Christmas morning

(By Sil, 25th of December 2020

Christmas morning

The rooks sing

Dogs circle the pond

Frosted water-mint

Under a pink sky

I left you breathing

This simplest of facts

Is no longer a cliché

Christmas is a tally of a year passed

Time’s own special attaché

The last twelve months -  

Marbles

That rolled under the kitchen sink

This Christmas morning

The choirs will not sing

And we will not bless each-other

With peace

Beyond disrupted human custom

Life is perpetually at ease

The quiet valley

That grows into light

As night pulls away her heavy train

Inside me a new heart is beating - 

The ghost of future spring

Part-Time Preacher

(by Gub, 27th of December 2020)

For me

You don’t exist 

You are like a folded shadow;

A part-time preacher

promising a  sermon

That never comes

I listen for words to lighten

the dark

For some noise to deaden the echo

Of my own voice - but no chords are 

Struck.

I am feint with hunger for sound 

Unhinged by my own interminable guide track.

When will you speak.

What noise will you make, amidst the clatter of my tortured thinking.

For if you voice a thought 

What will I answer back....?

Clara’s Dream

(By Gub, 25th of December 2020)

Crystal light

A Moon beam

On ice

Flakes sifting

Down 

Onto a frozen

Pine floor

The song of the

Troika bells silenced

The dancers enfolded:

Holding 

Life still

Breath held

Forever

A cold enchantment 

Or love’s promise ?

And Timeless 

Against the glistening  

Canvas 

Of white white snow

Heart Star

(By Gub 23rd of November 2020)

Could a breath exhaled 

Reach that far?

From a faltering heart

To a newborn star...

This fluvial magma

Of  blood stills

To the tideway point

On a crimson sandbar

Beyond the mantle 

Of a darkening world

Eclipsed by silent lights 

Souls search out 

Empty atoms 

To stowaway;

Being begins it’s journey

So quiet

An unsounded 

Prayer bell

Winds unfurl

Around the flag 

Whip 

Crisp air

Into the blue reach

Of a frozen 

Mountain 

Peak

Seek out new planets

New horizons

On which to settle

 

Breathe life 

Into passing cells

A delicate unfolding 

Pulse 

Echoes

Across time and space 

An answering heartbeat ...

The ghost of Christmas future

16th of December 

I thought I'd love you

but the last lick of fire

died out 

Life crowded me out

On the screen, we age 

Our edges blur

The articulate speech of lust

Is now but a quiet slur 

At the weekend I am a crowd mistress

Surrounded by

overgrown babies who,

In their disquiet,

want to latch onto my tit

Mouths smeared in transference lipstick

I'm just a shapeless plaything 

they use

on their sojourn to Hades

to tune up their emotional strings 

I charm I laugh 

But at the end of the day 

The verdict is: 

Not enough 

Says so the 50-year-old girl 

in a pink hoodie and plats 

They're listening

I try not to breathe,

And the truth is a stillborn 

but the queen on the wicker throne

Can't say so

Beware

says the man who plays hide-and-seek 

He hides - but you'll never get to find him

You won't drown but neither will you swim

A baby grows inside you

She is the ghost of Christmas future 

Throwing a punch and a kick 

Weaving invisible threads into a mind

Immortality's magic trick