Heartlines

I am a man
I am a man

I am a man born of a woman who was fit and healthy
I am a man born of a woman who had an unseen virus

I am a man whose father worked in a shop
I am a man whose father worked in a factory

I am a man whose birth brought pleasure to my parents
I am a man whose birth brought pleasure to my parents, but also pain

I am a man who grew as most men grow
I am a man whose growth took a different path

When I was five, I went to the local school
When I was five, I travelled 10 miles to school

I walked to school
I went in a van

I played football
I cannot walk, I use a wheelchair

I am ordinary
Apparently, I am special

My parents made me feel special
My experiences made me feel anything but special

I went to University and gained my degree
I went to a ‘Centre’.

I go to the local pub
I can’t get into the local pub

I am a teacher
I cannot talk

I have trouble finding a parking spot
That’s no problem for the driver of my van

I am thirty, married with children
I am thirty and still live with my parents

I look after my children
My parents look after me.

I will live long and see my children married
I may live long and see my parents die

My children will see I’m alright as I grow old
What will I do when my parent’s die?

Malcolm Henshall
December 2018

Workers having a break
High above America they sit
If they fall the earth will shake
Workers having a break
Future warning for men to keep awake
Lean into the past, don’t avoid it
Workers having a break
High above America they sit

A triolet by Jim Mallin

Verb – an eager, tail-wagging little word,
running wide-eyed between its bigger brothers;
words such as conjunctions, prepositions.
One of grammar’s doers, never content to lie
supine, always knowing that action
speaks louder than other words.

Pronouns are full of their own importance;
adjectives are pure decoration and nouns
are merely appellations. The sturdy verb,
though, moves mountains, spins the galaxies
in their endless courses and propels the heart
through the cannon-muzzle of emotion.

The verb is the jewel in grammar’s crown –
far superior to the common noun.

Copyright © Bill Fitzsimons 2009

My neighbour is an angel.
I can hear her wings flutter
at night, her celestial voice
harmonising with the thrum
of the universe.

Each morning I open my door
and see a trail of silver
angel-dust leading from
her house to mine – I feel blessed,
touched by her heavenly presence.

But no – that is a lie.
She is a fallen angel,
one of Lucifer’s legions,
condemned to an earthly existense.
Her feathers droop dejectedly,
her voice a demonic croak
at odds with heaven and humanity.

Each morning I open my door
to the stench of sin.

Bill Fitzsimons

You were lighter than the wind
In my hand
Your hollowed places, and the hole in you
Through which I could see my own skin

Opalescent gleaming, shell-like pearling
So breathtakingly breakable,
Yet forming a tower, a pyramid
For the tiny things of life
Spiraled with gold
And earthern colours.

At one point I dropped you
So small you were I thought
I’d lost you

Were you really a shell, or a leaf
Or a whole universe in half a centimeter
Of sea-bottomed spiraling
Pretending to be something solid
Not quite white,
But shining.

I expected to have chosen something bigger,
Something bolder, less broken.
I don’t really know anything
Except a shining, sea-bottomed smallness
And a becoming which can
Hold everything.

Eileen Neil

Pale as a pearly moon hanging in translucent clouds
Your scales shimmer as you glide serenely
Wafting through the green and garnet undergrowth

You pause and hide, shyly beneath the rampart walls
Of the underwater castle, your breath softening
Your gills barely whispering the watery air through your body

Are you sleeping that secret slumber of deeper waters?
Of worlds unseen by those who walk the surface,
Of dreamers, of dancers, of singers of silence, of poets

Your own poem births now, in a single graceful leap that breaks the surface
Water shatters shards of silver light, light falls as ripples
Splashing your wordless words like messengers from beyond the world of air

Like bursts of jubilation, like effulgent sunbeams, like angels
Words from watery crystal clarity spring
For a second, or was it for many lifetimes? That moment of leaping?

You slide now with infinite grace down to the deeper life again
Content with the circles you created on the perimeter of your world
You search these depths once more for your food

Small creature of such pearly scales, of rose pink eyes, of life filled water
Wafting through the green and garnet undergrowth
Your scales shimmering as you glide serenely by

Eileen Neil

Solitude makes an unlikely companion
Impossible really
As birdsong wafts in through
My uncurtained window
A mistle thrush, the uncensored urgency
Of a tiny wren in the hedgerow
And the melodious blackbird
Perched on the wire

Who called this state alone?
When the heavy blossom of
The wild cherry drops itself
Like confetti into my hair
Scattering its white pearls
Freely on my path

What is solitary anyway?
In a world full of things that grow
That share the same earth
That breathe the same air

I pretend I am alone
While all the time
Through my uncurtained window
The universe bombards me
With cosmic rays from
The beginning of time
And stars blink at me
Unfailingly bright

What strange stories a human mind
Can tell itself
In this radiant bath of everything
Solitude makes an unlikely companion
A dream perhaps?

Eileen Neil

The path led nowhere, just ended in bulrushes
hiding a marshy bog, and I slipped in
up to my ankles. A kingfisher flew up and away
alarmed at my expletives, as I struggled to retrieve
a boot. The rustle of the rushes swaying in the breeze
like a ripple of laughter, followed me up the path,
fading as I plunged deep amongst the clinging downy birch,
bird cherry and hawthorn, searching for the place
where we last sat together.

High above, the ash and sycamore
waved their tall branches in a dance and I gazed upwards,
earth bound, and alone, longing to spring into their arms.
Around my feet the fragile flowers of dog’s mercury,
And nodding bluebell crowded, calling for me
To rest among them, and as I sank down, I saw
Shyly tucked behind a twisted oak root the delicate forget- me- not.
This was the spot.

Drusilla Long

They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
schoolchildren once, now grey-haired,
stiff and pompous, propriety made flesh,
cod gasping on the deck, flapping but almost dead.

The one who laughs a lot, the sporty one,
the fool, the quiet thoughtful one, the tyrant,
peddling their years between then and now,
purveyors of their own accomplishments.

But how it’s marked them. Some have bellies,
toenails thick and yellow, hair like Brillo
pads or cushion stuffing, absent teeth,
misplaced between fights, lovers, dentists, drinks.

A few who seem unchanged – the girl with gloss
black hair and manmade curls wearing
a dress so tight her knickers show, the one
whose bones and tongue are sharp as shears.

But the girl who played the violin,
(was bullied for her flair), now leads an orchestra!
Between us all, a hundred jobs, some
marriages, divorces, kids, a few deaths.

Our names declare ourselves, in letters
that require fumbling for bifocals
or desperate guesses. Some clutch at drinks
and dance at last, swaying too slow or too fast.

And me, well I am where I always was,
awkward in the corner, I watch.

Liz McPherson

I always have good intentions to write a poem every day for NaPoWriMo https://www.napowrimo.net/ but usually fall by the wayside quite early in the month.

2020 however is different and being stuck at home means I’ve had more time and on Day 8 I was still going strong. I chose a Sylvia Plath line generated by the suggested twitterbot https://twitter.com/sylviaplathbot). It’s a line from “Wuthering Heights” by Plath; “They stand about in grandmotherly disguise” and I used it as the opening line for my poem, “Reunion”.

In case you were wondering, the NaPoWriMo site tells us the following:-

there’s actually quite a respectable lineage of poems that start with a line by another poet, such as this poem by Robert Duncan, or this one by Lisa Robertson.

LM