I slept with her, my rapacious pen, took me in quiet vengeance in
full on conjugation

raken and taken, me,
her overlording me now, her authorship, so long held
in my maledom abeyance,
a kept imprisonment, unleashing at last, a tongue lashing~leashing,
de-spite my un-desirous craven lying supplications,
excuses of innocence and accident, coincidence and conflation,
ashes, ashes, denials incinerated, all fall down

she wrote/stabbed upon my heartless chest,
in the cheap crudités colors of a prisoner’s inking,
“user of words mine, all mine”

gathered up my innards of loose words,
speculative notes & titles yet to be,
born and kept hid in password protected silent back labor files,
now hers, leaving me sputtering, unable to create,
a homeless mute citizen, possession-less,
helplessly hoping her hovering harlequin might relent,
without any shelter, even a glimmering, a single aleph or bet

she celebratory cackled and clawed,
professed her reclamation ownership of all my poems predecessors,
zola j’accusing that I, ripped from her forcibly,
with no granted permission, her womanly touché of my scribing,
warning of no more global warming for my unprivileged hands,
daren’t try for pretenses of stolen legal guardianship,
warning of a new, forced caining inscription,
a tattooing of  “thief” upon my 5 knuckled right ******,
“plagiarist” boldly inked in back & blue upon my left palm

I, predator,
she, victim,
of my now self-professed, admitted confess,
she, my single victim,
of a decade long serializing criminal coverup

her parting poem a threatening,
herein issued in this very verse,
damning all who would falsely credit themselves,
to suffer shame and an unimaginable curse,
this, the newborn eleventh of ten commandments

parting, she kissing my lips, even my emptied apertures,
with warning bitings,
she knew all my
my numerous noms de guerre,
no dead scrolls caves to hid in, and to be discovered some future day,
and if ever marked as copyrighted,
’twas no tunneling escape,
the exposed truth to be over-stamped
upon all, upon each, in every language,

”copied right from the tongue of a woman!”


and she would be wright...

You broke my heart saying you were gay
you stole the best years of my life and
i had a freaking *** change like you wanted
feel messed up in the head cause you asked
me to do something i did not want to do
i became a lady like you wanted. still ******
cause i got thoughts like i don't like me no
more cause of that *** change and losing my
job and all that kinda stuff. still **** at this
poem writing but getting better i think.
My name was Mathew and not i is just
mims cause of you asking me to have a
*** change then dumping me for a woman.

To be quite honest this
Concept is strange to
Me I'm just
Myself but
To others my
Mind is abnormal
I ponder things other
Couldn't care less about
I understand concepts most
People ignore
And yet
I feel stupid quite often
Much of my mind is unexplored
I daren't venture into the
Cavernous chambers of
Scorn I have for myself and
Those who aren't intelligent because
Who am I to think myself
Superior to anyone?

It is only when you realise,
As you sit in the far corner of the room,
that they are all so far away from you.
So
Distant.
Laughing amongst themselves
In a joke you clearly don’t understand.
Alienated from the throws of conversation
And the formalities of friendship.
You daren’t say a word for the silence that will follow.
A dragging
Periodic
Calculating
Silence.
So you sit, content with your space
In need of something you cannot categorise.
They’re all just
So
Distant.
If the physical space weren’t enough,
Your individuality will seal the deal.
So
Distant.

After all
there was so much to hate
and no one cared
for what there was to love
the least of whom
was himself
and that
was why he drove the cleaver
THWACK
into the wood
right between his fingers
between yes or no
between bedlam and smug satisfaction
knowing he'd missed the mark
on a whim
though
should he have succeeded
he would go on a broken man
no
not because of the mutilated hand
but because of what he would do to himself
should he have abandoned himself
indeed
his tattered body
paled in reflection
to the cavity in his soul
where worlds of dreams had gone to die
and he had pleasure in their deaths
how he marched them on
the dreams
pied piper was he
to the vast
incalculable
sums of fantasy and waylaid plans
beneath him
his scales
his snout and snarl
his wings
a dragon
on a hoard of promised treasures
sure to be expelled
due the ravaging of time
due delinquency and self-wrought disaster
he was an effigy
to the great power of humanity
fallen in grace
subdued by cancerous desires
and poisoned
by fool's love
a rusted bounty
of sham hearts
open and willing
willing his demise
but he loved it
the attention
the destruction
for as it were poured upon him
in him
through him
about him
a pool of toxic ichor
his price for the abuse
was the sacking of the world
the decay of humanity
as they tortured him
they wounded themselves
ever deeper
salt in his wound
was salt in their eyes
rot fed to his belly
became rot in their souls
but they could not stop
they daren't
for they feared his power
they feared
his penchant to rule them
to lay waste to their weakness
mold them
guide them
command them
they feared losing
all their closely coveted lies
that dangled
like snow sequins
about their shivering
cadaverous bodies
malnourished
wanting for respite
from the cold
of their inimical
and unforgiving
reality
from which
escape
is a closed book
empty save for a warning
that what goes up
will surely fall
but what goes down
into the depths of hell
truth itself
where the ****** break upon their wickedness
shall salvation ring in the deep
and awake the beast
who rises to mount the peaks
another dragon
born for battle
destined to be pillaged of its cantankerous wealth
how
it gorged on humanity
letting them wear sequins on their bodies
rather than glory
verve for life
satisfaction in the passing of time
and joy in knowing the coming of the inevitable
they feared to be free
for the cage
they thought
fueled their spirits
but it was a charlatan's ruse
smoke and mirrors
hiding the puppet strings
clouding their judgment
obscuring the ability
to see that He was their shepherd
the pastor of their flock
and with him
all doors would be opened
all minds would be free
all bodies would be whole
and no blood
would be spilt
forever
and on into the waking
of eternity...

Part 1: (The traveler speaking)

"I follow the winding, the way beyond the farthest places
between trees knotted menacing with darkened faces
under mossy roots that twist and trip with a mischievous cackle
over heights and falls that beckon death's clanking shackle
and if you fall in, lose your precious breath
to tree limbs tangled scratching at vulnerable flesh.

A green roof above and green floor below
but my eyes look ahead, to where the silver meadows did grow
Remorse remembers all that passed before the eye
burnt of fire forgotten and ash was strewn across the sky
and now only memory does remain
of silver meadows and the golden rain.

This land is dampened with the morning dew
that daren't melt but for the light of moon
where mossy things are stowed in sunken places
and beautiful wonders lay behind rock faces,
I know the way, but do not lightly follow
As sunset brings forth demons beyond tomorrow.

I wish to find her: the lady silk
Her hands weaving threads of fates who twist and separate
her threads she brought from those older places past
Where nascent fauns with youthful voices fastly gleam and chatter
and deftly danced to delights in the silver meadows
When all was false and truth was shaded
all liars happily in reflections reflected
pale faces feinted in humorous deception
and all charismatic affectations were familiar expression.
singing songs of passing pleasures in strange dialect
All was serene was silver mirrors reflecting
save the flow of golden liquid cool and still
which seeped from sky to hill and then chalice filled.

I walk to see the lady
who has one eye black and one eye white
and carries a silver knife which- in moonlight flashes bright.
I will wearily watch for it's flashing tomorrow night,
for she doesn't know it, but I was also born of moon's pale light."

Part 2: (The lady singing)

"The meadow shifted softly that fateful night
in breezes blowing warmly and songs of ephemeral delight
melodies swell and shift like the swirling blades of grass
Grass not green but silver shining, all moonlight reflecting

Gods with silver hair and silver eyes danced in shifty iridescence
Voices sang clear and wandered wistfully through misty hills and hollowed places
Oh they delicately weave the lines of notes around my ear
under over between and in, I wish I could hear those notes again
but alas their time is passed-- the daytime took the nightly hymn

There are few who remember things as I have done, but waning pasts are of worth to none.
Oh the night was never meant to end
and it is left the earth but for what I have kept for mine, things broken never truly mend.
These silver threads for weaving time and fate together again
a mournful burden, but I cannot abandon them
for the tapestry of time is my from the gods of ancient past
As long as my fingers can touch the strings, my mind will see
what I have preserved in memory

the tapestry, though, will live before I die
All fates will cease to meet as edges cut
and gods will from sky return
to chase away sun in blue and silver flashing eye

And so I hurry to finish this task over which I mourn
so in silver laurel, I will be adorned."

she has green eyes
which rarely open at night
I daren't blink twice
in case time is wasted not staring into her lies
she expresses joy leaving me in a daze

she has green eyes
with a grin like a flowered dynamite
I daren't stare for more than a second
I know her ways
but she looks so nice
I thought I was wise
but I lay here in this purple haze

There were raised voices. Ingrid heard them. Her father's booming voice over her mother's screech. She stirred in her small bed. Pulled the blankets over her shoulder. Sheltered by the thick ex army coat of her father's on top of the blankets she snuggled down trying to shut out the sounds. It was Saturday, no school. She hated school, hated the tormenting kids, the lessons, the teacher bellowing at her. Only Benedict talked kindly to her, only he made her laugh, took her on adventures round and about, the bomb sites, the cinema, the swimming pool in Bedlam Park. The voices got louder, there was a sound of glass smashing. Silence followed, her mother's screeching began again, her father's booming voices trying to drown her out. Ingrid pulled the blankets tighter around her. She daren't go out along the passage until it was over. Even though she needed to ***, she held it in, thought of other things. Her wire framed glasses lay on the bedside cabinet her mother had bought at a junk shop. The thick lens were smeary, the wire frame slightly bent where her father's hand had clipped them when he slapped her about the head for talking out of turn. There was a small cut on her nose where the glasses had caught. A radio began to play, the voices had stopped. A door slammed. Her father had gone out. She poked her head out of the blankets. Music filtered through into her room from the radio. She got out of bed and stood on the wooden floor boards. Her clothes: dress, cardigan, underwear and socks were laid neatly on a chair where she'd folded them the night before. She opened the door of her bedroom and ventured down the passage to the toilet and shut the door and put the bolt across and sat down. The music played on. Her mother began to sing. She had weak voice, kind of like a child's. Ingrid played with her fingers. Pretended to knit, as her mother had unsuccessfully tried to show her, with imagined knitting needles. As she sat she felt the bruise on her left buttock. Her father's beating of a day or so ago. She knitted faster, fingers racing. She stopped dropped a stitch as her mother called it. She left the toilet and went to wash in the kitchen sink. She wished they had a bathroom like her cousin did. Her parent's bath was in the kitchen with a table that was let down when not in use. She washed in the cold water, her hands and face and neck. Dried on the towel behind the door. Her mother came in carrying a cup and saucer. She set it down on the draining board and looked at Ingrid. Get yourself some breakfast and then get dressed, if your father catches you in that state, he won't half have a go, her mother said. Ingrid went into the living room and got a bowl from the glass fronted cupboard and a spoon from the drawer and poured herself some cereals and added milk from a jug on the table and sat to eat. Her mother brought in a mug of tea for her and put it on the table and went off to the bedroom to make the bed. The music from the radio played on from the living room window she could see the streets below, the grass area beneath with the two bomb shelters left over from the War where she and other sat or climbed or played around. Over the street was the coal wharf where coal lorries and horse drawn wagons loaded up with sacks of coal. She ate her cereals. A train went across the railway bridge over the way;puffs of smoke rose in the air. Below boys played on the grass. One of the boys had offered her 6d to see her underwear, but she had refused. He shrugged his shoulders and said your loss and wandered off. 6d would have bought her sweets, a drink of pop, but she had her pride. She finished her breakfast and sipped her tea. Warm and sweet. She let her tongue swim in the tea. Benedict said he would buy her some chips after the morning film matinée at the cinema. Her mother said she would give her 9d for the cinema, but not to tell her father. As if she would, she mused, watching a horse drawn wagon leave the coal wharf. She drank the tea and took mug, spoon and bowl into the kitchen  and washed them up and left them on the draining board. She went to her bedroom and took off her nightdress. The mirror on the old dressing table showed a thin pale looking nine year old girl with short cut brown hair and squinting brown eyes. She only saw a blur. She put on her glasses and peered at herself. No wonder the boys laughed at her and the girls avoided her. Only Benedict was friendly to her. He said she was pretty. She couldn't see it, the prettiness. She turned. Over her thin shoulder she saw the bruises on her buttocks. Fading. Bluey greeny yellowish. She walked to get her clothes off the chair and began to dress. She wished she had a cleaner dress, she'd worn that one for nearly a week. The cardigan had holes and there were buttons missing. She did up what buttons there were and brushed her hair with the hairbrush her gran had given her. It had stiff bristles and a large wooden handle. She stood in front of the mirror and peered at herself. She put the 9d her mother had given her in her pocket. Ready or not Benedict would be there soon. He knocked his own special knock. Once her father answered and glared at Benedict and asked what he wanted. Benedict said, to see the prettiest girl in the world. Her father glared harder, Benedict simply smiled. How did he do that? How did he do that to her father? There was a tensive wait, her father glaring and Benedict looking passive. Then her father called her to the door and said, this here boy asked for the prettiest girl in the world; he must have got the wrong address. Ingrid went red and looked at Benedict. No, right address and girl, Benedict said,looking by her father's brawny arm at her. How she managed not to wet herself she didn't know. Her father just walked back indoors and left them to talk on the balcony without any more words and she never got a beating afterwards, either. Now she waited for that special knock. That rat-rat and rat-rat. She smiled at her reflection. Prettiest girl. Ugliest more like. Rat-rat and rat-rat. He was there. He'd come. She could hear his voice. She took one last look at herself in the mirror, wet fingered she dabbed at her hair. Time to go, time to get out of there. Her knight in jeans and jumper had come on a white horse to take her away; imaginary of course.

Anticipation
Hope

Winning
Ticket

Emotional
Millionnaire

Who
Stares

No
Sound  

She
Daren't

North
to
South

To
Hold
The
Prize

She
Won
Sixty
Years
Ago

Ripped
Apart

South
To
North

The
Lottery
Winner

Makes a sound, she is heard... she dared...

I write and write but nothing helps me get over Daren G.
he ***** and life ***** sometimes after my *** change
see been watching and getting better at this poet stuff
Daren G you made me hate you and myself life *****

Mom would say, “Your dad has friends,
Black friends on the police force, of course
We don’t set down to eat with them.
It wasn’t safe to say to her, “Ahem.
Did you hear what you just said?”
She’d swing one upside my head
And it would be like a garden gate
But with the weight of her stout arm
And the harm she could do with that
Sat me back down on my bony ****.

I wrote “black friends” but that is because
That was not the word she used, applause,
Applause. Clean it up for the publishment,
Don’t cause a resentment for the wrong reason.
It is never the season because I am white
And it’s never right for me to say the N word,
Haven’t you heard? They can, and I can’t
Even in a rant that describes the horror
Of living in a half right, all white world.

My fingers permanently curled into fists
So hard to resist saying to my parents
“You daren’t speak like that to the preacher
Or half of my teachers because they’d see
Just how deeply grained racism can be."
And both sides would take it out on me,
Just a kid, so I agree to hide what you did.
I agree to pretend you aren’t part of the problem;
Another prejudiced person, training me
Explaining to me how life really is right now.

You saying to me “Don’t put your lips there
On that fountain. Some N person might have, too!
And that made sense to you. Perfect sense.
You were that dense, that unquestioning, too.
Ready to do what your white society dictates
And making me into a swinging garden gate
If I don’t toe the line, and hold my confusion
While I pray for no contusion from the slap.
I hold hands in my lap and act submissive.
And I act like I accept all this as right
Because I am white. But, even though I won’t
Say a word at ten years of age, I don’t.

Everything in my body is weary, my bones don't feel like mine anymore, or real anymore, just simple slugs in my limbs begging me to move slowly and slime upon everything.

I'd rather hide in my sweater than face the world today, and I daren't try to hide my yawns and my sullen, sunken face, bare to the world that I am broken and sad today.

I want to be asleep, where I have a chance of waking up and this being gone. But I cannot do that, not yet, I must fight and live to die another day. How somber.

My hair is a frizzy mess and my makeup must be a disaster, I am sure. The lights dance just out of reach, out of touch, out of my way as i wander along the lonely dark path today has for me.

Tomorrow. I want tomorrow, where I can sleep and dream and beg for a life more than my own, to beg for some magic that will magic away these feelings of sorrow and unworthiness. I just want to be better.

At least my sweater keeps my cold heart warm.

a series of quatrains*

Anchor’s bound for hell as it falls
Sadly I watch the fast rope slip
It is gone, I need a strong sip
From a sailor’s bottle, land calls

In a boat, earth and moon move you
these deceptive cargo ships hide
the stash of smugglers, I choose
To rock back and forth with the tide

Such fearless ships save lives at night
and daytime too but not for thanks
for it also ferries heartbreak
when lovers part on boarding planks

A message in a bottle lost
was found on a cold Cornish coast
The message read “darling please
know my love will swim across seas”

I daren’t live by sea much longer
Oh! what I’ve seen, fear gets stronger
with every lapping slurp I hear:
the drowned whispering in my ear

Once I fished in this bay of shells
My line was frayed from reeling sharks
A blue whale fought me three miles out
In his bowel I awoke at last

Boat or ship? For now ‘ships’ they fly
A rocking chair, without duty
They float, enchant, sink but don’t cry
shipwrecks are a thing of beauty

Called the place a few minutes ago and ran my face under cold water.  
I knew didn't dream up getting my new start job and don't matter
about my *** change and didn't mention nothing about it.
Think Daren G was infatuation or something cause I stopped
crying already over him read poems on real love and not how
I feel about him think it was *** that got my body raging
thinking I could not live with out him being in my life.

The cloud settles over the moor.
Scottish peaks and thistle
darkened to shadow;
voids within voids.

A sheet, a film
of papyrus copper
plays reality.
It approaches the single paned window,
the abandoned outhouse.

It is deserted here;
one-and-a-half living souls
‘cross the entire landscape.

The story is in the air,
the tension toiling my innards,
scaling my arms to gooseflesh
and my mind to trepidation.

She’s here.

She is here and at the window.

Please, I hope, please
let it be a billowing of plastic
caught in the wind, movements
stifled by a telegraph pole
or some other cursed sign of company.

Occluding mass, she hesitates
by the window, I daren’t look,
but she is there all the same,
wailing achingly silent for reprieve.

I know why she is here.
I see it:

Thick rope. Crude, unrelenting knots,
I feel them press, cut with friction
into my wrists, twine like snakes,
devoiding me of life

one eternal day after another.
He prowls the door from time to time,
I fear it but it’s all that I have
save for the songs of the Tree Sparrows
that warm the winter.

He comes in to shed light to the room,
brings bread and milk, sometimes fruit.
More often than not he brings just himself,
presses me to the cold floor,

tries to make me feel something real,
demands my artificial praise.
He climaxes quickly, fills me with life, he says,
clutches my ***** hair, wracked with lice
and pregnant with the renewed hope

of his mercy.

None coming, I’m returned to my holster,
a stool upon an opened barrel,
I leave my messes behind,
the stench rising between my legs

and surrounding my senses,
until all of my life is nothing more
than excrement. Recycled, lived once
and then forevermore.

I live in my mind. Only the single-paned
window in this outhouse
offering an alternative;
most usually slate grey skies
and a barrage of hail upon the tin roof.

Outside of the window, I know
that life is something else. No books,
no words, no love, no music;
yet the weak Scottish light still
pierces the glass,

light always finds a way.

And then one day or one passage of time,
it matters not,
my hero, my villain, my father,
came to me no more.

I rejoiced. I rejoiced in my starvation,
the waste of my muscle,
the overflow of the toilet bowl,
skin reddened and bruised and eaten.

No one would come, if indeed there was anyone at all,
I knew that.

So I waited for death,
as death had waited for me.
We greeted each other as friends,
archaic pen-pals, acquainted at last,

I embraced his touch,
felt more life in death than life
had ever cared to bestow.

I kissed death on the lips,
told him of my long-sought desire for him.
He turned, a glint of silver,

and I found myself
on the other side of the single paned window.

Looking in, I saw only my regret.
The stool, the barrel, the waste
that had strewn the floor,
had surmised my life.

It was a sight unfit to un-see,
and so I stood in my perfect sanctuary,
never turned to look and face the light,
and instead stayed only to lament.

And so now I look into the old outhouse,
decades of decay improve its sight.
Old moss gathers over the fingernail marks
that I had carved so desperately
into the flooring.

Forevermore I stare upon my regrets,
forevermore I opaque myself
in half-existent smoke,
tapping on the window.

Upon this I look, a deep plunge of horror;
my heart freezes in frame,
upon a young woman’s face,
no more than fourteen years.

It is locked in a scream, a sense of despair,
eternal and rite, forever in shame.
A life lived in terror, naught but a tirade
of brutish **** and desperate privation.

We lock eyes for a moment,
enough proof thus,
that there is life beyond misery,
if one cares to look.

In this moment, it seems, a spirit has found us
Alone or together our strength is boundless
Our thoughts reach further than one has ever dared to go on foot
A flurry of hopes; both old and new flicker before us
Our light floats in a sea of faith
As read by the virtuous figure “joy and courage go hand in hand”
Thus creating a heartened happiness.
We find laughter in one another
Adversity turns its face to the shadows and hides from safety
Once we have returned
A free spirit is left behind
It waits to be rediscovered
By she who yearns so passionately for it
But it daren’t make a sound
It remains yet unfound

Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, up on the bluff,
He’d spent his life as a rover, and
He said, ‘I can’t get enough!
The sea, the sea, the lure of the sea,
It whispers at my front door,
And calls to me, here up on the bluff,
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’

‘But I can’t go down and I won’t go down
For I daren’t go down, you see,
Not since I was caught in the maelstrom
When the seabed beckoned to me,
My mate had clung to the mast, while I
Had lashed myself to the rail,
And he went down to the stony ground
Along with the yards and sail.’

‘I hear the sound in my ears still
The roar of the whirling pool,
I’d cried, ‘Let go of the iron chest,
But he’d not let go, the fool.
It was filled with gold and pieces of eight,
Dubloons and precious stones,
It carried him down to an awful fate
Is spread, all over his bones.’

‘But I clung on ‘til the turn of the tide
I could almost touch the ground,
My head was spinning, deep in the pool
As the ship whirled round and round,
But then the tide began to subside
And I said goodbye to Bjork,
For then the ship rose up to the lip
And popped right up like a cork.’

‘We’d sailed forever the Spanish Main
The ship, Bjork and me,
And searched the atolls of rocks and sand
Of the Caribbean sea,
We found the treasure that Blackbeard hid
In a shaft, six fathoms deep,
Then Bjork had pined for Norwegian lands,
Said, ‘What we’ve got, we’ll keep!’

‘The further north that we sailed, the sea
Grew surly in its ride,
The waves crashed over the foredeck and
They tossed us, side to side,
The squalls came in and the rain came down
And we had to reef the sail,
The water rose in the bilge, until
I thought we’d have to bail.’

‘But then one night it was flat and calm
And the water lapped below,
I heard the voice of a siren then
That whispered, sweet and low:
‘Come down,’ she said, ‘you can rest your head
And give up your earthly seat,
But lie instead on a seaweed bed
With a mermaid at your feet.’’

‘I think of Bjork on the ocean bed
Though I don’t know where he lies,
His bones are covered with precious stones
With two dubloons for his eyes,
I’ve never been back to the sea since then
For I fear it, more and more,
As still it whispers on moonlit nights
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’

Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, facing the sea,
He seemed remote, but a final note
That he wrote was left for me.
‘My days of watching the sea are done,
I think that I’ve had enough!’
And then he strode as the tide arose
And walked, right over the bluff.

David Lewis Paget

(Inspired by E. A. Poe’s ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom).

I daren't (rather, shouldn't) breathe:
I'd built a tower of hearts from cards.
The gaps and breaks are real estate --
I'm nestled in the in-betweens.

                                              (Sapp­**'s spirit sighs.
                                              How human to not move quickly enough,
                                              or to yearn for whatever's inches from reach
                                              - blissfully unhinged by "almost".)

She's marble-carved and still as stone:
if I kissed her, would she spring to life?
I'd offer nought but foolish flesh,
this trembling frame, and bone.

                                                          ­  ("Tell me yes, tell me no;
                                                             either way, you're in the right,
                                                          ­   but for the love of Venus -- speak.")

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!

- William Allingham
(19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889)

It's that time again folks,
Bikini weather,
Well, maybe not for me.
The six stone babes are out in force,
But i am ten stone three,
I daren't go out with such big *****,
Those girls are small and pert,
I think that i'd make two of them,
I think i'll wear a skirt,
Oh look, the ice cream van approaches,
I'm going for a poke,
Those girls need two egg cups and string,
But i need two buckets , and a rope!,
I look with dread upon my thighs,
And sigh a moan of stress,
While barbie and the sindy dolls,
Could wear my shawl for a dress,
So in i go, indoors for now,
Til the sunshine turns to wet,
Please god, if you can't make me thin,
Then please make my friends fat!!!!

First day new job went better than I hoped.
Worked as domestic for a few years guessing
I would always be one but nice lady said
life skills meant I qualified for better pay
and higher up jobs so I applied and got it.
Thanking nice lady again for help in making
me know I was born to do something better
in life than I was doing and no more crying
over spilled milk man like Daren G.

Bones are ****** dry and carcasses are licked clean
Voices are taken away
Who would be there to tell you,
that you do not deserve this?
They are obliged to make every dream of yours
a combination of different hells.
The banshee is a devil,
for she daren't call for you;
and you daren't call for her.

These staircases spiral into traps
and the sun cuts these diamonds like a blade;
the night hides all the faces you have ever dreamed of
and sleep leaves you drenched in the venom of your very own fears.
Few knew how many battles have been fought in a losing war
and fewer knew better than to make it out half alive.

Perhaps a blessing in disguise,
or a master of disguise:
when they leave you alone, they really do.
and it'd be less of a chore
to speak to yourself, instead of for yourself
or to those around you.
An eagle is born to be held captive-
and when they will you to fly,
you would.

Some wake in the dusk
Some brew the wrong cup of coffee
Some brew the same kind of storm
It's hard to know if you were awake
or alive
when your name never did sound right
coming from someone else's lips.

It was not so good
with me and him the first time.
he made me feel like he cared
but said you aint what I need
scared not finding another lover
who cares about me
that is why i is a holler back girl.
nobody wants to marry a used
up one like me no more
i write when i am and not is
learned that is correct way to say it.
reading and liking virginity poems
tonight just gave one of the little
hearts to one i read like it
was about me and my mean ex
I think I hate Daren G.

I
 
Why do I keep looking at you?
Today another photograph
pinned me to my notice board.
You, darling, dearest girl,
a woman so finely formed
by motherhood, I ache
to think I have lain beside you.
Nobody has your smile,
the sweep of your face
beneath hair that has become
my rest, my home.
 
 II

I daren’t write about your voice
but I will, as it holds me to you down this phone.
I feel its formants rest on my shoulder
          (like your hand)
and  so compassed about with phrases
I am gathered to you in a shower of syllables.
So when you say I don’t want this to end
our talk together my body breaches
dolphin-like from a cold sea – in joy.
 
 III

I realise in imagined talk with you
it is as though we are close in bed,
so close hardly a whisper’s spent,
barely a breath’s taken.
This is how it is when I walk alone
in the night-time park,
and then today in the shopping mall
I forced myself to enter, a short-cut
I said, but knew I’d regret the route.
How could I talk here to my love
when I have known you
under islands’ skies and soft air
kissing deeply at every gate
our hands unclaspable
steering our passion’s cargo
to home and harbour.

In the bitter spring we do not sleep.
The Ides of March unforgiving, reap
silences, times that keep
souls that inconsolably weep,
baby birds refuse the seed,
winter comes, four months deep.

Roots have shriveled buried deep,
corpses rot although they sleep,
they are the dirt for new seed,
this is the fruit the farmer daren't reap.
Childhoods where we could not weep,
fade to promises we could not keep.

Why do ravens turn from the towers, that keep
the king buried six feet deep.
The villagers do not weep,
they too have fallen to sleep
The Devil’s hand was there to reap
death’s long forgotten seed.

God has planted one mustard seed
the only thing there was to keep,
because there is no reward to reap.
The mortician dug in his pockets deep,
all his clients are fast a sleep,
he sits in his chair and refuses to weep.

His wife sits in a rocking chair to weep.
She is lacking of seed,
knowing that she will be next to sleep.
A single child she could not keep,
The needles puncture, puncture deep,
for it was his child that she could not reap.

Winter winds have come to reap
the tears that some have refused to weep
in a crystalline jar buried deep
like some vengeful seed,
the secret that the grounds keep,
in the place where creatures refuse to sleep.

In the lack of sleep, it is then we reap
a safer place we then keep, we weep
the seed lies within our hearts, no longer buried deep.

The First Poem of the Day: Thou are not Nameless

I shall call you
Lovely,
for unenumerated reasons.
Yet you may account, accept, number,
my unseen caring, daren't to disbelieve,
as reason number
One.

Naming you is a perk,
Awarded to myself by myself
For somethings are too
Marvelous,
Like those words that are
my principled friends,
Principals and principles, not or,
These words, like you, you, you, like Lovely and

Goodness,
   All the days of your life,
   even tho so many are devoid thereof.

I tender to you. To myself. This
First poem of the day.

Screen name only protects so much,
You can't screen, veil out the
Brutal and the ugly, the dread of
Just Another Day.
The shrieking silence from the pretend friends,
The holy dark inside that we born with.
Hurt, you think you know only, best,

So Here is this something  you can rely on,
Something you count on as reason number
One.

Amazing that with words,
really each a miracle,
Stop, think upon it,
You understand me
because of the uncommon commonality,
the community of words,
A universe of words shared,
Principal words are principles.

So empowered are we,
I cannot leave you Nameless,
How could I,
Oh I cannot alone save you,
Tho I desperately want to
Because we share
principal words that are principles.

I name you lovely and goodness,
Could not leave you ever Nameless
Here now and in this, the
First poem of the day.