A Poem a Day (61): Linger

Another for JD Mader's 2minutes go... kicking my writing arse... something needs to!

Linger

You know the glass reveals your smile

Try as you will to hide it away

I can see it even in this dark

When the sea breaks and splits the light in two.

If I kiss the curve will you stay?

If I turn and walk away will you follow?

These days are meant for learning

Awakening thoughts in me I’d forgotten

Lost in a drift upon a breath of yesterday

These things I touch to find them gone

And yet your smile remains

Calling me to remember and forget the rest.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 26, 2017

A Poem a Day (60): Walking

Another one for JD Mader's Friday 2minutes go session :)

Walking

He practised the art of forgetting in the time of stillness

Where the widest lines seemed to promise desolation

If he stayed long enough, tried hard enough, in his

Unfathomable desire to escape into an echo of bliss

He sees himself sometimes, a fleeting glimpse of sometimes,

When nothing is and the playing brings only emptiness -

This loitering in a life drifting into days of commonplace

Against a background song reminiscing in a broken key.

Here the dusted wind blows in on the second-handed chord,

Cleft in his fist is the starstruck face that the moon left behind

On a January night when the sea turned black against an iced earth,

His footsteps cursed in the art of sleepwalking through his life

This is desolation’s severed promise of a blood-red emptiness,

The heart scooped out and wrung so dry beneath a faithless sun,

Leaving the spider-web loneness of something so real it hurt

Lost in the years left behind, scattered like dandelions blown.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 26, 2017

A Poem a Day (59): Distance

Written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo writing challenge - still the only thing kicking my writing arse!

Distance

Somewhere in the sands I catch an echo
Of where you walked in the yesterday
Kicking up dust in the arch of memory
Only to vanish in the buttercup misted dawn

No more sound in the disintegrating sun
A flash upon the roar of a wave of ebbing fate
I spread my fingers through the chill of it
Summoning something long forgotten anew.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 26, 2017

A Poem a Day (58): Casting Colours

Written for Dan Mader's 2minutesgo writing exercise. 

Casting colours

It starts…

The beginning casts colours in the light

Sacred thoughts transcend the real

Aglow in the dry heat of summer,

A kaleidoscope of raw emotion

Spun tightly, wrapped in the soundless

Instinct killing itself nightly,

Caught in a web it seeks to unravel.

Locking the heart within a keyless box

It feels like time has no end.

Choices lost in a cloud of nothing,

This trivial heart knows no distancing,

Seeking self-destruction in a second

Of perfection it can never hope to find.

It ends…

The falling triggers memories of dark

Where the spider creeps in strewn dust

Waiting for the silent stuttered scream –

These things born of bloody nightmare.

Screwing the twisted seeping heart,

Shadows awake from the silent walls

Where hands seek to drag and play.

He builds a fortress across these skies

Inside the beat of a solitary star

Sent adrift where the dreaming lies,

Echoing the curved moon’s absent lover

Here to stay til the dawn tide roars –

A subtle kiss is the only thing he knows.

copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 12, 2015

Flash fiction 19: Bitter guest

This one was written for Dan Mader's 2minutesgo writing exercise – the only thing managing to kick my butt into writing lately. 

Bitter guest

It’s only words. Letters conjured up. The he said, she said. Cast adrift, spiralling like smoke twisting from a cigar. Set adrift upon the breath, usurping the light. The story took on a life of its own until it walked and talked, ate, drank and laughed its way inside, taking root in the recesses of the mind. Never questioned. Never asked. It stayed for years. A willing guest, received with a warm welcome by those who hungered for it. It never wondered why. The story stayed, grew and rested, spilling its scented anger and bitter streak wherever it drifted. An invisible guest always chattering, nothing sensible escaped it. Only bile. But no one thought not to believe it as the smoke choked. 

copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 12, 2017