Inverted Yggdrasil

I reach my branches into the ether
  of zeroes and ones, a binary cloud
  organised and fractal
My twigs twitch and clutch
  the information overload
  taste the ebb and flow
Trolls don't hide under bridges
  but stomp in the open here,
  broken sludge in their wake
My buds are repelled
  the darkness frosts the edges
  turning them inward
Down I go, my roots
  reaching for earthiness
  away from illiteracy, politics
  blasting rhetoric
My toes quest like worms
  and push for warmth, goodness
The fires are raging above
  minds turned inside out
  thoughts splashed everywhere, corrosive
I become a stump
  and wait in the dark
  for the storm to pass

 Written in response to "The Almond Tree" by D H  Lawrence  at the Cardiff Bay Writing Group

Litany against fear

I was afraid of you
I knew you would upset my equilibrium
I knew you would
I knew we would make memories
  to hoard, a jewelled rosary for later years

I was afraid of you
I  knew you would open up my heart
I knew you would
I knew we would walk on, squeeze a blossom of baby's breath
  and twine fingers and thoughts through our lives

I was afraid I would not be good enough for you

Written in response to Sharon Old's "To our miscarried one, aged thirty now" for the Cardiff Bay Writing Group

Batter my heart

You wore yellow, when we met
by appointment, for our first illicit kiss
You, with a bottle of wine on the table
two glasses, though you had not waited to pour
You wore yelllow on your finger
your wedding ring, a guilty gilty gleam
We spoke circles around each other
(will we? shall we?), coiling certainty with doubt
We leaned closer, willing
and unwilling to close the deal
You, like an usurp'd town to another due


(Prompted from John Donne's holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god)

There is no try...

I believe in failure
  waiting to trip me up at every opportunity
Do nothing, the easy way to fail
Try, and yet, fail again
  at something different
I try to do the right thing, but there is no reward in heaven,
  only the world turning around to bite you
    somewhere new
I stopped believing

Musings of Gaius Hosidius Geta

I wanted it so much, to be venerated and remembered through the ages. We knew Ozymandius, far beyond his own era, and although people didn’t remember his words or deeds, his name and statue lived on and on.
I commissioned Alessandro Ferrante. I bought a fucking quarry outside Carrara, the best pale pearly marble going. I was the greatest general of my age, fame beyond my country. My name resounded, now. But to be cemented (ha, yes, pun intended) I wanted a statue.
Ferrante showed me the design, my proud chest and embossed shield. Horse maned headdress. Aquiline nose. And yes, twelve times life size.
My fucking statue. Stick that, Petronus.

Prompted by "Rain of Statues" by Sarah Lindsay in Cardiff Bay Writing group meeting.

Still me

Every life is a tangle of moments

running one to the next
Blinking
Slowing

The rope dancer turns
arching arms, sharp angled wrist
commands the lithe rope
a complicit cage
Blink

The sound has stilled
closed eyes
The next moment I am with her
the rope licking at my ankles
composing me
striking my old frame
into a pose, reaching
Blink

For another to photograph
print up and pass around
challenge others thoughts
of stillness
Sit and imagine my moments

Blink




The postcard is from Dave Daggers, and was a prompt from a Cardiff Bay Writing group meeting

Ophelia

The tree is bare
Ophelia
The streams are full
of leaves
The leaves are full
of holes
Ophelia
full of torment
atmospheric wrestling
sheared silhouettes
burnt Saharan light
Dust tipped waves,
the sea smells windy

A warm up exercise (from the tree is bare/ the tree smells bare/the tree smells windy/ the sea smells windy) written outside in the wind.

Without words

The four cornered gulls tumble past, crying and screeching, chasing each other and flirting with the wind. I watch their white speed flashes from my tower window. They sit on lampposts and fight for the best perches.
In the street people noise drifts from under the raucous clamour of the birds.
Chatting.
Shouting.
The piercing beep beep beep of the pedestrian crossing.
“Come on,” a woman says to a child.
The insistent thump of car stereos, never to any tune or rhythm I can pinpoint from up here.
Wind ruffling through the leaves, showing me their silvered underbellies
Multiple people and creatures, clumping together.

The windowpane is cold to my fingertip, I stand back lest I mist it with my breath.

Written as an exercise at the Cardiff Bay Writing Group meeting; write of something (like silence) without using the words for it...

When it was over, we...

When it was over, we didn’t know it. Life didn’t flag this up as being the last time. There was no falling out, barely even a falling away.

Things carried on as normal, busy, a little more distance.

It was only looking back, to that day walking along the promenade, that we realised we had lost something. Fallen out of love.

Written as an exercise at the Cardiff Bay Writing Group meeting; write something starting with the sentence fragment "When it was over, we..."

Walking around the bay

Written to a prompt of "write something about Cardiff in 5 minutes" at the Cardiff bay writing group meetup last night.

So narrow, the world, recently
Head travels only, thinking
overthinking maybe,
the steps to get to the water

The submerged grid of pebbles outside the flat, blind mans crossing
The herringbone brick pavement with its dips and slants, leading
around the corner, down the street

The bilingual sign posts many ways, mermaids and hamadryads here

Resting on red ironwork, hearing the snick-whoosh of cars
speeding up to the bridge

My leg anchoring me but mind travelling on
across to the Taff

Tomorrow, maybe, to walk that far
to watch the swans, white holes in the pewter glitter
bending their necks at the flightless bird.

Of Spiders & love

This piece was written at a Cardiff Bay writing group meeting, with the title being given by the last line of Angeline Harrison's poem "Good Gig"

You appear in the autumn
vibrant, enriching colours
brushing aside web drifts of fog

Leaf showers
abundant golds and rusts
The end, the decay was there
    if I had taken breath to notice

Water globes caught in patterns
laid out in the air

Parcelling up
  Smothering threads
    preserved inside
      until you consume me