Ida
Who made you woodlouse herder
darling? Fiercely intent
and crouched in frowning concentration,
You guide them
with soft voice and occasional gentle poke
from a dirt rimmed finger, tender
with care and hope
for their survival despite my thoughtless feet
and casual moving of pots.
Face pregnant with worry you will rescue them,
righting the fallen.
Occasionally cupping them in an reverent, hot palmed hand
to stroke the waving fringes
of their legs.
Who put these pictures into my head? Who planted these seeds?
Who fed me these lines? Was it Sylvia, Dolly, Nancy or Jane?
Why did I think it had to hurt, to ache -to pain?
How could you think that love meant sliding
down a wall to rest your head blindly.
Long early hours in a green vinyl chair waiting,
scraping for reasons to appease them
when finally it’s your name they’re calling.
Tight rope walking for approval
saying; never mind, it doesn’t matter, that’s fine.
Until you’ve forgotten what it was that you wanted
what you were dreaming – too busy pleasing.
Who said
Love meant
Watching your hand break the cup you like best
like a wave falling down on the beach
turning in the page empty of story
to find no grain in your harvest sheaf
To sit in the gutter rotten and putrid with grief
Bewildered.
To feel your heart swell at the injustice
the sadness. At feeling alone in your own home, out of place.
When you look in the mirror and see nobody there
Who said you should suffer for it, be racked with despair?
As you lie awake feeling your heart beating time with his breathing
and fists curled, find yourself dreaming
of smashing the pan down
on his face.
Why did you think that you need to submit to the sadness
Make windows rattle with the rage and the madness
send obscenities scattered to grey skies.
Storm off, run out, slam doors. Never pause
casting yourself out to the edges that cut you.
Then creep back and beg back – to take up the burden
because love is for hurting.
Who said this? Where did you read this? Who dripped this poison,
Viscous and clear, slow drip drip drip down the thread to your ear?
who set your feet on this path to distress?
Who ever said that this model was best?
Who said this system was the one you had to adhere to?
until
Leaning by the window as my slow train slides into the station we’ve been aiming for. Weary bent arrow.
Through blocked lines, mudslides, mixed signals, pileups – missed connections.
Footsore, armsore – weighed down with baggage.
To see you
standing up from your bench where you have been waiting.
Quietly, patiently – inscrutable.
Knowing I would arrive eventually on a train. Some train.
and I would like to tuck my arm into yours and
walk home in the drizzle, feet dipping unnoticed into puddles
of splintered lamplight at our feet.
So now I tell you. This is love.
because it’s Day twenty four’s prompt. Gah!
Anagram of Laura Parsons
Arson rasps; our soul snarls to pour
Sour slop pus on our parasol parlour.
No oar, no spur, no spar, no roar
Nor loan us a polarspan, a soap lunar
Alas, a sun uproar as a sauna
also, soul-plan scorns our aura
Bread Therapy
Listening to the radio
I like to make some bread.
Safe-dealing out a vicious blow
listening to the radio.
Kneading knuckles deep in the dough
pretending it is Osborne’s head.
Listening to the radio
I like to make some bread.
When it comes to quahog hunting
I am a non-pareil.
Heyer suppresses a gasp of admiration
as I pursue
the elusive salt rimmed shell.
Willowy ghost slipping
between seaweed.
I am pleased to taste the mercurial tang of the sea.
Making things rhyme is very hard.
Everything ends up like a Hallmark card.
A lurch of visceral fleshed mysteries inside
stone faced unconcern as my heart howls.
Hot plastic bus seat stuck to my thighs
commanding the future in internal growls.
An inch bubble of air prickles above my much
freckle speckled skin. Smooth orchid petal, rare
yet sensitive and aware of casual touch
dear fly. I am a sulphured match poised to flare.
How I yearned after your sly clever smile.
To push the errant hair that threatens to spill
over your eyes – your true heart and all the while
A stubborn sense of right and wrong and the will
to set your shoulder against the ill and push.
To think your way through the world even now
Today I’m glad to be your friend and would blush
to know you’d read my heart and knew that how
from my bed I could see your bedroom light
shining across the block of hunched moonlit shrubs
and, dreaming, flung the end of my regard into the night.
Thin spun filament, a-thrum between us as I touched
myself. I dreamt sweet happy hopeless things
tenderer for the fact they’d never see fruition.
That scent, a rotten one – wasp eaten apples bring.
I will never mix touch with love of my own violation
The men I fucked; older, harder, on the make
I cast myself as a slack poppet – pliant to their desire.
Sex already tainted. Bent early out of shape. I
gave myself no choices. Delivered what was required.
Now wrapped in hard won happiness it is easy
to look back. Laugh, show regret but there’s no shame
in picking you – or those feelings. Instead I feel queasy
with pity and sorrow. It is hard not to blame
Yet blame never brought me change. I did that.
Myself. Cognitive reconstruction – catastrophe
meant court sent self examination. Gave me back
choices. That led me to him, them and intimacy.
Hello. Welcome. Let’s get this ball rolling
on this fresh page, the blank space unscrolling
before you. Expectant and demanding.
Tulips
He came in the evening with a plastic bag full of tulips. Exclaiming and joyful
I filled all the vases I have with armfuls of pointed buds.
Extravagantly I scatter lavish bunches all around the messy house. A jugful sits atop the piano casting shapely shadows onto the white wall.
A humbug striped jug hunches on the low table, white rimmed heads lolling and quivering as the children thunder by – mind my tulips joining the other regular cries of cottonwooling, carefulnow motherhood.
In the artificial warmth the petals splay – revealing speckled throats -panting – stamen trembling.
Tonight you’ve gone up to bed early, your book tucked under a purposeful arm and left me stranded on the sofa, idling, delaying, looking at my flowers preening under harsh fluorescent light.
Tulips always make me think of Sylvia. I say as much to you as I peel off my clothes.
About her – alone- in her room with the scarlet flame of her tulips. And the despair.
Too late now you say, frowning abstractedly, not really listening, turning your page.
Mutinous at the window I think, never too late for love – scowling into the night rubbing my thumb with a squeak against the wet glass.
Never too late. Never wasted.
and see it, wavering out into the night as
A drunken, laden bumble bee – gold dusted- drowsy.
Heavy with purpose, tracing an elliptical path into the sodium saturated sky.
Never too late.
Blast this cicada plague - despite my reunion with these animals, oy voy! barricades do accumulate diasma.
Odious espadrilles – they are never sensible, dulcet in colour, in sin - lather.
Invidious banjo desolates my clients, evidence of desperate maracas difference in the cabana.
Why enter no talent to my beloved?
Cameo dominos sustain my tiara, sleeping pigs gyrate as silly cousins in never ending corridors.
My mice plague for fatalities.
Tango tartar pillow appraise the sugar cabbages.
but I just couldn’t resist going back to read the original poem by Carlos López Degregori which is just so lovely I’m reproducing it here which I know is totally beside the point. Still.
At seven on the dot, after my dog’s cold cries, I close the barbershop as I have done for thirty-four years. Then I meet with the animal and sweep up the whole day’s hair.
I detest the chipped mirror, the unfeeling razor, the cloying smell of unwashed scalps. I envy the desolate eyes, the secret marks that distinguish the skulls.
Why, among all possible talents, don’t I have love?
I sleepwalk holding scissors and I sleep because the chair revolves and my heart is an interminable strap that sharpens knives.
It was fate that made me a barber.
I learned to cut off hair instead of heads.
Hi - I'm Laura, welcome to my blog. I bloody adore comments - they make me feel like I really exist - so please say hello if you feel like it, I'd love to hear from you.
