Poetry of the Month - April

Welcome to the April 2008 Poetry of the Month page.

Love in a Void

Loving in a void is dangerous
So avoid it

Loving in a void says
drop me into a dam
dilute it
refute it
mute it
dam it dam it.

Loving in a void is like
playing with electric
It leaves you in a socket
Got it
Have you got it?

Loving in a void is stupid
but you do it
play cupid
stupid,
bloody stupid
But you do it
because you drew it
from a pack
Got that?
Have you got that?

Loving in a void is senseless, fearless, hopeless, careless, spineless, gutless, guiltless, shameless, blameless, loveless

Until………You get it back
Double whack…
That’s the crack

Got that,
Have you got that?

Sometimes, you get it back

A Stranger’s place

A screeching owl cracks the silence
A drizzle dampens the echo

It reminds us that we’re here,
Not in an ordinary place where traffic moans to invisible stars,
But here, in a strange place
a stranger’s place,

Here, where time is a naked ghost
and sleep seeks us out.

I revel in it and chatter inside my head.
I scramble out to slam down the lid
and listen to the lullaby the clock sings to me.

Apple Blossom

Ghosts linger in my legs
Shadows of the day before
the week before

Before then I danced and sang a litany of lives
I shared a glass and sat at the table.
That was then

Now, I sip at them more slowly.
I hold my own hand

I lead myself down an avenue of apple blossom,
Here, crushed petals get blown away by the wind,

The sun shines and shadows play on the leaves.

Love and Strangers

I left my youth at the bedside of a stranger who lay dying and my innocence at the bedside of a stranger I once loved.

I laid my hands in the hands of the stranger who lay dying and my love in the hands of the stranger I lay beside.

I looked at the dirty twisted fingers of death as curling nails clawed at me in a silent hold of fear.
She left impressions on my skin.

But when I looked at the hands of my lover,

There was nothing.

Give myself to the North

I’ve travelled North my friends
It should feel like coming home
going back
back to where I was born

But I went further North
to surrender to the magnificence of it
to hear the laughter from across the loch
feel it in my flesh,
taste it in my spit and in my talk
sing it in my song

My head is pointing to the Northern star
It’s leading me to this place
this place where I want to just be,
Commune with this community of voices
give myself to the North
to the burn
the bothy
the ben
and to the bairn in me.