Heaven here
and happiness

Faces like coffee
Hearts of chocolate

I remember and hum

Sleeping on pillows
not walking through fire

You remember and sing

My house is a hole

I hold a photograph
and cry for you

How can I live
alone?

My house is a hole

I climb in to search
and find fragments

I hold your hand
which seeps

Daughter of the Rom

Neck                       smooth
Jaw                        strong
Lips                                                                           mmm, soft to kiss?
Nose                       strong and long
Lashes                    long and dark          
Brows                     dark and thick        
Tresses                   thick and wild
Wild?
Oh, her eyes!          Her eyes!
    wild
       black
            shining
               black
                 deep
                     black
                        mysterious
                           black
                              frightening
                                 black
                                    loving
                                      black
                                          beautiful!

I sit with Sylvia Plath
open.

Thunder tears my ideas
with the rip sound of newspaper.
It rains a cold shower
lit only by Hollywood B-grade lightning flashes.

Old spouting overflows. Waters spill;
a forgotten bath with taps left on.

Winds tug at washing that’s pegged tight. They
tangle soaked sheets around the line with
noisy bluster.

I sit with Sylvia Plath
open.

Listening to her voice?

Life, I stand on your bank’s edge, frightened of a
slip that might bring a struggle I could not win.
You flow by with no effort. I envy you.
You swirl as if some magic occurs within your darkest green
―  the colour of the elm’s fullness during twilight.
You flow forever, past. I have little to offer but
three silver coins and my hope that you will accept them
with my anguished prayers.
Let them sink through your swiftness to your stillness.
Let them join others’ gifts
to clothe your bed in a radiant coverlet you have earned.

I know you, Jenny.
Your beauty betrays you.
What other woman has hair of
fine-spun gold thread
and long-lashed eyes of sapphire perfection?

Visible through white silk, your ******* and hips
lure me towards golden-freckled alabaster arms.

I’ve known your name all my life.
Now I meet you, smiling shyly as you bathe.

You’ll not get me, water spirit.

They say you wait
in wind-wild streams and lonely pools
for weaker souls than I
to surrender to your enchantment.

You beckon lovers in
to greet your body; to love you.

They say you
coil weeds around hopeful lovers’ ankles and pull them
down, white cold, into black depths.
You show their drowning eyes
the hideous crone you really are: Jenny Green Teeth.

But I see no crone, only youthful perfection
radiant in high sun’s glory.

Oh Jenny, your beauty and smile draw me.
Will you take me? Love me? Drown me?
Let us speak in whispers. Touch our fingers. Lips?

I cannot believe what they say. I cannot. I do not.

The water … so cold.

I flew a kite with a key
so You could light the sky
and flick a bounding bolt
towards my darkened home

You drew a storm from the sea
and rattled window panes
with gusts of supremacy that flung
my back door from its jam

Spiralling allure stings these eyes
which watch through squints while
tempests tear comfort from my chair
and split my mirror into slivers