Poetry

Memorial to a Marriage

Hand to hand,

Toe to toe,
Nose to nose, close… You exhale I breathe in.
It’s the morning, before the papers,
There’s sleep in your eyes,
Dreamy half-whispered words
Surf along the sunrise.
We are golden
in this embrace,
formed out of grace, and patience.
We love,
Which every law in every land
Says we do not deserve.
There’s a defiance in the warmth,
A roar in the whispers
Edges to the tummy rolls
and curves of thighs
and the heft.
The permanence of stone or bronze challenges –
“Test our mettle”
If you won’t make space,
we’ll make a monument to ourselves

E.C.

In response to Patricia Cronin’s sculpture, Memorial to a Marriage. 

 

Two Poems

Trapped
Hemmed in
If I could just
Take the deepest breath
And burst the stretch of my skin.
Too full of life,
But there is no buckle
Only my toes poking out of my shoes
Picking up dirt and rain from the puddles
Squeezed onto the ground earlier that day.
If I’m not careful, I’ll start to sniffle.

Loving, pure instinct
Does what it does
Unclipped, unfixed, lives.
Rainbow cape
=/≠ (delete applicable)
shroud of shame.
Playing catch up
From the start,
The finishing line is the same
But our field is full of plot holes.

EMC

Picture: Creative Commons

New Poem: Cloud Bound

The hills puff up kettle steam,

the loch is one big mug of tea.

My train rattles round

making noises like

a spoon tapping

along the banks,

clink clink.

 

The denser weather

closing in,

someone’s pulling the drawstrings.

Tissue paper torn and laid together,

waves where the sticky tape

doesn’t hold;

A flimsy fan in the face of a mere breeze .

Pressure funnels

air up

we head into a tunnel of mountain cloud,

darker now,

resembling a smoker’s exhaled breath

on a cold day.

 

EMC

Loch Lomond, Gustave Doré

Thaw

 

Icy polish drips
From frozen finger tips
Blushing rooftops reappear
Cheeky circles in the clear
At first
New old surfaces
Unexpected colour burst

Stepping out from hiding
Under the shelter of the white
A seamless camouflage unrelenting
United snow and sky
It’s like the artist took their brush
And smudged all of the lines

Hollow howl runs empty
Nothing left to carry
The bluster of waning winter
Dusting round the corner

EC

Photo used under creative commons license 

 

Home from Home

Colourful and calling
Out in conversation,
what language, a
Sing song along
I’ve never heard before.

Not dull or dank or grey
To merge into Scottish summer skies
or nearby brae
Instead rainbow feathers rush
A pink and yellow blur
Like drumstick lollies
Sweeties
For the lovebirds.

I hear that you’ve escaped,
originate
in a garden, penned
in an aviary too small for your ambition
And flair
Lighting up the trees and sky with warmth,
Softening the edges of brutal buildings
Edged with barbs, hard.
Like the population have learnt to do.

Painting the town,
A floating feather mural,
Leaving smiles in soggy footprints,
“Did you see those birds?”
Far from but quite at home.

E. Capaldi

This was written in response to a call for work about birds in city environments.

picture used under Creative Commons license

Halloween 🎃

What Are You Going to Be?

Scooby doo, and a crocodile
Nod hi when catching
Each other’s eye on the 9.45 into town
As you smooth down your Daenerys dress
In this sudden uncharacteristic moment, you… express yourself.

What would be fun,
What’s not been too done
What am I going to be…

Angels, devils
Jokes or efforts
Some go hell for leather
Could be youtube experts.
Or it’s a costume out the packet
Or somewhere in between
Bits and bobs bought from specialist shops,
Dust off moths from
Clothes at the backs of wardrobes.

What would be fun,
What’s not been too done
What am I going to be…

Confuse the ghouls,
Surprise the spectres
So they don’t mistakes us for kindred spirits,
But what they don’t realise
In the paints and masks
the covers the facades,
Are who we are,
Or part of us, an element,
something underneath.

Our superhero costumes are usually under shirt
As we do what we must to get through trials at home or work.
But for one night, we get a spin of the phone box,
And emerge.

There’s a witch at the bus stop
A pirate on the till
A unicorn in the toilet queue,
While the ring master waits for a free cubicle.
Pop art girls wave their goodbyes, walking Lichtensteins
Two legged spider friends go to dance
A wonderland rabbit running late,
hops quick past,
Dorothy’s plaits twist,
A Stormtrooper’s pissed
Men are women
And women are men
And people are characters
Rules transcend.

When immersed in a night of undress
What you put on uncovers the rest
Who we are, who we want to be.
Who would you be if you could be…

It’s all mixed up, what we want each other to see,
the signals we send, tapped,
to be mapped,
requiring translation,
From the subtle to the blatant.

The morning after
The 1st of November
goth eyeliner down your face,
Braving the walk of shame. Jaws is waiting for the station gates to open,
tomato sauce in their morning roll,
Spell broken.

Every day can hold more scares;
Than beleaguered die or a talking bottle of beer,
Day to day affairs
Can be infinitely more absurd,
Than merely dressing up.

Maybe a costume’s just a costume,
Nothing more nothing less
But the day still begs the question;
What are you going to be?

EMC

For National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day, and it’s now Autumn, which make the following by Keats the perfect fit.

To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44484/to-autumn

Pictured: Keats’ original manuscript, 1819, in the public domain, used under creative commons license

My Spine

Today I created a poem based on the order of book titles in my collection (thanks Huddersfield New College library for the inspiration!). Without realising I’ve probably placed certain titles together in a certain order, and when read as a text some of the words make sense or take on new meanings in unexpected ways. What do you come up with?

“Hot milk

we should all be feminists

why be happy when you can be normal

a girl is a half-formed thing

Harmless like you

your family your body

men explain things to me

if I’m scared we can’t win

hystopia

brand new ancients

I love this part

Spectacles

The Bricks that Built the Houses”