No More Bridges

You take out your blade
and cut down the clouds.
Their softness a blight
in your hard edged world.

You collate all the bridges
and you set them a burning.
Until everything's destroyed
but their rusted-out bones.

You drag the singing bird
down from the cloudless sky.
Its feathered beauty, stretched
and ragged in your idle hands.

You judge the nods and winks
as evidence of your belonging.
A cracked glaze on a broken pot
that leaks, and spills, and stains.

You think it is just beginning,
the tide rolling in and carrying
your long awaited ship in its swell.
You do not see the rocks you made.

And you can straighten the cushions,
put on the kettle, and bake a fine cake.
But your house is barren, and the path
to your doorway is covered in thorns.


Written for The Sunday Whirl - using all of the words.

A strange and bitter tale arose out of these words for me this week. I 'got' the first two lines and just went from there.

Not Broken. . .

I am not broken - I am dancing

Forgive my feet
while I learn the steps

(I'll stick to the shallows
until I can face the ocean)

I am not broken - I am dancing

Sunlight across my shoulder
a mantle I'll gladly wear

(forgive my false causes
as I drop all my woes)

I am not broken - I am dancing

I will draw back the bolt
that kept my door locked

(and applaud as hoops topple
I'll jump through them no more)

I am not broken - I am dancing


Written for The Sunday Whirl
I wrote this on Sunday but wasn't pleased with it and thought maybe I would try again later in the week, or even give the wordle a miss this week! The words really didn't flow for me this week. But I have decided to post it anyway as I really don't like to miss the Sunday Whirl. :-)

Scarred . . .

For Poets United's Midnight Snack

Autumn wraps around me,

like a cloak.

Spent leaves,

falling.

Shards of stained glass,

swirling.

Firebrand fingers touch

the ground.

Long shadows, stark and blatant,

trace your steps.

Words fall from your lips,

like bombs.

Detonating on impact
with my heart.


Inspired by the picture above: Rage by AnnaMariaDeMari at deviantART

He is Gone. . .

She swallows hard, closes her black lashed lids,
head tilted back against the heavy organza drapes.

Listens as his automobile roars. Kicking up gravel
like a rambunctious child, it squeals away into the night.

The hat-rack is empty, it stands like a punctuation mark,
highlighting the fact that they are both now rendered obsolete.

By his departure, he has purged the ballroom of its dancers.
Left this big old house fallow. Already she senses the decay.

He will be long gone, into that world of whisky and neon.
Backslapping cronies will admire his balls, keep his thirst slaked.

While she will chase a solitary crumb of hope around this vast room,
worrying at it as she ages. Wondering what she could have done better.

Her life a stagnant pond. She needed him to stir the surface,
bring life to the brown muddy water she had become.

Once she had sparkled, gushing and singing as she rushed,
over and around the rocks in her path. Once she had been fluid.

But she had let the sides of her life be narrowed by silt. Until
her channel was a trickle, mud banks keeping her static.

Her garden overgrown. She had relied on him
to keep it weeded, to nurture the beauty there.

When he had stopped, she'd watched, powerless
as her flowers were strangled and died.

Oh how she had hated him for that.
And now he was gone.

It is your responsibility now, he had shouted,
as he had bounced down the winding stairs like ball.

It is my responsibility now. The words rang
over and over in her head, like a bell.

From deep within she felt the water rise,
it bubbled, it surged, it burst the banks.

She opened her world weary eyes, there was a light.
Her parched life, irrigated by water springing from her core.

She watched as all around her, new life sprouted. The ballroom
now filled with flowers. Birds singing in the dead of night.

She threw back her head and laughed as joy took flight,
whirling around her head like a cloud of butterflies.

It is my responsibility now. The words rang
over and over in her head, like a bell.

It is my responsibility now.
He is gone.


Written for Wordle 25 at The Sunday Whirl (using all the words.)

Tricky words this week I thought - but it just stretches me to write something I wouldn't usually! I didn't really know where this was going to go until it went! :-) If you know what I mean.

It would have been so easy to write an unhappy ending - but I don't like those, so I didn't. :-)

Lost and Found

NIGHT (dark) LOST

The church spire lunged up toward the heavens,
piercing the clouds and making splinters of stars
that fizzled and dazzled in the blackness of night.

The shadowed cobbled walkways were now empty,
and midnight and its neon signs screamed of adventure,
making promises to all those who were lost and alone.

Long litter lined streets, stalked by loud youths and
too naked women, who criss cross the concrete like chalk.
This is no place for fearful souls who can not face the shadows.

Myriad headlights, cars rushing on their way to somewhere else,
except for those that slow crawl the circle of city streets,
looking for short skirts and street corners.

Sitting on this cold hard bench, amidst the take away cartons,
the drunken shouts, and the smell of stale urine in the air,
I close my eyes and try to remember who I am.


DAY (light) FOUND

I was fearful and lost,

alone and in need of adventure,
the circle that I was walking was too small.

I paced the streets,
searching for something concrete,
I was looking for signs, looking for salvation.

Effervescent water splashed,
creating music in the cobbled courtyard,
the church spire towering like a needle sewing clouds.

I looked up at crows whirling,
acrobats in their blue sky playground
and I imagined they were calling out my name.

And the moment sparkled,
called on me to remember something,
something long forgotten or maybe never known.

Myriad doorways flung themselves open
and the muddy stream of my thoughts settled at last.
In that pure clear water was a perfect reflection of my face.


Written for this weeks wordle at The Sunday Whirl

I had trouble with this weeks wordle words!

Church and cobbled just didn't seem to flow into anything I wanted to write.

So I persisted and actually wrote three different pieces. I have put two of them in this post as I think (hope) that they work together.

As always even with words that make me stumble, I really enjoy the wordles.

- Susannah :-)