Self Prompted Poetry III

UNPROMPTED

There was nothing to do but sit and think,

Sit and think… so what’s wrong with that?

Inside the hut can smell the age of the stones

Telling the time as it passes slowly, the sun casting shadows

Which measure the hours as they crawl on the way towards the night,

The end of the day, a great vacuum, the plug hole

Down which we will all vanish.

I wonder if they know, if they can tell that I’ve been crying?

Everything around me moving, sounds spinning

I imagine it all, the whole thing made up

And simply for me alone, always alone

So far away nobody can ever touch me

So remote, I fear for my own sanity

And yet, without it - am I really so lost?

Is the breakdown unprompted, completely spontaneous?

Turning my face to the sun, I feel the soft breeze against my skin

And this is the reality.

DOLCE VITA
Often I lay awake in those long, empty early hours… and my mind drifts in a state of half waking, half sleeping. I wander through places where I once lived, past people who I once knew but now are dead… or perhaps just changed, moved on after all those years. There are no solid objects here. No rigid structures or geometrical designs, just marshmallow lands and everything is soft and cushioned… is that maybe where the expression the “soft life” comes from? I balance against the sides of my surroundings… there’s absolutely no room for Ziggy here, I can see, I can hear. I blink as the Light Fantastic touches the retinas of my eyes… although when I’m awake the darkness increases around me, closing in… here the light grows brighter and brighter, beckoning me onwards. Beckoning me onwards, enticing me. I’m not sure how many hours or just minutes have passed since I woke up - time has done absolutely no damage here in this space between. I keep my eyes firmly shut, not wishing to disturb the slumbering state which has taken me so long to catch hold of, and is even now slipping, slippery as a fish between my fingers. Falling down, falling down to the ground and through that, beyond, down into the abyss. Still bouncing against the sides, the soft cushion, rebounding all around me as I fall… and I’m not frightened, I have no fear. The light creeping around the edges of the curtains seems far brighter than the grey day it heralds in reality… in this state, this magical state the light has no bounds… only soft cushions, soft promises, a truly soft life.

Self Prompted Poetry II

UNSEEN FACES

I’m living in the past

On vanished memories, faces now turned old and wrinkled

Changed not fixed like a photograph

-though that’s all I remember, the image fixed

In my memory, unchanging and clinging on desperately

Struggling, kicking, refusing to go down the plughole

And vanish, forgotten completely.

Distant voices echoing, I hear them still

But the image, the vision is gone

People might loose hair and teeth around me

But still, they’re there.

I still hold Jack in my arms

A tiny, shrivelled baby when I saw him last

In years long past by - gone now

Vanished, dropped into the abyss

Down the plug hole.

Self Prompted Poetry

Apparently it’s national poetry writing month, so Rob’s too busy writing poetry to bother with Writer’s Island prompts… however I’ve decided to do my own prompt, so here it is.

POETRY CONFUSED

I see him in the garden

Wandering around, eyes fixed on the sky

Translucent words spilling from his mouth, washing over the edges

To form a layer of mud which hardens in the sunshine

Like an extra eggshell, a coating of brittle pieces

A poem confused?

He still shakes his head and yawns, his open mouth cavernous

The garden twinkles around him, perhaps starry skies meeting the grass

I don’t know, I can’t tell - who am I?

I’m no one, I don’t matter

I’m just a poet confused.