Leaf

A visual poem for National Poetry Day, and for autumn…

 

Yellow Rose

My third colour poem makes the triad of painter’s primaries. It takes its starting point from a lively tune I remember from the radio when I was a small boy. Of course I didn’t know then that the origins of the song went back over a hundred years earlier, or what the lyrics were about.

White heart

This poem was written after I saw a picture of a ‘ghost heart’. This is a kind of ‘protein scaffold’ in researchers hope to be able use to grow a new human heart which will not have problems with rejection by the recipient’s immune system. It’s a remarkable image, I found it at once beautiful, hopeful, and troubling. (more about ‘ghost hearts’…)

rejection

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Delicate snowball cradled in latex,

Grotesque confectionary beauty,

Like a glass seed distilled from haar frost,

A harvested death, still unprimed for life.

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Wrapped in an eastern widow’s veil,

A bridal chalice engraved with loss,

Gently cupped with gloved competence,

A denatured vessel etched in air.

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Reborn, bloody, swollen and restarted,

Will this pale ornament seem quite so fine?

Bonny is as bonny dances, pressing

By hot and ruddy, stealing heat from stone.

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The image cusps our movement in-between,

Risky hopes drawn from disembodied flesh.

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Whiteout

Land’s stationary surface
Squeaking like meringue
To grip my marks,
Becomes a sudden sky.

I sense the edge.
I can’t see it,
But my stomach gives
A predictive lurch.

Ahead an uncreased page
Sweeps away, her seamless
Laid quite unperturbed
By marginal horizons.

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Spring remembered at the changing of the clocks

A small plane eases set square perpendicular,

Skylarks bob and descant chorus,

Gorse spikes buttery by the broom’s lemon yellow,

Sun hazed scenting coconut,

Save these richer, richest, riches –

Keep safe this warmer wealth of light.

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Shameless…

… self promotion, I know. Apologies – normal service will be resumed soon!  But, just a quick post to say that there are now less than 24 hours left to vote at Stanza Digital Slam 2014 (my entry is ‘Butterfly Mind in Blue’ )

Vote! Vote! Vote!

To my delight and surprise, I’m once again shortlisted in Stanza’s Digital Slam.

My entry this year is a reading of ‘Butterfly Mind in Blue’. The poem was partly inspired by an amazing specimen in the Bell Pettigrew Museum in St Andrews, but, of course, it is about more than that.

You can see all the entries and vote here (‘Butterfly Mind in Blue’ is number 9!)

If you feel compelled to tell every person you know to drop in and vote, who am I to stop you ?!

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