"cuttings" poems
It was only the other day you fell asleep in your old chair
The one that was in your front room decades ago
You didn't see Andy Murray lose but you didn't care
You’d eaten well and heavy eyed you dozed
I’m sorry but when I lost the house it had to go
I know throwing it out was a bit wrong
But if chairs go to heaven though
At least you’ll have something there to sit on
I wish I’d never told you off for smoking by the pump
You looked so sad that I’d made you feel a fool
But imagine how you would have made those people jump
As they were all engulfed by a massive fireball
Enjoy your new lungs and try keeping them clean for a few hours
Enjoy your time with Granddad it’s been thirty years too long
Enjoy strolling through those heavenly gardens with all your favourite flowers
But in heaven, please don’t bag cuttings; I’m sure up there it’s wrong!
Apr 9, 2013
Apr 9, 2013 at 11:08 AM UTC
I took the left path where hydrangeas grew and sleepy primroses under woods, edged shady trees.
The empty stream ran quietly dry
With grass cuttings piling high.
If one peeped, one would find tiny creatures
To cast a sparkle here and there, a delight.
So on tip-toe, with sandels bent
Up high I reached to take
The plastic fairy as she twirled a pirouette
In a theatre made by chance.
Reflected in a silver mirror intwinned with ivy branch
A mottled foal tends his dreams and Chrismas robin chirps.
My brother took the right hand path where the trees grew fruit
Ripe berries from the gooseberry bush bulged their prickles.
Dangling from hawthorn now a cowboy with a hat
Looking for his fellow Indian with the yellow back sack.
Sheep gather in a hollow, dark, protected from the sun
And Mr toad, now lost of paint, has turned a bit glum.
And so we leave our woodland friends and travel up the slope
Winding round the rose bed and goldfish where they float.
Then up we climb, the middle route, to jump the pruned clipped
Hedge.
The lawn divided in two halves, a contemporary taste.
Now we're nearly at that place where if one was to turn
Could see down across the land
To the sea and sand.
Of all the beauties that I've known
Nothing beats this Island home.
Love Mary x
My grandfather’s retirement bungalow was in Totland Isle of Wight.
It was named Innisfail meaning ‘Isle of Ireland’.
Behind, the garden led down to magical and delightful to children who came as visitors. My grandfather would prepare this woodland with some suitable surprises.
The garden and woodland deserved its own name and in retrospect
Is now named ‘Innislandia’ to suggest a separate, mysterious land.
Beyond the real world.
In the poem A Country Lane on page 8 the latched gate is the back gate to my grandparent’s garden and bungalow in Totland as above.
Jun 23, 2018
Jun 23, 2018 at 7:57 AM UTC
Another silent mid-Fall afternoon
Icy raindrops slash into my neck
The forecast calls for falling thumbtacks soon
One thin umbrella folding
Just 18 feet to the front step
With champagne acquainted
But forgot how to sip it
I slurp it down, eager,
'til I sit soaked and dripping
In time, fevered minds
will lower ears made for hearing
under waves of migraines
as mighty storm fronts are nearing
So I close down the bars and stumble home under awnings
Just to search for your name among newspaper cuttings
I've read the whole issue
and I've frowned over headlines
put it down
Now, soaked or dry, I've got only time
I've wasted so much of it losing my mind
I'm blind in the rain that now sticks in my hide
and they were right--
The forecast called for this squall to last all night
Another lonely mid-Fall morning walk
I follow gangs of specters in their steps
And, in the crunching gravel, ghosts will talk
November winds come howling
The second I leave my front step
The flavor's familiar
It comes back every morning,
when sunlight and sparrows
ignore tornado warnings
So the gales pick up strength
and a small bird's bones are hollow
The clouds lay oceans down
setting many sips to swallow
"So goodnight." I depart, but circle back in my wanderings
I'll always wind up here--shaky, ash-faced and yawning
I've read this before
it's printed on poor paper
in red ink
I can't say why I'm still walking by
Those other front doorsteps that I never try
The thick thumbtack rain stopped but I can't stay dry
the ghosts were right--
But if I find your name I might stop by.
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 7:09 PM UTC
You are going to die
before me.
I already know this.
You are going to get fat
and go completely blind
and probably,
eventually, they will
cut some parts off.
You are going to fall apart
in front of me.
I know this.
I still choose to stay.
I will be there
through all the appointments,
the stickings and pokings and cuttings and bleedings.
I have only wiped
a few *****
in my life.
Mine,
my son's,
a few babies
of friends.
I already plan on wiping yours
when you cannot.
I will draw
little sugar skulls
on your prosthetic feet.
I will make sure you always have enough medicine and it is always refrigerated.
I will help you
in and out
of the bathtub.
I will massage your legs
and arms
and back
and head
and neck,
every day.
I will make our boys breakfast
and walk the dogs
and make sure everything
goes back in the
same exact spot
and keep a file with all the pertinent medical information
so I can fill out all the paperwork.
I will take you to
all those folk rock shows you love so much
and describe the singers to you.
We will still garden together.
I can see you in a chair,
barking out questions
about our harvest and me,
going back and forth,
bringing you the biggest squash
to hold.
You see, I have given up thinking
I am ever going to
give myself to anyone else.
It is you and you alone.
So, when you start to fall apart,
and you will fall apart,
don't worry baby.
I am going to be there to wipe your ***
May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012 at 6:13 PM UTC
We stalked hawthorn hedgerows,
Backyards our battlefields,
Wielding wooden swords,
Dustbin-lids, for our shields.
We scouted railway cuttings,
Long abandoned and disused,
Where friendship’s blended alloys,
Were cast, forged and fused.
We patrolled village streets,
Marched along muddied lanes,
Proudly defending ‘our land’,
From raiding, heathen, Danes’.
We boldly challenged Vikings’,
Beneath a Sixties-summer-sun,
Bonding loyalty, faith and trust,
That will never, come undone.
Those days will not return,
Memories-mismatched-truth,
Recalling the fallen heroes,
Fighting follies of our youth.
Protecting imagined Kingdoms,
Lost in time, for evermore,
Boy soldiers standing guard,
In Castles built from straw.
Oct 3, 2010
Oct 3, 2010 at 2:06 PM UTC
You are going to die
before me.
I already know this.
You are going to get fat
and go completely blind
and probably,
eventually, they will
cut some parts off.
You are going to fall apart
in front of me.
I know this.
I still choose to stay.
I will be there
through all the appointments,
the stickings and pokings and cuttings and bleedings.
I have only wiped
a few *****
in my life.
Mine,
my son's,
a few babies
of friends.
I already plan on wiping yours
when you cannot.
I will draw
little sugar skulls
on your prosthetic feet.
I will make sure you always have enough medicine and it is always refrigerated.
I will help you
in and out
of the bathtub.
I will massage your legs
and arms
and back
and head
and neck,
every day.
I will make our boys breakfast
and walk the dogs
and make sure everything
goes back in the
same exact spot
and keep a file with all the pertinent medical information
so I can fill out all the paperwork.
I will take you to
all those folk rock shows you love so much
and describe the singers to you.
We will still garden together.
I can see you in a chair,
barking out questions
about our harvest and me,
going back and forth,
bringing you the biggest squash
to hold.
You see, I have given up thinking
I am ever going to
give myself to anyone else.
It is you and you alone.
So, when you start to fall apart,
and you will fall apart,
don't worry baby.
I am going to be there to wipe your ***
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 11:48 AM UTC
I draw on lilac cigars
through my mask
so her journey in neon stays
safely as a highlight
in gas filtered clouds
the faulty starter judders the light
flora scented
and in the flickering clouds
an attempt at landing
reveals her girdle red
in a flash of steely eyes
and suddenly mine were blinded
just as she rubbed against the dark
combing her strands wildly apart
she shook blonde roots and brunettes alike
I'm a sucker for hair turned hydrogen
peroxide mixed with air to make stars
startling amidst malefactory dye
metal booms swung away at each other
in the distance
building her model oxygen tanks
for pin up flower cuttings
and garlands on picket fences
she kissed the ground
and I gas peddled
a stomp on the glowing end
to the stub
only to drop like a skeleton
with lead hands
to follow any seeds
******* burnt rain
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 2:41 PM UTC
‘Why ask’,said the field mouse to Hedgehog
Who scuttled along softly on four short legs
Wearing a bobble hat made of apache wool
‘I don’t know but truths must be brought on.’
‘Yes’, said Mousey as it perched with fairy
In the brown bed filled with green cuttings
For only here with my friend is the world’s
Beauty allowed a sharing heart and voice.
So take me into the garden with pink roses
Growing one with up turned bright bud
Shoes holding tightly your peering down
Fills out the future with seeded windmills.
Love Mary x
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 2:49 PM UTC
The station Tannoy’s so polite,
Train’s here but late; commuter’s plight,
Doors opening, pushed to platform’s edge,
As the herd of bodies forms a hedge,
Will she be there?
A gap, way in, a scramble of feet,
The desperate scans for a vacant seat,
With a jolt and a whine we move away,
Packed with the faces of one more day,
Did she mean what she said?
Past fields and cuttings the city nears,
People gaze blankly, no smiles, no tears,
Blurred names on platforms pass with a rush,
London workers in etiquette’s hush,
But where to meet?
Slowing through tunnels, lean and rock,
Roll under the canopy, groan to a stop,
We pour from the doors like arterial bleeding,
Swept in the flow, haemorrhaged carriage receding,
By the trolley, she’d said
Moving fast, with their own motivations,
The eddy of souls takes me out of the station,
Pull out of the crowd, out of the flow,
Onwards they march to the tube lines below
But we just hold tight under J.K.’s fake signs,
And expression finds space,
Between the lines.
RD@2009
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 12:09 PM UTC
In the bardo*
you are floating
aboard the barge of couldhavebeens
and moments that were unseen
not the world
not a boy or a girl
lost
Lost boys are found toys for Thor’s hands
to play with
Lightening lick of guitar solo
striking health into blushed cheeks
Soon you’ll no longer need to be
painted
The eye patches will be removed
and pirate life won’t mean
Scrounging and wishing for an oasis
you’ll throw a life saver
throw a light saber
Glisten the sparkzap through tables
laden with all that’s been spat
from vitriolic minds
Listen
sore elbows from nudging bad spirits away
Blades of bone
and intention can saw through sadness
to the light beyond
like the sky’s pinholes
Stars aren't the cuttings of children
the dark is just a covering
Poke a finger through
Don't fear if you get stuck
for it is only the backdrop to a stage
hiding the mass of light
only there to protect us from blinding joy
Like sunglasses
So be one with your sadness
May 29, 2016
May 29, 2016 at 6:02 PM UTC
A Poem for June
Just why a cucumber should be so cool
Eludes the logical; a cucumber’s just
A vegetable a-lying on the ground
Awaiting consumption. But let’s accept
This vegetarian cliché’ simply
To get on with this cool descriptive task:
Whatever’s cool in the falling June sun
Descends through oak leaves, dark and summer green
And dancing down the air falls happily
Upon this cool cucumber cave where sits
Upon a wooden bench a lazy man
Who should be taking now another turn
With lawnmower, shovel, or shears against
The wild greenness of happy midsummer.
But, oh! Persephone surely won’t mind
If her allotted garden tasks are paused
By her appointed minion rustic who
Takes now his ease in her delightful shade.
For summer after all is more than work;
She calls for dozing too, and dreamily
Watching busy bees buzz among the flowers,
Like fussy matchmakers arranging marriages,
And hummingbirds humming in and out of leaves,
Their sanctuary leaves, to argue at
The nectar-feeders, as if there weren’t
Enough for all. The squirrels in the trees
Would never condescend to chitter there;
They glare at humans disapprovingly,
Like old teachers unhappily aware
That, oh, somewhere, somehow a child might be
Enjoying life, and that would never do!
Even the ribbon of smoke from the morning’s
Trimmings and cuttings and sawings appears
To be taking a nap in the summer noon,
There gently snoring up wisps of ashes
Instead of roaring, hissing manfully
As it did in the early hours.
The bench
Along the fence where the tired old man sits
Creaks as he shifts his weight, and watches
His backyard world doze in the leaf-laced sun;
He lights a well-deserved cigar, and sees
Its soothing smoke join with the ******* fire
Ascending heavenward with peaceful thoughts.
Jun 1, 2019
Jun 1, 2019 at 1:05 PM UTC
We flash across the level.
We thunder thro' the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
We sway along the ridges.
A rush of streaming hedges,
Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
Of racing woods and meadows.
We charge the tunnels headlong--
The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments--
The open spins and scatters.
We shake off the miles like water,
We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
And long for a common hansom.
1.1k
Garden cuttings grew slowly
in my Aunt's back lawn.
She coaxed them with words
and wet tea-leaves,
watched them flourish one year
in sunlit rows.
Mum had no time for flowers,
looked warily
at this late harvest
from the Mother she adored.
Dried lavender
sifted into hand-sewn bags
we tucked beneath petticoats,
knickers, linen handkerchiefs.
Roses and pinks
filling clear glass vases,
scenting the house as though
Gran was close by,
had just stepped outside
to unpeg her washing.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 1:58 PM UTC
It's time now.
Cut back the roses
down to earth.
Cut back the canes
that bore the flowers,
raising brave heads to the sun,
Now, gone to hips
or browned remains.
A fading tangle on scrawny stems.
Cut back the canes,
sturdy but yellowing now at the edges.
See the old scars of past
cuttings, notches in the plant.
The places where growth ended.
Yet, new canes grew anyway,
bursting below, above, around
the stumps and scars,
or pushed, slender,
new from the ground.
Pile the cuttings.
See the brown, the green,
the yellow.
Marvel at the pile of growth.
Look at the plants, now
small. stripped.
Ready for rest.
Waiting for spring.
Oct 6, 2016
Oct 6, 2016 at 1:04 AM UTC
I am like one of your beautiful plants,
that you are taking care of every day ,
watering just to make sure it will not die,
cutting the dried leaf that's ugly to see,
talking even if its not responding.
you're watching it growing , and excited to bloom,
and suddenly it totally die,
and never give up, you do the cuttings procedure ,
never get tired to replant ,
it's because this is your happiness,
until it grows , some leaf are dried , but you're still there waiting ,
you almost give up , and one early morning unexpectedly the best felling and the most awaited moment had come ,
the morning that sun didn't shine , the rain never stop , but you we're there to see how beautiful i am,
i am bloom according to how you want me to bloom.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 3:21 AM UTC
pendulum swing
letting the new hour
sprawl noisily
across the night
giving moments
taking empty time
a currency
of second hand
cuttings bringing
each piece to its
natural close
starts new afresh
but carefully
with great method
the unmasking
takes no bribes
the passing game
uncheated by the slip
unchallenged by the price
no tender for this work
the pendulum's swing
is a private service
provided by the darkness
for our own sleepless hour
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 11:45 AM UTC
Jade tree cuttings
In window sill tray
Pictures on walls
Panama hat
Hooked
Not a stick of
Furniture
To soften the bones
Home sweet home
Crescent moon
Through
Undraped window
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 11:26 AM UTC
When you kiss me do you feel it
Is your hear mine, should I steel it
Do you feel the same
Supple kiss ever drain
Does your hear beat, beat the same
Will forever be okay
Can you promise me you will stay...
Can I even say the same
Can you leave me hear this way
Expecting me to complie
To say that cuttings not a lie?
One that breaths the words...
That you can love with hurt
You would never break my skin
Razors edge biting in
You would never set me free
Do you have the courage to cut me?
Hurt is feeling, so it's life
But what's the point of living if it is only strife
what's a hand to hold, if there is no reason
Sadness comes and goes like season
But bitter twisted truth
Rips my soul and feelings from heir roots
Your peeciouse blood can spill
Your sacred hands can hold
Bitting metal, mean and cold
Legs stained in red
you can cry in silence
Scream in dread
But not alone
Not again
If you choose me, then hold up our head
I can only do so much and promise little
But to love, you have to love your self
And if it isn't a crime to you, it is to somebosy else
Each evil thought that clouds your head
Every cut, or scar that remains unsaid
For every lie that's sliped your toung
My self is trampled, come undone
If you become my reason, my chosen path in life
You have to love your self, and have to love our life.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 6:28 PM UTC
The cast iron cot frame stood in the garden
At the top left and held the relics of blue
Unleaded paint used to cover a girlish pink
The mattress disintegrated it contained plants
Mother’s cuttings from an extensive garden.
The girl now eleven and very thin
Sat in a homemade embroidered skirt
And played with her unbraided hair
Her feet neatly together like a doll
A teenage doll from The Pedigree range.
The beginning of ******* were forming
And insecurities and dissatisfaction open
That day in the sun with cousin Hilary
Two different specimens of womanhood
I only really knew her a short time .
Love Mary ***
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019 at 10:57 AM UTC
The mystic Mys-Match of Mew Manor mounts the moon at midnight. He flies freely, forgetting the faltering fallacies that fold this failing facade of figments of the imagination and inglorious nations into a crooked caricature of creeps, clowns, and carcinogens to our culture. From crack and **** to casual deaths, the population prays for post-pissing match days.
What's the reason of rhyme if you don't have a reason to see a new season of sweethearts and treason? The mystic Mys-Match of the planet Piblatch has snatched nary a glance of this reprehensible romance. He hums happily, hovering over the homes of the hurt and the helpless, unaware of the ugly and untrue souls of the suffering below.
Due in part, perhaps, to the planet Piblatch, whose population prowls playfully amongst the pipperplitz plants and the tinktertip trees. A civilization unaware of Gods and demons, Guido's and dip *****
At sunset, the Piblatchians partake of rackaday root and crushed up clibber clatch cuttings. They see the psychedelic sky ways that sing of sweet things and spacey swings.
As mankind manipulates, murders, and maims itself, the world which waivers with weakened wings is consumed by the carnivores that **** off the common crowd and leave only the corrupt and cantankerous crooks that fall to the depths of despair when the bomb goes off, blotting out humanity's light forever.
But the mystic Mys-Match and his planet Piblatch live on, past the end of time itself. The peaceful people continue to enjoy their lives and never know of the negative notions that drove the dimwitted denizens of Earth into a violent and gruesome grave.
Mankind could have learned something from the Piblatchians, if only they had opened their eyes and seen the light.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 7:30 PM UTC
At a loss with what to tell
the children when they bring
their deformed beasts to me
I teach them the word menagerie as
they clear the project table and sweep
up cuttings from the kitchen floor.
We gather without you for another
stiff parade of animals, and I’m embarrassed
to mistake their swans for butterflies.
The sky aligns edge to edge,
a yellow sheet of cellophane,
the afternoon cut and creased
and folded like fractal creature:
a crane inside
a crane inside
a crane.
Oct 5, 2018
Oct 5, 2018 at 4:21 PM UTC
Through the eye of the needle where necessity lies
and the horizon's a point somewhere off,
someone dies.
On the grains where the sand shifts the mountains away, where the land ***** crab sideways to gather their prey or the fields where the crops dust off MDMA,
I drop,
intellect fades
the night fazes in on sharpened steel blades.
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 5:51 AM UTC
At the time as the leaves turned colour
a hushed slither of an acquaintance
brushed by as Autumn rising.
Healing beneath his tongue
He tasted Marchpane again .
Dazed by the impending changes,
temporarily taking stock.
At the time as the wind stood still
he found his trusted keys
for his Autumnal hut
and opening its door
he felt a rush for those
composted stored Tubers and rare cuttings
as they awaited his thoughts
an outpouring
his selection an inspired command.......
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 4:45 PM UTC
She stands at the kitchen window, slowly stirring the rich brew. The shade from the Mountain Ash still cloaks half of the tomato plants in cool relief. The ones in the full sun of day are bigger and are already bearing fruit. What is the message this full exposure/half shaded patch is sending out to her as she gazes and sips her tea?
Remain in the shadows and only live half a life? Exposure yourself to all before you and find your fruit for life spent too soon? Who is to know? Somewhere in there she thinks there must be a happy medium. Some balance between the overly protected and the completely exposed. That is the fine balance she strives to find for herself.
She decides to venture out into the garden and walk the path that lies before her. Around every turn there is a surprise, some beauty to behold. Also along the walk are the nasty pests of life which rot and eat up the beauty that is there to be found. Adjusting the rocks and plantings, she disturbs the nest of the invaders hoping to salvage and rebuild the cuttings; to nurture new growth. Time will tell if she is successful.
She meanders to a new area of the yard still under construction. Development is slow. It takes thought and motivation to make a start; always a bit unsure of how to begin and then how to proceed. Structure takes shape one bit at a time. She has faith that she will be pleased with the end result. There is comfort in knowing that if she does not she can always tear it down and start again. It is not an easy process to begin again but sometimes it is necessary.
All the while, she reminds herself it is the journey along the path and the building as she goes that gives her the most joy; to see her life unfold as she places brick on brick. The garden will be done when it is done. In the meantime, she is enjoying the ever changing design. She sits to take a breath and finish her tea. The sweet refreshment flavours her tongue. She reflects as a gentle smile crosses her lips and she prepares for her day.
Sep 24, 2013
Sep 24, 2013 at 8:02 PM UTC
I was a collage of pain,
weathered in pool of convulsions.
Doused into my subconscious
then riveted to my frame of thought.
Contradicted ink was versed on my being,
watered down to the image you see now.
*"We are all a collection of paper cuttings,
woven in a mask of smiles.*
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 5:47 PM UTC