A very small selection. I write mainly in the winter months. I came second in the Literary Mary competition at the beginning of 2009. I often display my poetry alongside my visual work.
Altar
Broken Torn apart Fired passion stands here Not empty But holding life breath Living Saying Remember me
(This was used as part of a Good Friday art installation in an Anglican Church, 2008)
Portent
perch portent figuration
a dream occurs
sometimes you must choose jewelled heart to let a part of you die
because you know if it lives
dark drape
the day will come unexpected spirit
emerge write indelible significance
fly - fall -too far
hit
cold - hard - stone
opaque haze.
Time turns it's feathered flesh to bone
and faithless spirit
dies.
Blossom and Bamboo
curved tips arching low in stillness dips light-flecked wish white blossom pleads pink
Letter
It is the life hardened. The tender shoot matured.
It has grown beautiful, its suffering has aged it -
born it again in fresh, clean, whiteness, on a silent sheet of speaking words.
Is desire empty?
Is desire empty? Does it reach into space To find nothing Or does it have direction And point the way forward?
Tiny Bones
I trod on fragments of bone, homosexual, Jew and gypsy. Unknowingly desecrating precious loved ones with my soles.
A heartless, human realisation - I did not know, until the man told me,
when he spoke, my world changed.
Brokenness took a new meaning.
Even the tiniest prejudice is a terrible thing.
I took one of the splinters - pressed it into my skin
and wept.
Love Me
love me with a passion pierce my soul point straight to the core of my being
no hesitation not even a blink no indecision just total direction to me
meet me in a clinging knot pull tight and then spread across the whole of my life
that beating heart which finds me entirely yours
Wire frenzy
I am a wire frenzy, I play erratically In continual motion. I cannot contain myself
The only thing making tears bearable is that I believe they matter.
They may make a difference on some level currently unknown to me.
If I believed in a God without a heart - maybe a God with a heart which was not broken - a God who did not travel with me...
then my weeping would be pathetic.
Scraper
I watched him try to de-ice the car. Behind him, I saw a broken bus shelter. I sought it, for my own house was falling - as quickly as the snow.
He was not looking at me so quietly I slipped past - light upon my numb feet - spirit shifting slightly within my tatty soul.
The safety glass; a shimmering lake - grey concrete shone with flickering highlights - touched with warmest sunlight. Gently...
It is beautiful in it's broken state - I weep - because of the thought of its release; in one angry fistful of fired up rage; someone has made this a place for me.
I have only hot tears.
I stand, unclothed, with diamonds sparkling between my toes.
No single image appears: On my kness, I search with intent, drop my cold face, hard into the glassy earth which presses flesh grievously.
cry - that I may grow wish - for spikes piercing eyes, because I do not want to see crave - for red tears, mingling within white and glinting surfaces want - soft, pink, blossom, to open up inside.
I pray to God; dissolve the glass - and heal me.
i write in a vulnerable place i hide and wrap my silent disguise in image and undercover words
wandering
make music with my sounding thoughts
hiding
say
but not speak
play
but not to bring forward
that which would show the hurt
but pain... it is the underlying feature of my life
i cannot move it I am built upon it
planted on it
held on to it with clutching hand
yet
shaking off i try
i try
with words
to drop the crumbled heart
Look To The Side
Look to the side
I see your side,
Saviour
Your scar meets mine holds its hand bloodied pressed felt together.
Too Much
Pull that zip, right up too high, and over my head. Pull that cap all the way round and round; with it take my neck. Pull my jeans right down and if they're not close enough to the ground I will pull them a bit further just too much so they will worry you and make you frown.
I have taken no painkillers
Who gave me that pain?
tablet small
round-red
dropped
through heart and head
to dwell in a flesh
of soulful sleep
in body
dead
potion creep
Who gave me that pain?
Three Minutes
I have three minutes to write of pain running through life.
Hide your heads you long necked birds in the sand throwing up particles with your splayed out toes run fast for your fear of sinking. Let your glassed eyes
pop
from boney-headed-bullet blackness beaks open orange with human shriek
Still
the terror pained expression will freeze in sun and push it deep beneath the thousand grained sea. See, it shifts below you.
Three minutes
over.
Why?
All metal, emotion scribe my frown.
Heaviness you press me down.
Mark me
and my words such are of silvered
lead.
Ring around my crown hang my heavy head.
From heart, no rising fervour
no passion fire or water flow
Only cavern, deep and dark
and question
burning so.
Foolishness
Refusal to see loss
Refusal to embrace pain
Refusal to see the body on the cross
It used to annoy me; that "Catholic" cross
with the body still on it.
For he is risen! He is risen indeed!
Keep the wood plain, and your mind totally free!
Why think of that horrid time
Please forget it, just leave it behind
For we are all power and victory now
All power
and victory
Are we now so independent?
So disconnected from the world?
What blessing then, do we have, in our poor state?
How do we think we will relate
in a Kingdom of God
revealed in every part
even in the wounded and damaged
and bleeding hearts
who among us are
and ever will be?
There need be no question of allowance
No matter to try and draw lines around the human soul
No anger, lack of understanding or question unanswered
If in the brokenness of life, we can embrace the whole.
One day, there will be no more tears.
But for now, we must live in fullness of life.
I would kiss your body (for my brother, loved always)
I would kiss your body
blood red...
seek to meet your inner wound
fragile thread...
life you held in strong hard hand
lying dead...
Now all has passed -
but still
the siren shrills and cries
like weeping sister, I,
over your dead, walking, body,
cry.
Bold type face
it is wrong to push grief into rhyme
it will be too full for each rounded line
to contain
fallingstill
the motions which swell in deepest pain
familiar words, too much used, which hide the inner tear
