J: jasperated #AtoZChallenge

Jasperated: mottled, streaked with colour. You handed me the cats-eye hard, like life, you said keeps you safe. That black stone skipped across rainbows jasperated in my heart.

I: ipseity #AtoZChallenge

Ipseity: selfhood; individual identity, individuality, from the Latin ipse ‘self’. There are no poems today: the words I woke up with refuse to match. The song my soul was singing, burned and crashed. Sitting here forlorn, wondering what to say I turned to my ipseity looking for a rhyme some words with gravity. As the darkness departed,…

H: hallux #AtoZChallenge

hallux: big toe. Plural: Halluces   You stopped. Pausing in our conversation, your hallux drew a line in the sand and urged me on ahead: “It’s not the end of the world,” you said. Our short walk together was over, I was to carry on as before. And when I looked back, the line had…

G: gloam #AtoZChallenge

Gloam: twilight. dusk. from high above the concrete jungle over the gloomy city domes the sun slips past the horizon purple clouds concede to gloam a lone star sniggers in our ears: “yours is this parched patch of earth, welcome home!”

F: Flacon #AtoZChallenge

Flacon : a small stoppered bottle, especially one for perfume. I keep you safe away from the prying ether trapped in a flacon that carries your after-shave sparingly opened for fear that the stench of the world will take you away from me. Forever.

E: exequies #AtoZChallenge

Exequies: funeral rites I brought you back home The exequies were over, your body folded away like origami sheets. Ah, but your soul belongs to me.

D: discint #AtoZChallenge

Discint: ungirded. Days forever etched The smell of sun-drenched skin The angles of your body Discint pools of claret Of which I drank too deep.

C: Croodle #AtoZChallenge

Croodle: to cower or crouch down; to draw oneself together, as for warmth; to cling close together, or nestle close to a person; snuggle In my cosmos you were the sun the stars, the light, the dark I clung to you till your harsh words shattered my universe Only I know how your whirling disguise pierced my…

B: Bilboes #AtoZChallenge

bilboes: an iron bar with sliding shackles, formerly used for confining a prisoner’s ankles. To the keep tonight i creep with keys to bilboes where i keep you hid dragging on your chain untamed in confinement tonight you feed on me.

A: aprique #AtoZChallenge

Aprique: sunny. Dawn gives way to aprique skies the games of the night are over for this day i slip off my mask and concentrate on being.

April A2Z Challenge: Theme Reveal 2017

You know, last year at the Austin International Poetry Festival I met some wonderful and talented people. I got lucky and they added me to a secret group where we discuss  our work, bandy around with words and generally have an interesting time. Apart from the few people I have actually had the pleasure to…

Morbid

You said my lines were morbid the lines on the palms of my hands, the frown that lined my face the lines that lined my verse and I would never amount to much.   I never meant to be morbid I only wanted to be the lake reflecting the trees on the other bank the…