The Poetry Marathon

Green eyed monster

Nobody wants her

Not once the damage is done –

She sees a red heart and wants to paint it black

She sees affection and wants to give it back

Untouched.

You are a spider boy,

Creeping  through small tight spaces

With seemingly more limbs than you ought

Since you haven’t yet adjusted to their expansion

And so spangle them about you

Like shooting stars.

Nobody knows what you know or see

With who knows how many eyes observing

From behind that dark fringe veil

Since you appear to be perfectly mute

As you slink from edge to edge

Effortlessly weaving

The web that binds us.

It was a faint hallucination of you and a shattered dream self of I

Who destiny fellowed

While our guardian angels closed their eyes to sleep

And woke too late to ask who

Has your soul now kissed?

Mine feared you had tricked me

Yours feared you had tripped too far in

Hauled overboard by the

Lusty siren-song of the brain.

Credit: Dylan Thomas – I Fellowed Sleep

I’m probably nothing to worry about –

That’s what they’ll have told you

And I wasn’t before

But now it’s like reverse psychology…

And I make no apology

For being shown –

Making my presence known,

I’d rather you were appalled

Than ignored

The small risk I pose

I’m probably nothing to worry about –

But who knows?

Difference

Is a hindrance

When you reach forty

And people get haughty

About your single status

Your creative hiatus

Your dislike of their children…

So you try to keep it within

Stop yourself asking when they became so boring

So you have to just sigh

And ask yourself why

You can’t just bloody join them?

And things would be so much easier then.

You know –  easier to blend,

Easier to make a friend

Easier to fit into their social events

Easier to have more small talk and less rants and vents

And you could have a mortgage too

To stop you feeling blue

About anything too serious

And deep

And you could lose sleep

Over night feeds

And not the reason your soul bleeds.

The coal fire smoke piped like a snake-charmers tune

Between the symmetrical council terraced houses

Out on winter parade

Not allowed to blink or smile at the skittish snowflakes

Tickling their nose

Doorsteps lay burdened

Like a too-late harvest festival alter

Maybe a coal sack

Or an empty glass Alderwicks pop bottle out to get the money back

And then a heap of a child

Home for Christmas from across the miles

Jumping once at the territorial bark of a dog

Then at the sound of a door unlocked by a Nan not seen in oh-so-long,

And nothing’s changed –

Not one single decoration rearranged

On the tree since last year

And the little lantern lights still light the same route

Through the pretend branches and Santa’s boots

And just as it’s time to relax

Nan disappears to the pantry for snacks

And they haven’t changed either –

Still the same cheese and still the same pickle

And things not changing means a lot when you’re little!

Think of a team name you say –

‘We’ll be inseparable from that day

I want us to be as tight as a rope

I want you to be my handler

My friend and my hope

I’m barely indulging at all these days –

Practically clean

And I love you bumhead’ …

That’s what you said.

Think of a team name you say –

But whatever is the point

When we both know it will always escape your memory

But never your lips

That it’ll just be a forgotten ceremony

On one of your trips

And you’ll roll up a joint

Just to take the edge off

And forget what you said.

Think of a team name you say –

And I want to do the whole thing –

Team colours to wear and a team song to sing

A motto, a mascot –

But you do this a lot –

Get me to dream

By mentioning things you only temporarily mean

I wait for the comedown to start

And brace my still-high heart.

Think of a team name you say

And I don’t want to –

Not today.’

Not for you, the rows of ordered hedonism,

Parasols and loungers angled to the sun

Regimented in an army of summertime fun.

Nor for you the danger of the depths

Flailing about, out of control

Failing some self-imposed macho test,

Needing to be spotted and saved

By the competitors – the muscled-up beach patrol.

Rather, you tread the middle ground

Where the roar of the ocean is just a sound –

And the enormous seafoam hands just wave

And don’t punch you around –

Here on the one stretch of beach

Where people can stand squarely on their own two feet

Fresh from riding in on the shoulders of those giants

Safe from the need for packaged compliance.

If banged my soul against a brick wall

Time and time again

Waiting for this all to end –

The hellfire drawing me like a moth to the light

The passions I wish to deny

But they dance across my indulgent smile

The too eager readiness to go the extra mile

The fleeting moments regularly recalled

The heart and mind both enthralled

And in your habit of staying too long

And the lyrics of your unscheduled song

Our unflinching psychic radar

Trained on each other no matter how far

Our need to touch base

Our too happy face

The cryptic clues we weave through the years

Our tug-of-war with desire and fears

And despite the unwritten sacrifice

None of it has sufficed

To make us grow sick of this sickness

Never to be witnessed

Not my idea of fun

To light a fuse and run

From the flame

Playing catch with blame –

Tossing it between us like a hot potato

Ripped from the Earth

Where I left hasty skidded footprints

As I chased sorrow

Ending the trail where I squatted to give birth

To a lonely tomorrow

Grown since I met you from a blind embryo

Bloodying the earth and dirt

With the afterbirth of hurt.

When my waters broke

And poured from my eyes.

They somehow spoke

And ruined my disguise

And the winds of change performed a dance macabre

Through holes bored by lies

Deep in my heart.