
and she says ” Speak up. I cannot
hear you. You’ll have to learn
to speak up.”

Visiting her mothers house
is a shoutin match.
Her father is deaf.
No bloody wonder!

She’s not quiet, my wife.

Dialect

Bawlin’ Bertha
Loud Lucy
Foghorn Fanny

First linking up
she sharts us o’er
wi a “On thee oan.
Tha’ll do for me!”

She can’t keep nowt stum
first shag it were
‘Tha gonna ‘ave us
wi that mouse!’
so rest of street
could hear.

Then its ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
out open windows
she insisted on.

Carerwaulin’ Kate
Loud Hailer Hettie
Shartin’ Cheryl

Am speakin’ normal
an she’s sayin “A can’t
hear thee. Tha’ll av to learn
to speak up.”

Visitin’ her mothers house
is a shartin’ match.
Her father is deaf.
No bloody wonder!

She’s not quiet, our lass.