Lamplight

Lamplight reflected in puddles
We walk down these rainwashed streets
The sky is a navy blue dome arching
Over us. We look up. Enraptured
And we savour the silvery

Flavour of the stars. We move on.
Surrounded by city walls. Rats run
Beneath our feet and tramps seek shelter
And hurl a welter of curses at us
As we pass but we pay them no mind

And focus on the road ahead
A smooth black ribbon we trace its curve.
We stand on an arched bridge watching
The river swell and, agile and audacious,
We climb over the wrought iron gates

Of a great stone mansion
We wander through its unlit grounds
While within, in dark chambers,
The wealthy sleep on feather beds
And debutantes weep as stealthily we creep

Across the stone courtyard
Our hopes as high as the owl's cry
For anything is better than nothing
We lie on the damp lawn and we sleep
A sleep as deep as death

Nobby Clarke

(91 year old war veteran) upon seeing this man's infamous face on his TV screen:

'I shot better men than him when I was in Sicily.'

Moon

The Proprietor of Dreams

I ride with my horse unsaddled
Onto the field of battle, wondering
Just who is the proprietor of my dreams
Is it the moon, corrupted by trees
Whose black branches reach up and up

To caress it. The usurper of a sun
That once witnessed two towers fall
An ineffectual element. In decline.
Each rock is eroded by its sister: the sea
These are the songs all children sing

As newly dead ghosts depart
To join the ancestors. 'One day
We'll be back,' they say, moving away
I drift with the river instead
Grey waves, grey waves, they greet us

And we pour blue blood
Over the red of some pauper
I tried to die a thousand times
But I was always dragged back
To the stench of that trench

The European Night and the American Poetess

The European night is unfamiliar to this American poetess
In a way that she cannot define. The stars are brighter somehow
No matter, it is indeed divine. A lamp burns at her window
It is the star that beckons us home. It seems to smile. At what?
It is displaced by the moon
And our yesterdays call once more

And the moon gloats
At the stars she outshines
Like a brilliant big sister
Are the trees overwhelmed too?

Their fingers reach up, up, up to touch
Her as she dangles there for all to see
What a narcissistic show-off she must be
That full, all-effacing (rather fat, actually) moon

'I think I'm on the side of the Angels'
'No you're not. You're on the side of the cool kids. Watch Mean Girls if you don't get the reference.'

This Week I Be Mostly Reading...

'England is, above all, the country of the amateur, and the wireless operators, couriers and saboteurs who went to France, were therefore amateurs, officers working behind enemy lines. They had a fine contempt for the professional spy. They were ordinary men and women in that they sprang from ordinary walks of life. The don, the stock-broker, the bird-watcher, the doctor, the insurance agent, the shorthand typist, the widow, the anthropologist and the head-waiter...'

Odette
Jerrard Tickell. (p.44)

See Saboteurs.

No Real Job

Nocturnal bride
Wears black tonight
Grainy pictures
Of a faded wedding
I am naked, draped in leaves
My hand clasping my heart
All foliage suffocates

A fragment of my mirror (broken)
A shard of my heart
Books line the walls
Who lives in those leather-bound volumes
Even they are soon to be forgotten
So I devoured you
And I relished every morsel
Torn and bleeding
The grey sky in my head
From some ancient tale
Pale ghosts hovered over me.

'Pin This Butterfly Down'

They call me 'Madam Prozac'
All night outside my window
Cats shriek, fight, cry
Beneath a dark sky

I am the wallflower at the party
Sweet scent blossoming
I hover on the outer circle
My perfume grows repellent

Then like a kitten I curl into a ball
Sleep leads me into dreams
I hide beneath this black veil
My memory of the sun is dimming
The sky grows greyer every day
No light is strong enough to shine through

Fade Away and Radiate

Acorn (Flying Meat Software)

Some see Angel-children
Singing in Sunday school
And others see Daemon brats,
hovering on the line between
Heaven and hell
Cowering, beneath the birch
For this is all that they deserve
‘A burden on the parish’
From the moment they were born.

Hiatus

Nothing much to report. I stopped visiting a certain blog when I began to use phrases such as 'festering ferrets' , 'deluded Dalmations' , 'pernicious penguins' and 'catatonic kangaroos' (yes, I know that last one doesn't really work) in everyday conversation. Credit where credit is due though - its contributors had some very sweet and comforting things to say about Bella. I keep seeing Bella's 'ghost'. Her image is embedded in my mind so I am seeing what I expect to see. My GP understands. He has his own phantom feline: a cat called Marmalade who died last year. He says it will pass. Eventually.