A Poem a Day (113): The Grudge

Written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo website – head over there to write, read and comment every weekend...

The Grudge

Again, and again, and again,

This repetition strikes us dumb.

Sensation shifts where it was not,

Where it stalks, singing lullabies

Of the dark, where it talks the talk,

Spinning a web as a spider does.

The wasp keeps its guard up,

This misted time is not for us.

These things fall loosely cluttered,

A word count of naught unchanging.

Laughter lifts where it finds itself

Loitering in a pause,

A semi-colon stumped.

We read of the silencing today,

Where caustic hues come to merge,

Seeping deep into the margins

Washing sprightly across the page.

Jumbled words seek order,

A pattern to emulate a song,

And sung, we remember it always.

Where the Grudge stalks by day,

It will find the pitch secreting in,

Raw dripping walls drawing closer,

Its path narrowing and narrowing.

Jump! It says jump, but this falls flat.

Walls come down when sanity prevails.

This dark-coiled snake eludes itself,

Stealth-like plunging an illusion of teeth,

Ego twitching, forever finding fault;

This delusion confounds us all.

The lost wander through gristle churning,

Vomited forth from the Grudge’s hate,

Thirsting on twisted entrails, gouged without.

Just a stab in the dark, it growls.

This veil reveals and conceals the wolf

As the crowd grows weary in conceit.

They hear the sirens wail,

They hear the walls thunder in.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 26, 2019

A Poem a Day (112): Spiral out

Written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo website – head over there to write, read and comment, and be inspired/inspire...

Spiral out

Torn nerve lines of cabbage leaves

Trace new countries, waiting wounded

Silences leave me dead, fluttering,

The wings of the butterfly seared

Accompany me into this red desert

This place of dry, unwilling longing

Spiral, it spirals, it yearns, it burns

This colour corrects, consumes, replays,

So we drift within it, seeking out

You play the fiddle as the sky opens,

Flinging tears across this battlefield

Where times sleep, ravaged, open hands

Still grasp this earth, a sense of self

Spin, it spins, it feeds, it curls

And I see what you have lost, where

You turned wrong, unknowing, unseeing

I feel the desert cry in wrack and ruin,

Disobeying you, turning its back

The rain lies heavy, sinking, pulling you

Down into the mire of autumn’s breast.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 18, 2019

A Poem a Day (111): Red spectre

Red spectre

She dances in the red chapter,

Colours of heat, movement, pain,

Yellow-green slanted cat eyes wide,

Jagged limbs such untamed sticks.

She’s a judder in the wind,

An elfin spark leaping in a blue flame,

And it will never blow out

While these faces invite her in.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 27, 2019

A Poem a Day (110): Stone prisons

Stone prisons

Stone prisons, reactions of the mind

To a sense of inaction, inadequacy,

The rush long gone, sensation shunted.

I feel your frustration perforating your skin.

Do you know me now? Can you sense me?

You carry him lost like missing data.

Tie a white ribbon where he might hear you,

Beckon him forth to betray himself.

I cannot dare you; only you can travel.

To his own eyes, you are blind;

In his mind, he long forgot to remember you.

These words balance tricky, evaporating,

Struck on the wind, a discordant chord,

Rattling.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 23, 2019

A Poem a Day (109): Fire man

Fire man 

He sells bravery on the wing,

Lights flashing,

Tyres grinding fertile earth, 

Phoenix rising, vermillion, gold,

Redwood crackling,

Strings of yellow ochre firing,

Tumbling leaves of ash curl.

It soars on high,

A giant heaving flame,

Challenging its audience 

To fight or flight,

Rousing fear to a crescendo,

Smashing, cymbals still, 

Redrawing towns in rubble. 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 21, 2019