Thinking about silence (2)

Sister of swans

She hoards hush like treasure.
Her tongue lies heavy, snoozing
in its lair, stirring when thoughts
thicken. In her mouth they flutter,
wings like blades.
She blinks the world away:
in every tear a thing coils
until nothing remains but six faces.

A girl sits in a tree in the forest,
starflowers filling her lap.
Wordless she hurls her love
against the spell's wall, stitching
blossom to blossom, year to year.

(Did she eat? Did she drink?
Did she get down the tree to pee?
Did she sweat? Did she wash?
Did the flowers not wilt?
Did her first blood seep like red sap?
Was she afraid?
Was she cold? Did it snow?
How old was she when the king came?)

A famished eye trawls scripts
and scrawls, in the tapered shapes 
of petals, a beetle's forked horns,
the dart of a deer - words a flicker,
clinging, clawing. In the damp dark
of her mouth they home like bats,
winged bundles waiting
to fall into flight.

Thinking about silence

When better to rethink a poem than during the early hours when sleep unravels. Here's a difference to my artwork: once a piece is declared done it hardly ever changes again, whereas a poem niggles away at me until I return to it, over and over.

Sibyl

Last she pawns her tongue, for coins and crumbs,
belly a howling hollow; her books long gone,
a copper for thick tresses.

Scooped, scoured homeland, stony bane: her throat
sifts seeds of silence. She shades her eyes
but signs seep like tears.

For years she scrimps, heaving with voice and verse.
Folks come, unshout their woes, the loot and litter
of their souls, and ravaged faces soften.

Scalp bristling cold, she bears a bundle home.
She spreads stained cloth: out rolls a dull, brown,
shrivelled thing, with raised blue veins
and a diaphanous fin.

Her mouth's a bony lair, where nothing lives.
Tuber, muscle, earthworm, stiff as a bell's tongue -
she waits to feel it wake.

Tired, but something flows

Sunday falls

Sunday's levy is a fall and a tear:
The grit gripes and grinds with tiny teeth,
rings up its coin of scraped skin,
its mouthful of wool.
I slip a hooked finger in,
pull burry edges wide: no blood,
just the usual stings and stitches.
Under blue knit my knees are round
and hard as darning eggs.

At the instant of falling a stop
and a rush collide. Holes are my calling
and I ponder their collective names
while mum closes in: a host, a hoard,
a huddle, a spill, herd, hive,
charm, mob, throb. A cloud.
Best of all: a murmuration of holes, due
their quiet puffs, their quiet flutter in and out
the tunnel of my tights.

Mother slaps dirt off my legs,
all sighs and stringent hands.
On the way home dad photographs me
standing on a low wall. He calls: smile!
and I draw myself up
in my black patent leather shoes,
their toes well clawed,
my blue and red chequered poplin-coat
with its lustre of dust.

I give him a gap-toothed one
and that frayed blue ‘O’ stows away.

Note to self: BREATHE!

There are situations which require such notes: Agreeing to read one's poems in public is one of them. I'd put my name down simply because the opportunity came my way - I wouldn't have dared search it out. It felt like a mad and sweaty thing to start with but when the day arrived it just felt right. A beginners' event at the local library, with a small and eager audience - such a gentle start.
There's something strange, for a visual artist, about being present with one's work and not just letting it stand in/speak for you. But as with a piece of art a poem only comes full circle when it's out in the world.
As I read it took a little while to find and trust my voice, to let myself be guided by the poems' sounds and rhythms, away from fears about failing, falling short (and being heckled - are there poetic hecklers?), but once I got there I didn't want to stop.
The days after: Fatigue loomed like an ugly ogre and with grey felt hands smothered everything. Everything. It seemed almost impossible that this was me too, this exhausted uncoordinated bundle of flesh and bones and frazzled brains. Slowly emerging again, as you can see.
I had a little toe out in the world!!!

Image: Bittersweets (wrapped poems)

Offering (3)

My body is just tired, but my brain is tired and buzzing, if that makes sense. Aunt Frieda is stalking me, I guess she wants a poem that does her justice.
As I've been told a couple of times that in my poems I am often not sparing enough with my words I took my sheet to the garden, sat in the sun and crossed words out with my thickest black marker. And again and again. Didn't leave me with a new whole poem but lots of little floating poem-clouds. These are my favourites - each of them could be a whole story. They're almost like titles for pieces of art.
Oh, and Tante Frieda's sister is here too.

girls in dresses
stiff
as blotting paper

17/6/09
I realise that something different is starting to interest me here. These lines are not so much about being spoken, I want them to be read, individually, and evoke images silently.
19/7/09
left only my favourite

Offering (2)

Just not up to making work yet but editing poems and preparing to read some out in a small group. This will be my first time, terror of terrors, but feels right. Need to air my poems. The waiting game was an exercise for my poetry-course a while ago (first attempt at writing a sonnet, which I enjoyed very much); this one here is the revised version of my Tante Frieda-poem which some of you may remember. I've rewritten it heavily but feel rather adrift as my course is over, alas, and it's again rather wordy, even if 'crafted' with more attention to its sound and music. I wished TF was still around, I'd like to ask her lots of questions. A piece of crocheting will grow from this, I think, first stitches maid (made!). Feedback welcome.

Tante Frieda

The last room on the right, opposite chapel, is hers,
her last room, where she waits in state,
hatted and girdled, hair teeming with pins.
Her crumpled face crackles with mischief.
She is older than the century, erstwhile Rapunzel
who had not known to grow her hair.
Hand-me-down air clings from mother-dear -
a prayer under every breath
and her daughters' dresses stiff as blotting paper.

Frieda, five feet tall, taught and enthralled
boys in their teens. Happy times
and best of times for being out of step:
she was removed from school when she refused
to toe the Führer’s line. Much of her life though
she stowed away, homing in mothed skin,
counting beads and her heart on a string.
She sailed dreams trailing shaggy wings,
and when finally laid up, without guard or girdle,
kept her handbag in bed with her, open,
spilling regret like teeth from an old mouth.

To me she was the kindly crone from my fairytales,
born old, hands packed with plenty, ready
to grant wishes to those who dared want.
Postern to yesteryear she sank in her downy bed,
eyes logged with sorrow
that she’d never been kissed.

Offering

The waiting game (Clytaemnestra)

Take one who weaves with measured industry a web
that cannot hold her grief. She finds relief
in hating, tracing her loss in warp and weft,
stretching her rage as cord on cord unreels.
How fast he dropped his father’s cloak for armour.
If only she’d unstitched his sails, slashed stays,
lopped masts, strap-strained his greed
to hear his name sung.
A girl’s death plumped limp sails!
Instead she spins fast strands, soft-gleaming
in the light like strings of rain, last robe
to stain in hues that are his royal due,
and maps in silver lines a hungry grid,
empty just now, a subtle gift, a trap.