Dream Poem 9: Birds Through Water

Dad was there
We were at the dinner table
He was shouting
he had dementia
“You forget stuff- you always forget stuff”
I always back down, well not this time
I let him have it
And ran upstairs.

We are in a row of terraced houses.
When I get up to the fourth floor, I see that all the houses are connected
making a long passageway under the eaves,
lit in blue reflected light as if from snow or water.

Abandoned
Abject and forgotten, rotting and decayed
I run down the length of the passage way, it is empty and deserted
The roof has fallen-in in several places and through it
I can see the Lapis firmament pricked with stars.

Under each breach,
Pools of azurite water have formed, reflecting the vault of Heaven.
Flocks of birds are flying through water – dipping beneath the surface
and rising into the roof-space.
Dripping.

Pearls of liquid beading, building and bleeding
to the bare attic planks
forming Pollock patterns under their wing gestures.

Speeding, speaking to each other
I stand awe struck and silent
As they pass in concert, sloping through a puncture wound in the plaster.

After
Dad came upstairs
Kind of apologised
I was really angry
And aggressively pushed past him to go downstairs.
Regretted it immediately,
turned on the top stair.
But he was gone
The houses were on fire.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Collect Art Publication July 2023

Image
 First published in Collect Arts Summer 2023 edition Stone all the flowers   The year of the art school tutorials. The difficult woman you are to me, and the difficulty I present to you. The year of my recovery and your husband’s death.   Your husband fails and worsens through the days of our trimesters together. As he weakens and declines, I grow incrementally stronger. As if terrible fatalistic scales of balance, set and reset.   Do not cheat her. Give her a full measure of time and experiences with him. Pressed down, shaken together and overflowing. She, in the face of all this decay   Chooses to destroy flowers with stones. Until their purple hearts stained the cartridge with their elemental pigments.   She cuts the flowers only to waste them in the parching sun. It is the cycle of being and unbeing, the grass withers and the flower fades (Isiah 40:8). She decides to press her flowers till their lungs burst on fine co...
Read more
Image
Blackbird Egg Time slows down in the Victorian mirror. She is haunted by every face that checked themselves in the glass. She is on the cusp. A life about to begin in earnest, on the tipping point of adulthood. On the apex of future relationships, sexuality and desire. “Yes” she says, “that’s me in the mirror”, long brown hair, grey-blue eyes. She is just an ordinary brown bird. But common or garden blackbirds create sky eggs, objects of beauty and desire. Each one speckled slightly differently in the genus. If only she can create of herself such an object of yearning, her small brownness will be worth the transformation. On the Hall-stand crafted in a grand antique style, are a collection of blackbird’s eggs. Saved in small glass containers with their lids tight shut. Through the glass she sees pale blue specked eggs, broken with raggedy edges. The armoire ominously overshadows her slight fourteen year old self. Whom she sees reflected back in multiple mirrors, framed in the warm glea...
Read more

Chap Book #3 Gone With The Wind

Image
  Delighted to be published in:-  https://www.cistaarts.com/product-page/chapbook-series-3-gone-with-the-wind Learning craft from the wind   There was once a woman. Who learned craft from wind, art from the sea and design from the earth. She sewed intricate organic patterns in labyrinthine repeats. Her creativity was celebrated through the land. She was known as La Corachine, beautiful shell of the sea. Her daughter Powys was as natural as the elements, precious as comfort and radiant with gold-nature. One day an old woman coloured like an autumn day came to their door. “I want what is yours.” She said, and stuck a pin into the girl, who transformed into a brown-bird and flew off. “Old woman”, cried the mother, please cook a meat and potato pie for us. “Of course”, she sang, catching the brown-bird-daughter. And made her into a pie with potato skins. The leftover bones she threw into a corner of the garden. In three days, a beautiful tree g...
Read more