The Poetry Marathon

such a lovely summer day to sit behind
my curtains with the window wide open
lots of sun and some sea breeze to balance it out.
Can see the glare of the sun on the rooftops across the road,
hear the neighbour next door playing the same boring music.

Writing, thinking in peace of a sunday morning,
all the windows are open across the road,
they are facing north
and complain no end through the cold season.
all i can see is light blue sky,
the sky dreams are made off,
summer weddings
a stretch of paradise.
Not a single cloud in the sky
and all the unused chimneys pointing towards the sky.

Under the shower,

so many happy memories with you under the shower,
then children having their shower
and the bathroom as a swimming pool.
A life can be lived under a shower
under the shower, warm and comforting,
a painful shoulder, a separation,
stuck in my painting,
my choice of colour, or clothes,
Lots can be sorted under the shower.
Under the shower,
remembering the torrential rainfall
from the last twenty four hours,
my shower is getting cold, icy and it takes me away.
My shower is now in the middle of the rain
and my house is no more.

You are gone now on your journey away from me,
i miss you the little boy, full of questions and mischief,
the serious teenager, dressed as a goth,
so full of music and fun.
Still talking , close, trusting.

You are on your journey now away from me
but with your family,
partner and children and i miss them too
the mischievous little boys and the girl i never got to meet.
So much pain and trauma and pain and loss for you.

You are gone now on your journey without me,
i still wave at you at times, we skype, we talk,
we meet up for a few hours or days.
We share bits of our lives but miss out on so much.
Are we still close,
something time and distance can never break, we are indeed,
still close.

I am wearing the big heavy boots
to pull me down,
the door opens
and slowly i climb down the stairs.

You are carrying the hopes of the whole of humanity on your shoulders,
Harry shouts into my earpiece.
I could have done without those encouragements.
My rucksack is so heavy.

I reach the ground, and move aside,
two bags are thrown after me.
The hopes of the whole of humanity, i think.
Am just looking for a bit of water to save us all from drought.

I love this planet,
very sandy,
not a lot of light too far from the sun.
but empty, only me,
shame about the big heavy boots.

I can feel it in my bones,
i get nervous and itchy,
when in the mid afternoon
slowly descends on the city
the evening fog.

It will cloud us,
isolate and underline our loneliness,
even in the mid afternoon
it will seem like bed time, once he descends,
the evening fog.

The lights are on bright an cheerful
the computer switched off and the coats on our arms
ready for the exodus home
but we huddle together
wait for each other
before we descend into the evening fog.

Here she stands in her velvet black dress,

will that do for my husband’s funeral,
she thinks.
he loves that dress so much,
I wore it so often
people thought we couldnt afford another one
or that he was too tight to spend money on me.

But he loved that dress so much,
so much memories.
This where we stood for our wedding picture,
stiff, worried, and frightened,
My mum had given me a leaflet to read
and my married friends had explained
but i knew already but was good at pretenting.

This dress i will wear it one more time for him
or should i bury it with him.
so he can remember me at times
and the waltzes we dance me wearing that dress,
Will that do for my husband’s funeral,
he’d approve and then would want to be burried with it.

I lost my shoe,
my new shoe, never worn just in the shop,
how did i manage that,
did i just take one out of the box
and then walk away
did the shop just let me go with on shoe in the box.

I lost my bearing
in the woods,
had gone with my friends and then somehow,
they were gone,
where are they?
i call out, no answer,
I will just keep here on the straight and narrow path.

I lost the light,
my flat is dark and really dark at night,
just in the day time it is nice
and on a sunny day i get a lot of light.
I can pay my electricity
my shower is cold,
my food is cold too.

I lost you,
there was a message stuck to my door,
could i call back
the police station.
With a message for newly bereaved.
I kept the key in my hand and never went back in.

The place I live in

The sky in the place where i live is blue, the bluest you have ever seen,
When it rains, it rains not buckets
but enough rain to last a life time.
When the sun shines, it is so strong we need special sun glasses to go out,
and when the wind blows, it blows so hard,
it takes us places
we don’t necessarily want to go to.

Our people are the nicest you will ever meet,
Our children are so lovely and sweet in their innocence.

The walls around the place I live in is so high
Nobody never managed to climb it to visit
or to get over to see what it looks like on the outside.

and here i sit on my throne and will they get what i wanted them to see,
thwe saw and looked at each other
and i saw fear and i saw anger,
some admiration but mostly
from the dreamers and the artists
they were impressed
but the people,
again i couldnt reach them.

and here i sit on my throne
and i can hear them building new altars
for new gods to help them,
to defend them from the colours in the sky.
They are already turning away from me and
here i was hoping that for once we could start
on a footing they would understand
and agree
but they are already looking away.

When the first rainbow lit the sky,
the colour were so vibrant,
strong and
the sound they made in the wind was reverberating into people’s life.

When the first rainbow lit the sky,
the people heard the promise and they saw
the colours together lighting up the daylight hours
and quietly in their hearts they took fright,
they started to whisper

have you see the colours in the sky
the bow accross the blue sky
remember all the rain we had before,
the rain that destroyed some of our homes,
some of our gardens
pulled up trees
and now

when the first rainbow lit the sky
people listened but only heard what they wanted,
understood what they had seen,
knew that in the coming winter,
food would be scarces and now
this scary bunch of colours was lighting the sky.

While the first rainbow was still high in the sky,
the first stones were erected,
and new gods were invented,
new prayers were composed.
for the coming winter
when empty bellies would need the consolation of some form of almighty.

and here i sit on my throne
have spoken to my people,
have traced a bow of colour in the sky,
as an agreement to our friendship,
trust and closeness,
and i see them
have i overdone it again.