Skinny's thread

Love Song filled me with warmth. I'm still beaming with smiles.

"Bluster flush and flake cheeks
flatter your kiss:
I'm arousal."

Smalls is elegant. So precise in its soft flowing contours.
Your second stanza is so evocative.

Your images are imbued with so many different charges.
Oh, my.

 

I'm creased from sleeping on the edges of dominoes.
I'm without condiment, hidden, dishevelled.
We're an earthquake, a warzone, an unholy mess.

Cupboards spew ribbons, all those
memories that no longer fit,
crowd together on the carpet, shaking hands.

Spent fizz rolls over in yesterday's news.

Albums of family affairs and young lovers, reinvigorated.

These greeting cards,
these spent gifts.
What made me keep that?!

The black caped devourer of declassified material
purrs and guzzles by my side.

The tomatoes were on the turn.
This aftermath tangs unpleasant.

Acid belch.
Dusty throat.
I'm boxed up.

This rave of sour, this riotous relocation.

Change down a gear and turn right at the river.

 

I am the sidewalk of vampires,
littered, with thoughts of the past.

....I'm connected to the struggle,
the catapult,
the skin of the rabbit....

Contemplating this blister under my thumbnail,
and when the bruise on my forefinger could have happened.

...Plump lips, my feral teeth are sinking
into the lust of a lonely vixen. This copse,
a dance, inebriates. The air sighs.....

I can't sleep
without dreaming.
Someone else
with white skin holds my hand through all the dark patches.

....I smell dirt, and hot feet.
Heather scratches my hidden nose,
in my burrow shelter... but now I am loose
and the wind and I converse
as the chase fires up.....

I don't have time to preen
or read every wrench,
the sobs of strangers in the ether.
Not now,
now that I'm old and plump, with
knees that hold in place my TV dinner.

I'm walking backwards through my peas and gravy, remembering, remembering.

 

Oooh! I love the way past and present meet in this poem.

 

This is the chill
of an empty grate.

Muddy dogs passed through,
brushed dandy by the skirting.

Warm tongues and bulk.

The chill of toes on these boards,
now snowdrops.
Spine tingled like a holly-sprig,
leaping goosebumped down the stairs.

Outside, the bones of autumn
lay frozen in the mink.
A massacre of grotesque twigs
swam breathless through the ice,

while inside, raspberries kissed hot air
and mistletoe bumbled its way through
lost punctuation.

Now I stroll this blushing lawn,
survey,
and pull discarded limbs,

stand to watch small landslides rush me,
rough and tumble my gloved hand.

 

wow, what an opening stanza! I love that feeling of awe some poems leave after I finish reading them, and so many of yours have that effect....

i'm speechless, really. thanks for continuing to post!

 

I tried to read you all in one night:
to find in your thread the makings of my cloth.
Too much. Too rich.
Each syllable vibrates; each image redolent with sight and smell:
evoking half-dreamt touch.
I feel unworthy of this muse.
But can't deny its light, its smile, its acid joy.
.......
Or
The reverie interludes in "Salad Days" seem so right 'cost they're filled with simple ideas of past strength.
"This one's for Fox" and "Not missing much" suggest to me a strange sense of angry objectivity; of finding wisdom of the world in longing. And you produced those at the same time as the playful "Trouble with textual intercourse" and the alluring "Smalls". Er, WOW !

I could go through them all - but it's too long a story for one sitting (though "The Ghost of Christmas Past" just IS the house of my youth in winter).

I can but marvel at your range: direct observation ("Scattered showers") to personal feelings ("Well, what would you do?", "That dolphin is like my heart") to imagined feelings of others ("Countryside Alliance").
You have shown me how to love to write.

"Never give up. Never surrender!" PQ Taggart

 

Can't wait until you get in full swing again skinny!

 

I saw the lightning fall that night.

I watched it dance a liquid tango
and bow to curse the elm.

We kissed here once,
but now the air is torn.

The ash of witches
lingers
thick and still

 

that's just sheer perfection... excellent, excellent job! Makes me think of Anne Rice's The Witching Hour for some odd reason... very cool!

 

My freezing fingertips linger as peeling paper strands curl at the window's foot.
Half torn cornflowers - icy parasols turned inside out - are lewd and shrivelled;
devastation gathers round the gash in the plaster, and the crack in the painted sill.
Flies hibernate here, in black caverns.

(Tonight you cruelly awoke, buzzing demon.
Drowsy drunkard, you should have stayed asleep
and not tried to fly through the magma glass of the bulb.
Stumbling and clattering and keeping a household awake.

Then out like a light. Ha. Cut down in your dozy, winter haze.
Dropped to the floor like a stone. Silence is golden.

I wandered, now, what to do. Concentration free for something else,
nerves now calm and settled, but how to reconfigure the predator's senses,
newly honed, but no longer required.....)

Tomorrow brings nothing but new condensation,
to dribble down these sad panes,
these ill-fitted spectacles in an old face,
with weather-worn cheeks, above sagging ribs.

Creaking floors and doors that shut in invisible breezes keep children awake here.

I ache for a tale of bloodthirsty villainy, a brutal romance, a mighty revenge.

But most likely it's the combined unhappiness of
centuries dead cows that stalls my sleep,
each beast chewing slowly round the crib
sullen, mournful, as in life,
but indoors, upstairs, pale hooves nestling silent in the carpet,
flanks of nothing lit and drawn by moonlight drizzled through the window's pain,
and long lows that gather around keyholes,
join the chimney breast's lament on nights when the wind can't sleep.

 

A pocket full of pins
bent double
like old men is
a good way
to stop the everyday
jinxes of untold numbers of witches
with nothing better to do
than file their nails and chitter.

I wear a hat topped
with hare's foot
and mistletoe
as I leave the house
at the crack of dawn when
the moon is still
smirking at all us busy types.

I carry a millstone
round my neck on a cord
and wear an undercoat of horseshoe mail.

Pick my way up the platform
with a stick of moutain ash,

everyday. I ride
the horseless, fiery chariot

cursing the witch that said it would be so.

 

I shuddered with the cold and damp of an old, old house just reading this. Favourite part - though I'm still thinking of other meanings - is the clash of "lewd and shrivelled", as if age and death in the country are both natural/ordinary and obscene at the same time.

And I enjoyed the way the first verse in "..Mary Baynes" suggested witches on a malevolent harvest. Sweet.

Happy New Year !

 

"Madelaine
had a doll.
Now plays guitar.

That thing about horses
old news now.

Madelaine sees angels
in the rain.

Sidles past the halfpipe
toes in dust,

glitter nails
chipped but happy.

Madelaine tugs at her sleeves too much."

that's classic. i hope your name is madelaine.

some of these poems are some of the best things i've read on this site... i feel like you've gotten better recently too.

 

* drops by and peruses the pages well written*
Thank you once again for a wonderful time in your thread sweet one

 

hi littleskinny.

i love the passing of emotions here,
the life the land the human soldiers on march....

lovely poem
i feel strangely happy after reading this.....more open
minded words thank you.

 

Thanks Saff, the Prof, gdhmomchild, ripple and anyone else I've missed off - I appreciate your kind words, and so pleased you can relate to snippets of my world! I am also heartened by the fact that your comments relate to poems far far back in this thread - it's encouraging to know that those pieces posted long ago are not condemned to history; that they will occasionally be brushed off and enjoyed again.

 

'Asunder' is beauty and poise. Quite sharp and stunning.

 

Wry smile.
It began in giggles and I looked again to laugh some more
and then I found the place you set out your stall,
and wasn't amused at all. Your bloated head,
disjointed, hovered over your gaudy advert.

Shocked by your sincerity, the clear and urgent pitch you make
to holler, beckon across the ether,
to me. A desperado, a wasted fool.
Yes, I could crunch my way through devastation
lick clean slicked feathers, aching heart, pave the way
for resurrection, compensation. I could engage, testify,
negotiate and lobby. I could hold my head up high.

But doubt hung from a gossamer sentence, and I checked you out.

I trawled the oily waters of the information age,
found the suspected fraud.

And I allege that this is not what you were selling,
this deceit is hard to swallow, ethics hamper my best choices
I can't engage.

 

We reached up once
and tangled our chest and fingers in a confusing bump.

We reached up twice,
and this time stayed collected, nimbly
twisted cord and cutting together
a team effort
balanced
four feet
on one stool
pressed together
holding our breath
and the sprig in place.

I blushed
as we disturbed
months old gossamer.
Old dust rained down on my face.

And then,
you exclaimed,
we were finally done.

A clumsy descent
feeling barnfloor with toes
brushing off fingers
while surveying the rafters.

And
while all the witches
recoiled in the doorway
and slunk back into the tar shadows beyond,

you kissed me,
and we were calm, now, in safety
our fear sealed up once more in superstition's wax.