A Poem a Day (617): Woman paraded naked

 
Woman paraded naked
 
Stark headlines tilt sideways, rip ragged,
papers strewn waste in the sharpening rain.
Letters slide, seek a silenced escape,
a way out, an alternative way of being.
 
Dragged out, stripped, paraded naked,
tied to a telegraph pole and beaten to a bruise.
A mother. Red and blue. Red and blue. Red and blue.
Tears awash in our rain. We hurtle through.
 
The rescue party, we arrive too late by hours,
stand agape. A simmer of men eye the spectacle,
the debacle, the sex that causes such offence.
We are the few who disagree.
 
Her only son eloped before his wedding night,
so someone had to pay. Someone female. The mother.
She is the visible invisible, now safe, blanketed,
but trauma digs at the contours of her face.
.
It’s 4am. Someone blew the whistle.
A police officer who watched is suspended.
In the hospital, all is quiet. The walls bristle,
heavy with the weight of history. Female souls.
 
It permeates the corrugated roof. We watch it sag.
The rain sketches ever-increasing circles of light years.
The mother stares at the wall, seeks understanding,
but it stares back blankly. No words can explain.
 
All this water will never wash this foul shame away.
Her husband insisted they had not known,
their son had kept this other love a secret, hidden.
His lover flew her own gilded cage by night.
 
Outside, the men still loiter in the soiled street,
their uncorked outrage clouding the void.
The crowd will have scattered by mid-morning,
but history has already chalked them in.
 
This was an ‘inhuman act’, the authorities said,
gave the mother land, part of this country owned by man.
But this land had turned on her in her hour of need.
It had not forgiven her for being a woman.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 27, 2023

 
 
I read about this incident on the BBC News today. Here, I have pasted part of the article:
 
“Cases involving assault of women are always under-reported because of shame. Families don’t come forward because it’s a matter of honour and the system does not support the survivors or give them a safe space to report these crimes,” says lawyer and rights activist Sukriti Chauhan.
 
In the National Crime Records Bureau database, disrobing is recorded under a broad description called “assault with intent to outrage [a woman’s] modesty”, which clubs the crime with cases of street harassment, sexual gestures, voyeurism and stalking. Last year, 83,344 such cases were recorded, with 85,300 affected women.
 
Link to story: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-67769453

A Poem a Day (616): The walk

 
The walk 

A cutting wind blows us in two,
peels back the edge of a buttercup carpet.
 
Olive stalks sway, fan this sunbathed land.
We hold nature at arm’s length, picture it
 
through a cold lens, frame it, silence it
when it needs to yell out loud and be released.
 
Slide your bare feet through the warm mud,
churning rivers between your toes. Sienna drips,
 
seeps down this canvas; fuel for the soul,
a gathering, a grounding for the city type.
 
We flit between our own flimsy self-images,
echoes of our childhood shadowed mirror-play.
 
Gnarly branches seek to press our stiff backs forward
down leafy, ground-out trails and grown-over mazes
 
into damp, mossy nooks and crooks of watery pearl,
these crumbling granite walls so cool to our fingertips.
 
Crows lift in a circling cloud and in the far view a single tree
stands statue-still, sketched in hollow against the light.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 10, 2023

Little brainstorms (2-minute poems)

If you fancy writing some fiction or poetry, or reading other people's, head over to JD Mader's website, 2minutesgo... 

Some little brainstorms... 

 
1 THE MESSENGER
 
In the gust
dust swells, panic caught,
misses a cue in the line.
 
A tumbleweed plays,
scrawls out your name
in the dirt,
 
leaves a memory
imprinted that neither one of us
wishes to recall.
 
I watch it skirt the road,
free, feeling it knows I’m right here,
just waiting for it to leave.
 
 

2 IN THE HOUR
 
Wait on pause,
take a trip,
think it out,
delay the plan,
relate the way,
time it completely wrong,
say it in song,
say it isn’t right.
 
You can choose the date
or pretend to lose.
 
We fathom the night
in the close of day.
These are the hands
that wound the clock,
and clocking out,
they forgot to pray.
 
 

3 FREEFALL
 
It’s a freefall,
endless. We are inclined
to be as we ever were,
without pretence,
No disguise.
No more than three words.
 
We are as the land wishes,
as the trees grieve,
as the ground breathes.
And nothing echoes aloud
except that which burned before,
ever here,
always now,
despite the years
flown
by.
 

 
4 MINDS
 
In the mind of the other
we are one. As we might be,
as we might see, and be here,
waiting, knowing, seeing,
as calm as a blackbird.

 
 
5 ELFIN FORESTS
 
Elfin forests,
crystal clear streams,
an endless dream of being,
where the twig-strewn ground breathes
in summer’s sway, where our feet tread,
sink into earth, just resting.
We are breath. We are here. We be.
 

 
6 THE CATCH
 
In the unsung song we hear
the passing of a thought, a treasured
heart, a memory. The thing that fell foul,
the betrayal, the slip, the echo
of the abject thing. The bird caught,
the tripwire; this endless rebegin.
And we are heard sliding.
Here, there is no catch word,
no rail, no mat.
We are falling. And we are free.
 
 

7 SINKING
 
In the morrow we will begin,
counting numbers,
drawing circles with our fingers.
This sand sinks, scuppers,
water fills. It’s a cue to bury it all,
seal it over, never
to be found.
 

 
8 THE ANCIENTS
 
The ancients stand tall,
stretch stone arms to the sky.
We are small. Astounded.
Can only stare up at the moon,
its sound rays crowning them,
the earth gathering dust.
 
 

9 SERENADE
 
A moonlight serenade
without harp or drum,
no voice, no harm, no motion.
Only quiet. And light. And devotion.
In this setting we are might,
we are ever, we are chosen.
Seated, the same. Just bones.
 

 
10 THE APPLECART
 
The applecart. Rocked. Smoked. Out.
The whodunnit. The mystery. 
Seeing all, he fans flames to the sky,
listens, draws a picture, imagines ruin.
It feeds it out, off the scale,
watches the burn.
 

 
11 LIKE BATS
 
Shadows mock the living,
line the roads for the forgotten,
the lost, the fragmented.
There once was water here.
Now there is an absence of it.
Where there was flow all is still.
In the moonlight, jagged bats flit,
avoid the cage drawing near.

 
12 REPEAT

Echoes.
In the walls.
Beneath sound.
Without a wakening.
They wander out,
forsaken.
They wander in
with a newfound thing.
Here is breath.
Without echo.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 10, 2023
 
 

A four-letter word

I first published this poem on here on March 31. It's an issue that should always be spoken about and never swept under the carpet. Men, women and children are raped or sexually assaulted every day - while you are reading this. Most people don't speak out. Most cases never get to a court room, and once they do, most do not end in a conviction. Around the world, the statistics are shocking (see below). Rape is also used as a weapon during war. It's all about taking a person's power away, and crushing and humiliating them, and depriving them of dignity. 

A four-letter word

RAPE.
A four-letter word.
A small word, easy to ignore,
easy to hide in the cracks in the system,
too easy to look away from, skim over.
 
The statistics tell us how it is:
one in four women,
one in six children,
one in eighteen men.
About 70,633 reports in 2022,
and that’s just in the UK.
 
We’re talking 736 million women around the world.
I repeat: 736 million sometime in their lifetime.
Can we visualise that number?
Can you see all their individual faces?
 
The number of charges show how many victims
are being failed. The sheer number tells us
something is wrong – they’re not being heard.
And these are the ones who spoke out,
who were brave enough to say ‘this happened’.
Their voices are being lost on paper.
 
Education is needed. Protection is needed.
People need to feel safer walking the streets,
going to sleep under their own roof,
just going about their daily lives.
Is that too much to ask?
I guess that’s too much to ask.
 
A victim reporting a rape needs support,
action and subsequent follow-up,
not to be turned away, given excuses.
A friend is still waiting, years later,
yet they said he might be a serial offender.
I wonder what he’s doing now.
 
We reported a flasher once, as girls.
Followed us home, darted out from the bushes,
he knew the direction we would take,
waited for us and started to masturbate
right outside the door we were meant to enter.
Did he expect us to clap? We reported it,
sat through an interview, and nothing.
We wondered if he did anything worse.
 
RAPE.
A four-letter word.
The most offensive four-letter word
in the English language – and you might
have thought I was gonna say c***.
 
More cases need to arrive in court,
more offenders should be brought to account,
or rape becomes a way of life for some,
a living prison for others. The perpetrators
go free, walk around, even do it again,
leaving the victims hurt and afraid.
 
Even the word victim is wrong:
it removes all power from the person,
places them in a position of weakness,
steals their confidence and identity away –
they’re the person the crime was done to
when the offender had no right to do it.
 
Survivor is the better word:
the person who was strong enough to go on,
who picked up all the scattered pieces
and tried to continue despite it all,
even knowing nothing was being done
in this now more dangerous world.
 
Some are too ashamed or scared to speak,
thinking they will be blamed or disbelieved,
better to be quiet, pretend it didn’t happen,
when it is the offender who should be ashamed.
 
It’s time men and women stood up and said no, 
there is no place for rape in society.
Survivors need to join hands around the world,
so their voices become the loudest argument heard.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 31, 2023

The statistics 

According to Rape Crisis, these are the statistics in the UK:
1 in 4 women have been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult;
1 in 6 children have been sexually abused;
1 in 18 men have been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult.

The highest number of rapes within a 12-month period was recorded by police in the year ending Sept 2022 as 70,633. Over that same period, only 2,616 rape cases went to court.

In 2021, only 1 in 100 rapes recorded by police resulted in a charge that same year.

This is a drop in the ocean compared with the figures globally. According to the United Nations, an estimated 736 million women (almost 1 in 3) have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence or both at least once in their life.

Rape is used as a weapon of war, power, control and subjugation. In a resolution adopted in 2008, the UN Security Council affirmed that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.”

A Poem a Day (615): Trio

 
Trio
 
In flight.
A curve, like palms reaching,
plucking clouds from the skies.
 
In bloom.
Soft silk shivers, pollen stalks stiffen,
a red carpet spreads for the bees.
 
On stage.
The beaten side of moon tips,
leaks a silver-speckled wand’ring.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 2, 2023

A Poem a Day (614): Shimmer

 
Shimmer 

Stars echo, glitteration, speaking of night,
scant decorations of light, a distant pose.
 
All heaviness slinks, a sea breeze in curve,
cerulean salt pleasures seep into the abyss.
 
On the horizon an echo of being shimmers,
the ebb of a fresh page being turned.
 
A solitary yacht cuts this hazy line,
glides left to right, breaking waves,
 
imagines time on pause for a second,
lost on an island shore, sand grit shifted.
 
Within this move the endless is as it ever was,
the being of everything on rhythmic revolve.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 2, 2023

A Poem a Day (613): Shift

 
Shift
 
Beyond today, out of tomorrow,
kind ruminations, a pagent sings,
discrete buds of purple light reinvited,
here, where the crocodiles glide.
 
Shapes flit and shapes glit,
and the moon turns a-sideways
upon the rise and fall, a graduation
of silver, an envelope reopening.
 
Here, naked feet sink and slide,
in and out, deep into the travelling sand,
hiding and revealing in constant rhythm,
this even flow watched by the yawning dawn.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 2, 2023

A Poem a Day (612): Dust

 
Dust
 
We are one,
but we are not everything.
We are part, unwhole, redrawn,
eclipsed by night.
 
This is how we bear it,
restride and untie, this walk
back into soundless oblivion.
Turn out the light.
 
We can’t wear it.
Disheveled, the weight drags.
And dust-moted morning breathes
an eternity away.

Copyright September 29, 2023

A Poem a Day (611): Birth

 
Birth
 
Just one spark.
Hardy. It battles the dark.
 
The invention of a flintstone,
glimmer of an idea, grown,
 
an unhindered orange glow.
A halo mimics the shadow’s flow,
 
dancing. It slithers non-sentient.
The icy wind bristles, impatient,
 
but you shield this spark from harm
with the curve of your palm.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, November 6, 2023

A Poem a Day (610): Plunge

 
Plunge

Dawn lifts on a silenced sea,
evened waves rotate on ever-slow,
an uninterrupted rhythm of sleep.
 
Without edge or arrogance,
uncut by bird or whistling wind,
a page of a book turning.
 
We are the echo in the indent,
the spine, the fold, the blank,
the motion of the echo,
 
the falling point, the plunge
between papers, the idea that loiters,
waiting to be read.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, November 6, 2023

A Poem a Day (609): The politician

 
The politician
 
The dragon’s breath curls, breathes fire,
caresses the moon, carves it out,
digs with its claws til nothing remains.
 
So darkness reigns. How come we didn’t
miss the sun? Why didn’t we argue? Too long
we dithered, and the hours are now lost.
 
Time flows, but now we cannot see it.
The dragon’s breath curls, and we,
we can’t breathe.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 12, 2023

A Poem a Day (608): Salt

 
Salt

We wait on the edge of Never,
eye of the storm breaking the curve.
 
Foam flicks, sprinkles our cheeks,
makes our skin bristle with tears of ice.
 
This roar is something I never can learn,
never echo, this strength in pure abandon,
 
the splicing against rock, the fierce surge,
this Never to be discovered in default.
 
Waves surge and curve, spin inside out,
while the rain plunges, unperturbed.
 
In its clear-blue wisdom it rages back,
casting doubt that our sun will ever shine.
 
Salt spits and I catch it, lick my lips, taste it.
In all my days it has never felt the same.
 
From all these places, a wealth of visitations,
it brings us news of the lost and found.
 
But we are all forgotten when the ebb subsides,
when this ardent flow resides on another shore.  
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, November 6, 2023

A Poem a Day (607): Flagstones

 
Flagstones 

Rainbows upon flagstones
cast lights amid blue rain’s faint splash,
sparkling streams in the bald air.
A wealth cascades. We limit darkness,
but we could still be anywhere.
 
The lift goes down, and so we travel.
Stairs range upward, so we alight.
Here, the late train speeds a single track,
eels its way over low-drawn verdant hills 
in a welcome rush of green.
 
The travelling wind caresses our framed face,
lifts all the strewn parts, recycles lives,
the essence of the inside we carry out.
We are short here. We lack distance.
But we are among the many passing through.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, November 6, 2023

A Poem a Day (606): The Hitchhiker - something for Halloween

As we're coming up to Halloween, here is a spooky one, about a werewolf. It has been published in one of my books, Mind-spinning Rainbows, which is divided into light and dark themes. It contains 109 poems and 49 haiku.

The Hitchhiker

 

No time like the present,

she said,

 

wished yesterday revolved,

wishing upon the thing

as the oil spilled forth

dark and rich,

congealing in her hands

like sin.

 

The time was for the taking,

the day eaten by night.

A still, arched moon

breathed out

against the howling wind,

like a curse.

 

She stood guard over it,

her own body,

and the soul caged –

its remnants –

as the car turned

like a hearse.

 

“Are you going my way?”

she asked the profile,

flicking a smile,

opening her hands,

clean, so bare,

like innocence.

 

Twisted is the way that

I am,

she said,

not so long ago

to the last passer-by,

like a game.

 

This one has a crazy air,

a dark wildness,

flicks back his hair,

spits in the dirt,

curses this old life,

like a reject.

 

In her hands she carries it

all, despairing,

slipping into the car

too close to him,

offering a smile,

like a child.

 

But the demon inside her

rages hot and cold,

eager to howl,

translucent as this moon.

In a moment she’ll snap

like hell itself.

 

No time like the present,

she said.

 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone. Mind-spinning Rainbows. Published April 18, 2015.

A Poem a Day (605): To those left behind

 
To those left behind
 
We light candles to combat the dark.
We hold vigils to remember the gone.
 
We walk with placards to fight against their plight.
We print pictures of the missing in a rescue bid.
 
We erect statues to honour those who gave.
We pass medals to those who showed their mettle.
 
We write names upon names upon silent walls.
We place cut flowers on a gravestone’s echoes.
 
We turn over the years of our photo albums.
We carry in our hearts every face who mattered.
 
We send cards to signify our empathy and love.
We listen. We respond.
 
Sometimes there are no words we can say.
Because sometimes there are no words.
 
But we are here.
We offer the warmth of our arms instead.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 18, 2023

A Poem a Day (604): Lines

 
Lines
 
A circle, two dots, one curve,
scrap of fine hair and a mid-line,
two sticky-out ears. It grins back.
 
For a moment it is whole,
strangely familiar. For a few seconds.
And then it slides. Like tears.
 
Warmth makes the whole subside.
It runs, drips into itself. Now faceless,
the window stares back at you.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 28, 2023

A Poem a Day (603): A cup of tea in M&S

 I stopped for a cup of tea (and a pastry) on the way home today... 

A cup of tea in M&S

I sit at the table, pour a cup of tea
from this plump penguin of a milk jug,

the lip bird-shaped. It pours. It does its thing.
I watch the rain trail its fingers, spiralling,

patterns recreating lines, twisting, erasing,
and we can dream. I see a young man.

He sits with his family in a chair,
his lifeline, his mobility, his limbs.

But he is out, he is here, and he is not alone.
He has company and warmth. He is cared for.

The rain glints in the broken sunshine.
Maybe he will smile and light up the room. 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 17, 2023

A Poem a Day (602): The inn

  
The inn
 
It breathes, bereft of slumber,
turns its glass eyes to the moon,
closes both doors, seals itself off.
 
Dust mites nibble the open pages
of the only book ever to be read.
So many tales left untold.
 
Fiery last embers crumble to ashes
and a cold draft lances through,
trips up the stairs two at a time.
 
Outside, a long-lost dog howls,
thankful for the scraps on the step,
listens to winter’s chill settle in.
 
Brick and mortar glues it all,
on top a tiled hat sits askew,
offers a cosy nest for the crows.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 1, 2023

A Poem a Day (601): Waiting

 
Waiting 

Black and white faces,
a campaign in the eighties,
on pristine cardboard wrappings,
stare out from cartons of milk,
the stuff that nourished them in infancy.
 
Here, they look out at us, no longer erased
from view, invisible, but present at our table,
and we are hopeful.
 
Disappearances are marked in numbers,
birthdays reduced to five. Two names:
the first and the last. So few characters to
represent a person. The missing. The unfound.
The ones who may still be out there, waiting,
their stories incomplete, the news items unwritten.
 
We wait for recognition, to notice one face
sitting in a window, crossing a busy street,
or just a fleeting look from a passing car.
We notice all the vehicles with their hazards on.
 
They wait, and we wait, and the time is endless
in the interim. They’re printing a new design today:
this face is only eight years old, one month missing.
 
The waiting drift past in the supermarket,
unable to acknowledge those eyes, while we read
all the details silently to ourselves, place the carton
in our basket, join the quiet hunt, hopeful
we might see them sometime somewhere
among the many faces we encounter every day.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 28, 2023

A Poem a Day (600): The closet

 
The closet
 
There’s an empty closet that bears your given name,
carved inside the hollow, wooden walls, nestled beyond
the mothballs, the sickly-sweet scent of lavender’s cloy
in nibbled linings through which your coins always slid.
 
We packed your many shaded things into black bin bags,
carted them off to be given to those who might need them,
carrying the memory of the unknown you on their backs.
 
Those unsellable items we still hang in your closet, all lined up
neatly, marking your daily presence in our humdrum lives,
like enduring flags on the startled face of the pocked moon.
 
If you hold them to your face, they still smell of you,
whispering picture-postcard memories cast adrift on air,
of holding our first bikes still, foam-hemmed bucket beaches,
stones skimming silent waters and curling cigar smoke.
 
A walking stick pokes out sometimes when you open the door.
At other times it slumps at angles, mimicks your jovial stance,
and I wonder if you’re moving it somehow just to prank us.
 
I tried to read your favourite newspaper the other morning,
but the words stuck silent on the page, didn’t lift so light as
in the way you could narrate a story, put flesh on the bone,
in your quirky fashion no reporter would ever think to try.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 23, 2023

A Poem a Day (599): GPS

GPS

It’s the main highway leading in,
they join the line, succumb, sublime,
sheep leading the sheep in line.
 
They are the silent forgetting time,
driving one by one as though in mime,
warming themselves against the grime.
 
It’s a depth of infinity you can’t lure.
It hides beyond the light bearer,
peers into the pitch and will endure.
 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 8, 2023

A Poem a Day (598): The block

 
The block
 
He set it all on fire,
crawling, the urban light
stifled by night,
the all-seeing lamps dented
in straight lines walk on down,
stealing the air’s pure
camouflage.
 
Streaking the wind,
scraps of newspapers,
in big, bold letters,
speak a lack of gratitude,
unread.
 
They loiter as one, slunk
into the wall, osmosis funk,
rattle off, stick a fragrant smoke,
pass a domino effect;
no one remembers the hour
they were born, off the page,
now on the page.
 
Someone’s daughter lost her sight
behind the gate; someone’s kid,
she was found too late. A green,
broken bottle marks the spot.
 
No stages sound outside the wall,
loud voices subside into silence;
this isn’t a breakout call.
 
Dark cut-out windows glare out.
Tall-shafted. No lift will carry you here.
It gave in years before.

Painted smiles grin
from beer-stained brick.
Browned gum sticks in spiral patterns,
glitter seeking to create a sparkle.

But this grey cancer ravages
through concrete, digging holes,
cracks in forgotten time. Iron rails
usher like prison guards.

Tiles peel from walls
so thin you can breathe through them.
They keep you in.

Cameras forever on watch capture nothing.
It’s the sprawling conundrum of alleyways
that have stories to tell.
 
If you dial out, no one will enter here.
You’ll wait a lifetime for a lifeline.
 
It’s coming down in stages,
but this part still stands, a stooping,
skeletal shout-back to the 50s’
quick-fix housing boom.
Sold.
 
Most families packed up,
shifted miles from their relatives,
so only a handful remain, the grey crew,
steadfast til the bulldozers come.
 
It’s an anniversary for some,
a self-burial for the old.
 
Ghosts clamber the metal stairwells
by night, flown figments
of an imagination run wild.
 
We wilter down the evergreens,
not enough light to grow anything.
Life stagnates left behind. 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 5, 2023