Crimson Lips

My chalk crumbled
as I was trying to sketch your face,
with your crimson lips and measured gaze.
Your soft peppermint eyes are laced with black
treacherous arrows, ancient and tipped with poison
you used them to stalk me, avid with your wordless glare.
It burns you know, as they hit my flesh, they sting and smart.
I know full well that when the bleeding wounds have healed,
new skin will grow, it will be thicker and less sensitive
it will be immune to the darts your eyes dispatch
when your mouth is pursed and silent.


Linked to The Poetry Pantry

Recalled To Life

The constant drip, drip, drip,
slowly dissolved the rock of me.
Diluting my essence homeopathically
until I swam, one part me, a thousand water.

Sweat, saliva, tears, still aware, still me, still there.

Sun, burned light, ferocious and questing,
lit the miasma I had become,
not content with my fluid end, it condensed,
evaporated the amniotic sea,
wanting to understand dissolution
its probing light sought what was left,
when shape and structure were removed.

Would the I of my identity survive intact?

The water vapour of me rose in the heat,
steaming spirals, swirling ever upward
dross gone, I had been reduced
to the very nugget of me,
distilled and potent.

Recalled to life.

A Million Tiny Pebbles inspired by Magpie Tales

Inspired by Magpie Tales No.54 and the photo below.

You have
fractured and distorted
the very ground beneath my feet.
Shale slips, rocks roll, and a million tiny pebbles
hurtle into the crevices created,
when you triggered the landslide.
The warping of my bedrock.
Careless words, contained explosions,
blasted the once solid earth,
into which I was planted and bloomed.
Now my roots lie exposed.
I am no longer tethered.
I am adrift, fragile, bent by
the sudden gust of your breath.
As you opened your mouth,
to say goodbye.

Food inspired by Sunday Scribblings

The gentle air
The green, green leaves
The rushing river
And the pounding seas
The song of the birds
In dawns sweet light
The diamond stars
Set in blackest night
The soaring swallow
And the gentle dove
The soft warm hands
Of the man I love
The precious moments
That make me whole
All these things -
Food for my Soul

Sunday Scribblings

On This Occasion

It was the kind of occasion
that called for handshakes.
The smile you pasted upon
your perfectly powdered,
rouged and lipsticked face,
made me blink in disbelief.
Why would you pretend?
When your soul was melting
and dripping through the gaps
in your tightly woven fingers.
Some things are best left unsaid,
but not this, no, please, not this.
Petals, perfume, claustrophobia,
no space, the elephant in the room
is using up all of the oxygen.
Polite chatter covers the fissures
opening up in the solid ground
beneath our slick stilettoed heels.
You just make it to the exit door,
moments before your slipping mask
says everything that you won't.


For 3WW - (prompt words Blink Kind Occasion)

The Road Was a Spiral - Theme Thursday

Written for Theme Thursday and the prompt 'Spiral'

S P I R A L

The girl sat there silent

and thought of the way

that the circular path

she walked every day

bought her back home

to that familiar place

and that every return

showed a different face.

The road was a spiral

the bridges were burned

and she felt so much wiser

each time she returned.

Shadows are Vital - Inspired by Thursday Think Tank

The shadow black stripes, define you,
throw your light into sharp contrast,
give you a depth and a fullness
that without them would not exist.
To be manifest and well rounded
you need the light and the shade.
You are not a pencil drawing,
scrawled on a flat surface.
You have body, you have shape,
dimension, form and movement,
without the shadow blacks . . .
your colour would have no meaning.

Inspired by Poets United Thursday Think Tank prompt# 35 - Shadows

Across The Street

Inspired by this weeks Magpie Tales and the photo below.

She wanted to hide, curl up in a ball and cover her head, away from prying eyes. Even the slant of light through the tiny gap in the curtains felt intrusive, abrasive to her need for retreat. She yanked it tightly shut, angry that light had wheedled its way in, she needed darkness and silence.

She was trying not to focus on the the wind as it whistled down the chimney, sounding first like an express train, then a scream. She didn't know for sure if the noises were in the room or inside her.
She had heard screams like that before.

The door was locked, she knew it. She had turned the key herself and tugged at the door to be sure. But still she fought against the need to walk back over the lurid carpet to check it again. It was a matter of moments before her bare feet padded across the room and she leant her weight up against the panelled door. Her face resting against its cool surface, the solidified paint runs magnified in close up.

She turned the handle and pulled hard. It was locked but the slight play on the handle bothered her. She rattled it, her mind turning to screwdrivers and loose screws. She picked up the wooden chair with the red upholstered seat and the fake brass tacks and lifted it an inch from the floor, and then as she had seen in the movies, she tilted it and jammed it up beneath the handle.

She knew that he was out there. Standing across the street, staring up at her window.
He would have his hands plunged deep into his pockets and be shuffling his feet to keep warm. He would be watching for a sign, a flicker of the curtains, her face at the window. He would be praying that she would open the front door and run across the empty street and into his arms.

But she couldn't.

Not yet.

Story Inspired by Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings

S T O R Y

We need our story, a framework upon which to hang our lives.
The words are our heartbeat, the rhythm to which we walk. . .
or waltz, depending on the chapter.

Some sentences are so beautiful that we ride their meaning,
skilled and agile like a surfer to the shore.

Some are not . . .

But we turn the page and it is gone.
Just a memory, just another part of the story.

And the ever unfolding tale
moves on . . .

What An Atmosphere! inspired by Saturday Centus week 40

Week 40 of Saturday Centus the prompt is to use up to 100 words (not including the prompt) using the line "It was growing bigger by the minute..."

What An Atmosphere!

What an atmosphere and it was growing bigger by the minute. The tension in the room was palpable, you could cut it with a knife.

If only he had kept his big mouth shut, but too late for that now, his foot was well and truly in his mouth and the icy silence wasn't being helped by his Donald Duck impressions! Why did he always resort to that, when he had inadvertantly insulted someone.

I've told him before, even though it diverts attention away from his original remark, however good his impressions are, they just makes things worse.

It's his nerves you know, he can't help it.

Red Brick - Magpie Tales 51

Inspired by this weeks Magpie Tales and the photo below.

Wet red brick retains the memory of my footsteps

for I have passed this way before and will again.

Ever observant, the grey sky watches me walk,

storing each moment for when I have passed

and the only traces left of me have seeped

into the porous surface and disappeared...