Alex

He is wise, wise and wizened;

hair thinning, salt and pepper seasoned;

brow lined and furrowed,   quizzical? 

Brows: bushy, grey and wiry;

eyes blue and vision fading;

nose: large and Roman

(now too long and thin (he thinks) -

My, I can almost see where bone blanches skin). 

Cheeks: skin thick and craggy;

mouth small, pursed and wrinkled;

chin cleft, stubble sprinkled.

Ah, and below the chin –

the bugger that will be the death of him. 

Untreated – he too old (he thinks)

for wrath of radiation beam

or cruel brunt of surgeons knife.

So this is he, this is who he is

above the faltering heart in heaving chest –

his face an echo - a diary of a life well-lived. 

His mouth clenching pipe, pipe-puffing,

puffing pipe (vanilla flavour and aroma)

he reminisces on the joys of yesteryears. 

He is alone – yet not lonely,

his memories’ - companions of his past and present. 

(He sips Jack Daniels – no, swigs it back,

his body welcoming each soothing warming mouthful.)

He thinks: if death comes tonight I hope it comes easy –

no crushing pain of heart arrest…  

But should he be blessed to live another day,

to see tomorrow – he will live it for the love of it. 

But should he not he knows    (yes he knows)

that those that gather grimly at his graveside

to pay homage to his passing spirit,

will sigh,    smile and softly say: 

Ah Alex,

he lived life for the love of it.

Anna :o]

An oldie regurgitated and shared in these strange times.

Stay safe!

Shared with the good folk at Poets and Storytellers United, hosted by the lovely Magaly – cheers Magaly!

Also shared with the good folk at dVerse OLN, hosted by the lovely Kim- cheers Kim!

Image:  Courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons

Source:  https://burusi.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/romanoz-gvelesiani/

One Night Stand

An elaborate ritual,

you dance behind

my shower screen.

Intimately connected,

I watch

as you wash away

the memory of me.

Cleansed,

you leave,

passing me

without recognition.

Anna :o]

Shared at dVerse OLN, hosted by Grace– cheers Grace!

Also shared with the good folk at Poets and Storytellers United Writer's Pantry #10 hosted by the lovely Sanaa - cheers Sanaa!

Image:  Courtesy of Flickr "August 30, 2016" by osseous is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Industry

Garth shook the bottle in his hand and the funny little humans - pickled for eternity - were so compacted they hardly moved.  He found it hard to comprehend that a species so primitive would be viviparous, thinking that they surely would lay eggs. 

His father had given him a passel of the ugly little things for his fifth birthday, and he had watched them develop and multiply in the glass farm that had sat on his bedroom desk, this for what seemed the eternity of his childhood.  He had found their mode of procreation odd then.  But then they were mere insects and intellectually dulled life forms, but yet seemed industrious and he had marvelled at their efforts to achieve betterment, this always thwarted by their predilection for battle and want. 

It was in his late teens that when thinking of the dire straits of his world, of overpopulation and resulting food shortages, he had considered these little humans might be a possible source of protein - a bar snack maybe - and his idea had progressed into that of pickling them in red hot spices.  He loved the way they looked in the bottle, reminding him of foetuses bathing gently in amniotic fluid awaiting birth. 

"Garth the quondam loser - now the man of the hour" he sighed happily.  He picked one out.  "Hello ugly" he grinned as he popped the tender morsel in his beak.  Money money money, I’m in the money! Winner winner winner,  I’m in the money!

(Meanwhile, back at the factory, his dad, the CEO of one of the world’s largest manufacturers of pesticides, almost burst with pride as production began of the new super-duper Humandead, a 100% guaranteed killer of the human bugs that ate the crops that should fill his belly, the fact that it killed all the other bugs that pollinated said crops mattered to him not.  Who gives a toss, he thought as mental images of £ signs rushing into his bank filled his stupid little head.  Who gives a toss?)

Anna :o] 

For Brendan at openweal open link weekend #9  – cheers Brendan

Unbidden

Death will come unbidden,

it will not come today

it will come tomorrow.  

He will be tomorrow’s ghost.  

He half expects it,

his mind played out its scene a hundred times before.   

He cannot envision pain

rather seeing blood spill

from imagined gaping wounds. 

His wish is if and when it comes

it will be quick. 

It is.

This theatre, this theatre of war,

he plays but a minor role;

he is expendable, no glory in his death,

no rapturous applause 

at his final curtain call.

There will be no homecoming,

no coffin draped in national flag. 

His remains are no remains at all,

mere fragments scattered on a foreign land,

fragments that putrefy and leach into the soil.

He is here, on this hillside,

his life extinguished where this tree now stands,

he is part of it,

it absorbed his memory

tapped it through its searching roots,

its twigs and branches now his arms and hands.

He is unaware

as his leaves turn blood-red and fall;

it is the cycle of things,

lines quite never understood,

lines never learnt in war. 

He has become the Earth. 

It is the nature of things.

Anna :o]

An oldie, resurrected and shared on Open Link Night at dVerse - cheers for hosting Lillian!

Also shared with the good folk on Writers' Pantry #8 at P&SU. hosted by the lovely Magaly - cheers Magaly!

Image:  Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons:

"Cherry Tree in Autumn" by Chickens in the Trees (vns2009) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Mishunderstood

She had heard it all before.  "Déjà moo.  Déjà moo," she sneered in a dreary bored tone that perfectly reflected her present feelings for him.   Bastard!  Bastard!  Bastard!  “You drink too much and I hate you when you’re like this!” he had said as he pushed her away.

She had loved him and still did, oh how much she still wanted him, arsehole that he was.  Like her, he was a member of the burgeoning community of ad hoc families that were spreading like an unwanted disease in the empty houses that littered the right side of town.  The more the squatters moved in, the more those who considered themselves respectable moved out.

He didn’t understand that drink sharpened her mind, made her more creative, esemplastic as her diverse extraordinary thoughts melded into one.  He didn’t realise that she needed the drink to create her masterpiece.

She gazed at him scornfully as he lay stoned sleeping on the bare mattress, sharing his bed with fellow half-stoned druggies, life’s freeloaders and gypsy hearts that inhabited their sleazy little world.  Bloody hypocrite!

Bastard, bastard, bastard!, she thought as she staggered over to the dark corner that served as her “office” slugging at the bottle that served her imagination.  Bastard, bastard, bastard!  I’ll show ya!  I’ll write the damn book!    She took the grubby sheet of A4 and slid it into the old pink typewriter and her fingers began touch typing, tapping out her masterpiece.

Capter One

Christine decide yjsy djr epi;f yitm dkre[o’fyoymjker … … … …

… … … …

Anna :o]

(This is not about me she said (hic!))

Shared with the good folk at the Writers Pantry #7 at Poets and Storytellers United, hosted by the lovely Sanaa.- cheers Sanaa!

Image:  Courtesy of Flickr  Creative Commons, "drunk unicorn" by Tom Frisch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Butterfly

He, the small boy,

two, three maybe,

eyes alive, puzzled, inquisitive,

tugs the wings off a butterfly

eager to know how it works,

maybe understand it a little, he,

innocently snuffing out a brief beautiful life. 

I wonder when he’ll realise

that we,

his teachers, his guides, his role models,

eyes tight shut, blind,

greedy for the needs the wants of now;

rip the wings of everything,

including ourselves.

Anna :o[

Sherry at earthweal asks us to write of how climate change and loss of habitat impacts on the animal kingdom.

During my research into threatened species in the UK, I came across this endangered list on the Countryfile page and it was the image of the small tortoiseshell butterfly that stood out to me.  I cannot honestly recall when I saw this butterfly flutter around my garden but know it will have been a long long time ago.  The only butterfly I see is the common white although that maybe is only three or four in an entire year.

Seeing the image of the butterfly made me think of my children when they were young and now my small grandchildren innocently squishing the life out of insects, unaware (until told) that they are living breathing and beautiful creations.

It also reminded me as when a child (five-six maybe), I and my friends sometimes caught dragonflies, put them in Welfare Foods dried baby milk tins and kicked the tin around until the dragonfly was dead.  Why we did this I don’t know, but the memory is still there some sixty years on and I know this is down to guilt, for even then, something inside of me knew that it was wrong.

Apart from pollinating bees, I think we humans tend to forget the insect kingdom, as insects are not warm-blooded and potentially cuddly, but oh we need them so so much, they are the earth’s levellers.  We really really need them!   Our lives depend on them.

Please read The Insect Apocalypse Is Here, featured in The New York Times Magazine – it a very informative interesting and educational read.  And rather scary too…

Having just looked out of the French doors here, looking at nothing in particular,  made me remember that for the past three years or so, in summer months, when the doors are open, pesky flies rarely enter this room, perhaps only once to thrice a year.  Where have they all gone?

Image:  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Author:  Rob Young from United Kingdom

Chaos

In utero, slumbering  

budding into fruitful blossom,

I awoke,    here,    in this place,

twixt linens pure, pristine & niveous,

now splattered haemochrome,

cast chaotic, torn of loves labours,

contractions’   

of earthly surrogate.

(She: accoucheuse, fat and hoary,

bites through umbilicus.)  

A birthing,

footling born of chaos

toe dipping into Mother Earth,

I sang of Satan, hailed his glory.

Women wailing 

cluttered into corners,

black in wretched robes of mourning,

mourning my deliverance,

freedom from confines of merest mortal,

accoucheuse bite   and worldly tether torn.

Oh you fools virid of envy,

minds icteritious of greed –

how well you do my work,

feed my lust my hunger 

my want of your destruction,

stoke fires of your eternal hell.

The devils spawn,

I am born of your desire,

you harbingers of the death,

destroyers of all tomorrows, 

how well you do my work!

Do my work,

rape your Earth,

bleed her dry.

I shall spread my wings

fly into your tomorrows,

suck sulphureous sun cerulean skies

into my atrous heart.

(Wings fluttering will cast a storm  

the like you’ve never known.)

Anna :o]

These words first published in 2014, re- posted today for earthweal open link weekend #3.  Cheers Brendan.

Image: courtesy of flickr 

Daphne

The squiggly presentation was the hallmark of Daphne’s chirography, unmistakable to him; his heart skipped a beat and then thumped on his chest wall as if begging him to read the beauty and wisdom of her words now!   Of course he did.

She was a difficult one and getting her to put pen to paper was more than a little velitation, more so full battle requiring he and his lab assistants to goad her relentlessly (he was surprised at his ready ability to be cruel) and once enraged the words would eruct from her like some volcano simmering below the surface, suddenly spewing forth its matter in a violent torrent.

Her work was a strange masterpiece indeed for not only was she the subject of his research, clever little thing that she was, she was actually writing his research paper too.   He could visualise it being poured over, scrutinised by his peers and then the acclaim, the acclaim, the acclaim!

He felt a smug smile crease his face, he sniggered; he had taken literally the challenge of the idiom "that a half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum."   It was not that he expected her to scribe a full library, rather a single tome of exquisite beauty, bursting at the seams with infinite wisdom.

Only difference was, he had given her a cheap biro and no other monkeys or eternities needed thank you very much – just regular shocks from a cattle prod, until painfully defeated, she came up (screeching) with the goods.

Anna :o]

Shared with the good folk at Poets & Storytellers United hosted by the lovely Magaly, cheers Magaly!

Image:  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Author:  New York Zoological Society

Fog

Prognathism: mandiblular: his chin juts out –

like Beachy Head (he thinks) or barracuda;

juts out defiant neath tight upper lip.

He hates this.  He hates his tiny tiny little mouth,

wishes God had given     more thought to his creation.   

He has weighed up the odds,

the odds the risks of complications;

surgery – nervous (as he is of it),

he will sit it out, indefinite. 

Despite his sore self-seen affliction –

he has it all (he thinks) –

he has the sea and she and Lucky Lady. 

She?  He has this notion she is leaving. 

Is she leaving him?  

He feels her withdraw,

a moody ebbing ocean leaving,

leaving in its wake a lonely barren shore.

She: distressed, stress manifests cutaneous,

her silvery scales remind her of the fish;

that fish (bass she thinks) that flapped and flailed,

hooked as it was to certain death,

its tiny tiny little mouth gasping gaping drowning.

It simmered on the galley stove,

simmered in its briny waters. 

He herbed and lemoned it,

seasoned it, hot alive with peppercorn. 

He savoured it, the smell of it. 

Succulent, it melted in her mouth just as his kisses did. 

His kisses did, and then it came, came horizontal,

(as she had always lain before him (always always wanting him)),

came horizontal rolling fogging up her mind;

lost in it    she found herself    almost invisible. 

Distracted then (by it) she slowly drifted into it;

no, it took her hooked her reeled her in (flapping, flailing).

He is losing her;

lost she is to some lonely barren shore,

where darkness offers itself     the infinite,

ebbing as she is,    towards it,

gasping gaping slowly drowning.

Anna :o]

Happy New Year to all and many thanks Magaly for first hosting on Poets and Storytellers United  new site – the start of many new adventures for me.

I haven’t posted for nigh on a year, initially through writers block then I guess I just got out of the habit of testing and using my imagination.

So upon your lead, I will start this New Year afresh too, although not quite…  As, as I really haven’t got my poetry mojo back yet, I have pulled an old post from 2014 to share and will endeavour to respond with new stuff on further prompts.

Looking forward to writing again!

Image: courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Author: Gillfoto

(I Want to Die in my Sleep.)

There it is (still),

the knowing of impending doom,

the alarm, the dread,

the deep involuntary gasps the sighs,

the cold on every laboured breath,

the knowing that you’re going to die.

And then,

the slowing in your thumping chest,

the heartbeats skipped,

the foggèd head,

the terror when the heartbeats stop,

the horror when you know you’re dead

as you ‘wait the bliss of brainstem death.

Anna :o]

Sarah prompt at dVerse is that of HARBINGER – it sent my brain into overdrive and I thank you for lifting a writer’s block of 3½ month duration Sarah.

‘Harbingers of doom’ reminded me of my time at work – I am retired now – where eventual death of the residents’ was a constant (as death is to us all).  A small proportion of the residents had dementia, the remainder enduring mental health problems.

There is a strong belief in medical circles that all folk have a right to know they are dying, whether this knowledge is helpful or not…  In my place of work we didn’t go along with this, judging whether this should be so on the knowledge of our residents’ ability to cope with this bad news.  Some knew (instinctively) anyway and were filled with either peace or dread.

In this respect I do so remember Adrian.  He was a very nasty man and one could do nothing but dislike him.  He was (also) a person who instinctively knew that death was coming.   (It was the practice in our home that if residents had no known next-of-kin, we would sit with them constantly until death –for no-one should die alone.)  Adrian had no known NOK so I sat with him for most of the night.  He was so scared and knowing instinctively that he was dying; he became very timid and frightened.

Throughout that night I would constantly tell him I loved him, what a nice person he was and kissed him on the forehead.  He was so grateful for the attention – but gratitude was not what I sought – and would say:  Thank you pet.  (I like to think that constant staff attention brought him some sort of peace,)

Although the details were different, this is a scenario I encountered many times, even with residents who had severe dementia.    It was as if impending death suddenly gave these lovely folk insight and they were filled with terror,

On a more personal note, this occurred with my mother-in-law.  Her children (including my husband) impressed upon the medical team that she should never know (she was dying) as she would not be able to cope with it.  However a well-intentioned doctor, knowing that my mother-in-law was Catholic, decided she had a right to know – so she could receive the last rites – so took it upon her self to inform (her) she was dying.  My mother-in-law, upon receiving this information, became immediately agitated and had to be removed to a single room as she was distressing other patients.  (In fact it was a relative of one of these patients that informed of the doctor’s (I’m sure) well-intentioned catastrophic intervention.  The doctor never informed us herself.)

No-one should die in terror for a doctor’s beliefs…

Image:  courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Author:  unknown, but presumed to be Kirtap

Frail

The ivy doesn’t look too well and I wonder if I have watered it too much or too little?   Its leaves are soft fading and curling.   It looked healthy before as did you. I wonder if my efforts to nurture have been in vain and that somehow I have missed the point, the point of survival.  Is survival to merely exist or to live life to the full or to just survive whatever the cost?  What worth is our history if we just die, the memory of us diminishing across generations, words on a headstone, nothing more.

You are frail now my love, yet I don’t understand how a sixteen stone man can be described as frail – it just doesn’t correlate.   Frail to me is a stick-thin person teetering on the edge of life and death.   Rest is rust they say as if somehow these words of wisdom will raise you like Lazarus from your bed, strengthen your atrophied muscles, reactivate your mind.

I feed you thickened fluids from your sip cup and you drink with a want.  I wonder if you thirst too much or there is just never enough.  Is this your way of hanging onto life or do fluids bring comfort?  You smile at me and grab at the cup sipping on blackcurrant goo.  I love you so much you know – I will quench your thirst forever.

How the wind rages,

precipitating the storm,

winter is coming.

Anna :o]

Shared with the good folk at Poets United, hosted by the lovely Mary - cheers Mary!

Also shared with the good folk at Real Toads, hosted by Vivian.  Cheers coming to you too Vivian!

Owl

“And yesterday the bird of night did sit

Even at noon-day upon the marketplace,

Hooting and shrieking.  When these prodigies

Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,

“These are their reasons.  They are natural.”

For I believe they are portentous things

Unto the climate that they point upon.”

(Julius Caesar, Shakespeare.)

I’m not one prone to superstition, I’m not.  I defiantly walk under ladders, step on cracks in the pavement and chatter whilst walking under a *monkey puzzle.  If I break a mirror and cut myself clearing the fragments, that is carelessness.  I do not fear the next seven years. 

But this is different.  He (owl) has stood sentry outside my window for nigh on two days now, staring at me, unblinking.  He appears to need neither nourishment nor sleep, his only need seeming that of me.

Winter is here and I find myself fading as if day into night.  And he watches.  He watches.  He watches…

Night yawns at sunrise and I welcome this new day –

I  live!   I  live! 

Snow falls gently from the heavens,

casting itself at my window,

blankets the earth in its white finery,

offers me strange comfort.

Still, there is a sense of foreboding, a hollowness,

and owl, he watches, he watches. 

I fear his vigilance and wonder if I shall live to see the thaw…

Oh that he would leave me alone…

Anna :o]  

*During my early childhood I learnt of the superstition of talking whilst walking beneath the branches of a monkey puzzle tree - it was believed that bad luck would occur or we might lose something and in some cases grow a monkey's tail!

Sumana at Poets United has us writing of The Owl and above is my offering.  Cheers for the inspiration Sumana!

  

Image:  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Author:  Richard Fisher

It's Nowt To Do With Me!

Mother and father know best, they always have don’t you know,

feathering their nests with unneeded appliances

they only use once or never take out of the box, so what,

at least they have the power of ‘have’ and keep up with the Jones’s,

although ideally they would be winning that race.

Wealth is relative to your wants and your needs,

but if you have it why not flaunt it, buy this and buy that

whether you need it or not, for when you tire of it,

you can find it a new home at any old landfill. 

(Give it away to those less fortunate than you –

are you kidding - I will not furnish the needs of those

who don’t even bother to try. 

(I’d rather die first, don't you know - freebies won't come easy from me))

My brats are the same with their Game Boy’s and smart phones

which of course need to be replaced at the very least yearly,

and then there’s their clothes that must be designer, must be designer

for the kudos and the power's in the brand don’t you know,

and when they tire of a thing, off to the jolly old landfill it goes.

Today is so wonderfully pleasant for a stressed mum like me

what with disposable nappies that I dress junior in, for I must confess

I feel a little bit queasy at the thought of dropping his shit down the *netty

from one of those awful terry towelling squares.    

And those disposable ones,

I don’t have to wash them when their purpose is done, just drop them in

the unrecyclable bin and off to the landfill they go. 

Isn’t life so wonderfully easy?

You ask if I’m worried that our planet is in meltdown,

well of course I am for whom in their right mind wouldn’t be?

But I can state categorically indeed quite emphatically

that this pollution is not down to me.  I do as I’m asked

when meeting the task of sorting my rubbish into this or that bin,

tossing whatever in into its designated (right colour) receptacle – 

so see I follow all of the rules.

What happens to them when I’ve done what is asked is beyond my control

for, for my part I’ve just followed them damned written rules

And that plastic polluting the seas, well again it’s not just down to me,

for I rarely visit the coast don’t you know. 

So get off your high horse you who think you’re so so earth friendly,

for of course you haven’t seen me watching you arrive home

in your posh four wheel drive with particulates puffing outa its exhaust. 

Ha!

Anna :o]

*Netty – a toilet, Northumberland dialect., also ‘nowt’ a Northern English word for nothing.

Sherry at Real Toads has us writing of Earth’s grief as we watch it empty down the plughole, we pulling out the plug ourselves and above is my take on it.

Of disposable nappies/diapers, do you know that apart from the few biodegradable nappies in the marketplace, the following happens?

"Decomposing disposable nappies emit noxious methane gas. It will take 200 to 500 years for a disposable nappy to decompose, leaving a legacy to your children's grandchildren.

"The production of disposables uses 3.5 times more energy, 8.3 times more non-renewable resources, and 90 times more renewable resources than real nappies.

"They produce 2.3 times more waste water and 60 times more solid waste than real nappies."

WEN goes on to say: "Tributyl tin (TBT), a chemical compound which is known to disrupt sex hormones, has been found in disposable nappies on sale in the UK.

Please see source of this information here.

Image:  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Author:  Thue

Life Hurries On

Life hurries on and at this moment,

at this very moment

she is touched by the touch of his hands,

one slipped twixt her breasts,

the other feeling its way to her pants

Old she may be, all wrinkles and rickety limbs,

but she is grateful to him for the attention he gives,

for she lives and she breathes and she wants and she needs

and she is beautiful both inside and out.

He is as ancient as she is, memory fading and pissing of pants,

fears of tomorrows’ and the forbidding ‘no dad, you can’t(s).’  

It’s not right dad.  You’re too old dad.  Seriously,

I think it’s a teeny bit grubby.  No dad, forget it, you just can’t. 

You can’t fall in love again – you just can’t.

But he loves her and the drive is still there,

keeps him alive and in this moment of passion he lives how he loves,

gives all that he is to this woman he holds in his hands. 

He is beautiful.

He is all over her and she loves it,

loves the love of it, the intimacy of it,

maybe   even the lust of it, but it’s a want and a need,

and she loves the feelings that come with it,

that powerful needing and wanting, the soon to be ecstasy

as he fumbles his way  to her heart.

Anna :o]

As an ancient one, this article  'How to have great sex in later life' in Patient interested me greatly as it touches on the sexuality of the more mature individual, the older and wiser person, as I am.  :o]

There is a certain societal taboo with regards to us older folk having sex as it somehow feels ‘dirty’ to those younger than us, for as we all know sex is that wonderful drug that is only the property of the young…  I do remember as a spotty teenager hoping beyond hope that my parents had only had sex three times resulting in me and my brother and sis, for it didn’t bear thinking about that they actually would do that for the sheer enjoyment of it, as they were far far to old, and it just wouldn’t be right.  I also remember my eldest son (teenage then) asking if his dad and I still had sex for he never heard us…  None of your business son!

Shared with the good folk at Poets United, hosted by the lovely Mary.  Cheers Mary!

Image:  Courtesy of Pexels.

Mox Nix

Mox nix my friend, it matters not a jot

that now there is to be three of us,

you need to leave to find your stupid sorry self.

Oh there you are, you pathetic little stupid scrote,

crawling back beneath that rock from whence you came.  

Shame on you for running scared, but what the heck,

at least I really know you now.  So sod off, go forth and multiply,

spread you wimpish genes make other little baby boys who cry like you,

little wimps like you who run scared when the going gets a little tough.

I shall bear the child the boy and call him George

and raise him good and kind and strong,

he will become a man finessed with fairplay & fortitude,

something your parents never did with you.

So mox nix my friend, sod off and ne’er come back

for I’ll be glad to see the back of you.

Anna :o] 

Shay at Real Toads asks us to write using (one of five) foreign words/phrases that have become an accepted part of the English language.  One of these is Mox Nix which is a bastardiasation of the German “Es macht nichts” used by American GI’s in WWII Europe to mean “It doesn’t matter” or “It makes no difference” and some of them brought the phrase home with them.

Cheers Shay.

Video courtesy of YouTube