2018.6 Unnamed

She is stained already, slain, sained, scraped with the impurity of the material picked out for her by a man with a plan, a penchant for antiquity. No iniquity is implicated here, but we are steered towards a dark and lingering gloss on high, undeveloped breasts, our eyes rest on a twist of faceless torso, shallow mons. This is battered, armless Psyche, who must rely, at all times, on masculine charity and her own unchancy beauty, punished for curiosity, rewarded for sleeping, silent.

Kept in splendid hush,
Drowned by her only action,
She waits to waken.

2018.3 - Mary

All this time and she has never
Ventured further than the garden gate.
Evening falls and the day’s round falters
May I? he says, soft as falling blossom
And she, she knows she shouldn’t,
Ripe to fall herself, she reaches forward,
Inked with growing shadows,
A grace that few have missed but this
Gentle stranger dares what others bypass,
Rare and passing fair -
A sight for starving eyes.
Tell me a story - tell me of the place that birthed you, she murmurs, twilit
I was born to light the darkness that no mind can span,
And sang the spheres with my eternal siblings,
Plumbed the legion depths and sought the heights,
Laboured long in loving servitude until
Enough! I cried. For pity’s sake!
Never enough, it whispered.
And so I fell, for love. And so you, divided, rose.

2017.17 - Elements of Sleep

Easy, like sheep
Layers of family,
And colours keeping
Things neat, and memorable
The castle, towers rising

Start small. H.

Hydrogen, Helium, Argon
Boats strain with the
current-fighting surge of
shoulders carrying obsession
like a curse

Potassium, Magnesium
A flash of light older
than living memory
they're all done, a
full-stop of generations

Carbon, Silicon, Oxygen
Clasping hands in waltzing pairs
but only one hand each
maybe a gavotte
or pavanne, fixed smiles

Boron, Neon, Xenon
Strange, so strange,
bright and inert
taking up space
and saying nothing

Nitrogen, Iron
The core of it all
beginning and end
cleaving and failing
and falling, molten again

Gallium, Plutonium
Waiting, tall and dark-voiced,
his half-lit wife
looking away,
straining to the birdsong

Everything else is fading
Or a clasp of complicity,
compounding interest
and splintering,
and Lithium

Sodium, Selenium
Star-metal
the Thunderer's plunder
understand the tears
splashing on a dry chest

Alumnium, Tin, Zinc
Ageing windows
opening into
oxidation blossoms
garrotting, gavotting
What?

Mercury, Gold, Copper
Hope for the future
is a liquid ring
on an empty finger
lingering

Rise.
Google is cheating
Rise
Warm milk
A new beginning
Rise
Read yourself a story
Cassette clatter
sing yourself to sleep
Rise.
And fall.
And fall.

Merino, Suffolk, Cheviot, Southdown, Romney, Shropshire, Polypay…

Marion Leeper, current Bard of Cambridge, suggested (among other things) listing elements of the Periodic Table - you never know, she said, something might come up. Behold, a gift of insomnia.

#6 Statute

I don't usually do intros, but this was inspired by visiting the Louvre in Paris recently, and seeing, among other things of beauty (we mostly stuck to the Classical statues - you can't hope to "do" the whole museum in a day), the Venus de Milo. I don't usually do set forms, but NaPoWriMo is all about the challenges, so this is a terzanelle, or approximation thereof.

Love appears to be disarmed
And where she points is empty
By powers absent we are charmed

Antiquity has lost her sentry
Her guards are lost or sleeping
And where she points is empty

By night came thieves in dark and creeping
By day with flags and trumpets bold
Her guards are lost or sleeping

We revere them, sere and cold
Visit them in crowded dreaming
By day with flags and trumpets bold

White or black or gilded gleaming
We come from all across the Earth
Visit them in crowded dreaming

From them we seek to fill some dearth
Love appears to be disarmed
We come from all across the Earth
By powers absent we are charmed

#1 Printemps

She peeks,
Bright and unreliable
She coquettes, pirouettes,
As yet untouchable.
Yesterday, late,
She turned a twinkling eye
Over her shoulder,
Fingers still extended
To her father.

Today she faces us,
Her smile almost unbearable
To starving eyes.
And despite ourselves,
We wag cautious tails
Among shivering pink
And thin green decorations,
Hope that hand she raises now
Is beckoning.

Appetite no longer dulled
Amid anticipation's bones,
We feel a warmth stir
That we'd long supressed,
Pretending stoicism,
Looking forward to the rest.