A Poem a Day (230): Missing parts

Missing parts

We set sail where we rebegin,

Top and tail each day with sleep,

Speak when we sense a thing is real

And trick time on the upward curve.

We stare inside endless spaces,

Watch crackling flames rise and fall.

My touch is like Midas in reverse,

Contemplating his bad luck in Spades.

I can no longer see the idle hands

Of the dark mist rising around us.

Ill omens write themselves in the sand

And we hurry to scuff them out.

I ache from my hands down to my feet,

But there is no pain to speak of,

Nothing fixed, physical to report.

I watch myself drift away in stages.

Each part grown restless or dismayed

Creeps off in the hour before dark rises,

And I am left remembering each part,

Its function and its place in my heart.

One day I’ll just be a picked-apart head

Contemplating life from a sturdy shelf

In some quasi-comic analogy of life,

Frozen by the technology of the age.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 3, 2020

A lockdown song: She Blows in with the Tide

Something different from poems. Here’s one of the songs that my uncle, Billy Johnstone, and I have written during lockdown.

It’s called She Blows in with the Tide. 

He’s behind the melody and sings, while I wrote the lyrics. Enjoy! 

She blows in with the tide,
Skirts lifting on the breeze,
Red hair twisting like leaves...

Lyrics © Vickie Johnstone 
 

Links for Billy Johnstone:

Facebook    

Website

SoundCloud  

Bandcamp (buy tracks) 

If you are viewing this on a mobile and can’t play it, just click to the website. Cheers.

A Poem a Day (229): Powder

Powder

It’s a stranger’s walk and talk,
A mispelt hello in distanced mode,
Indifferent hunger in the afternoon.

Taking pleasure in forgotten things,
An unravelling of wool, frayed, undone.

Wings take off in this split of thoughts
Under a raging sun. It has not begun.

Sea bells sound a nuanced beginning
And I watch the clouds curl piecemeal,
The turning of days into powder.

Vickie Johnstone, August 2, 2020 (draft 1, July 15)

A Poem a Day (228): The hermit

I wrote a few poems today, but the one I like I’m going to keep for my poetry course, and you can’t share anything already published. So today I’m posting one that I wrote on July 30, and I’ve just reworked it. Cheers. The sun is shining here, so enjoy the day. Hope it's shining wherever you are.

The hermit

The hermit cuts silk pearls in his garden,

Trims back the seaweed conspiring to wander

Into its own retreat, starlit, starstruck.

He stems the waters seeking to slide out.

Life suspended never knocks him offside.

Patience is the thing sustaining him these days.

He can wait. The waiting always waits for him.

In his mind he’s trudging untravelled roads,

Living experiences he’s only dreamed of.

His house curves like a crab’s hard shell,

All these doors stand ajar, never closed,

So the air can breathe and run on through.

He never questions why life is on pause,

Only endures it in a way it becomes endurable.

Like a bird he waits in his nest for spring.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 1, 2020 (first draft July 30)

A lockdown song: Bird in the brain

Something different from poems. Here’s one of the songs that my uncle, Billy Johnstone, and I have written during lockdown.

It’s called Bird in the Brain. He’s behind the melody and sings, while I wrote the lyrics. Enjoy! 

Bird in the brain
Is the one you can't train.
Black-feathered and slick,
Never missing a trick...

Lyrics © Vickie Johnstone 

Links for Billy Johnstone:

Facebook   
Website

SoundCloud 

Bandcamp (buy tracks) 

If you are viewing this on a mobile and can’t play it, just click to the website. Cheers.