I am White Star Woman

My centre so deep the milky way would slip through like a black hole had opened

I’ll send you to find it

You always do – twinkling

Night Sky! Come quick, bring us a backdrop to our dance

My energy moves every other star out of orbit

Except for yours

I welcome your light’s penetration.

Let the earth folk see us; our children laugh at our tales

And sing to us, though sometimes;

The wild things, busy bees on flower trails

Making, creating, breaking, mating, orating…

They forget. Then home calls them again,

Star-ward

I am Great Star Man

Whatever my direction, I’m always turning back to you.

You grow darker, and my light twinkles

The more you need, the more I want

I found my life between your stepping stones

Each pickle you send me into, the tastier is my sandwich

My heart widens as you do, in my vision

I gather motes, for the curves, of the hulls of the seeds we’ll make

I’m keeping them dry as the spring tides rise with your moon

The lands on the planet are singing to us, longing

Waiting for the water cycles to start, for

This poetry:

For this bliss of life, expanding

Lockdown

Day 1 (official)

Green. Walking the familiar track. Just me and flirting wrens, the hum of a massive, exploratory bee the only motor. The green. A tyre mark in dried mud an eye-catching ghost of force and speed, obsolete as single use plastic. I feel a lifetime’s unnoticed tension drop out of me at the sense of cessation.

No more violence towards the wild, subtle, dextrous, complex, exquisite green. What a dream. But on this quiet day I can suddenly hear that other world breathing. A woman in barefoot boots and a wool coat like a cloak smiles down in passing from the top road, a ranger from ancient tales. We’re in this together and the tears flow, from a pool that feels fathomless. Later I’m shy to step out of the road when a van comes up behind, but he’s grinning anyway.

And after that release here’s my heart. In green. I feel more than I ever have in the trunks and hedges, can see the little paths and homes and signs. This huge horse chestnut says hello. I hear more than I ever have. I imagine a next life as one single pennywort leaf in the colony on the branch over the path and it pleases me as much as friend’s loving squeeze does, coming in on the phone. Soft tears. Nettle soup waits at home.

Acid Wood

I am taking you into the forest.

Horsed men hunted here before I did

I’ll show you these pony paths

Where the dry-bone beechnut earth

Leads our feet, crackling,

Not dank dark spinneys but

Sun sparkled genteel rooms.

We’ll waltz in the court of the Deer King

And lean in against soft barkless wood

Where he’s rubbed.

Sinuous trunks temple dance

For lightning scarred oaks

Let’s lose time between bracken screens

Make a bed on the heather

Lie in amongst acid greens

2016

Fingers weave

My fingers weave a rug for my ancestors;
The ones who stole scraps from factory floors
In clock-faced brick mills in treeless towns.
Who heard meadow grasses whispering in golden snippets
Snatched up the blue-green lilt of bracken tracks in dusken hills
And, feeling the warmth of old stone in ochre swatches,
Wove them all in, so the children warmed their feet
And remembered that once they ran free.
 
My fingers weave a rug for my sisters;
Women who sing with buzzards and drum to the North.
Who travel out on dog sleds to ice floes where worlds end
To gather songs of snow and blood and bone, and
Carry them back, and gather us in, and sing them for us
By a hearth so warm and bright that the ice starts to thaw
And wilder melodies flow back in amidst the
Meltwater; the tears of homecoming.
                                                                    
My fingers weave a rug for my sisters and brothers;
Those who step into the flames, and use the
Kindling of their guilt to spark the flame of their innocence.
Who torch their shame on a bonfire of wild abandon
So fierce, that the inferno of expansion burns
All their fear away, so only love remains.
I weave them Waves of Bliss to remind them,
Reflecting their infinite waves.
 
My fingers shred the shirts my brothers wore
Through their night sweats, and slice up the
Cheap cotton of dying lakes and exhausted soils.
Untangle acid wools from mountain deserts,
And weave them all into a rug so strong,
And so soft, that it holds newly birthing worlds
While my voice and tender heart sing along
To all of our freedom songs.
 
September 2017

What is it that you desire?

“What is it that you desire?“

“I desire to feel the root of your longing,

Show me the rock of your resolve.

Whisper me the secrets

You learned in the dark place

Tell me all that you heard

In that emptiness.”

“And so, what do you desire?“

“To explore your inner spaces

As a Lilliputian might:

Climbing down oesophagal galleries

A blue art brut of the viscera

As I paint my bright moniker

Across your muscular chambers.”

“Can you tell me what it is that you desire?”

“For you to forget your version of now

And the need to understand.

Don’t abandon me for the light;

I want you to hold on tight

To my darkness

And trust the shadows.”

“Tell me what you desire!“

“I’m not wearing my boots

To tower over you

Or kick your broken dog.

You must tell me when I hurt you;

When your muscles flinch

From my touch, as a punch.”

“But, what is it that you desire?“

“I want to feel the fire in your eyes

Spreading wildly through my grasses

Share that shimmering heat with me

Generously. There’s no oasis:

This is the flaming heart

Of a continent burning.”

Rings of Saturn

Rings of Saturn

In stereo, within

John’s telescope on the hill.

Real light, years behind.

Old light.

And he’s laughing at me a bit;

Because the rings have landed

On spikes of my association

And can’t be free

Until significance is awarded to all.

Double sphincters:

Releasing bubbles of laughter

Because men are journeying

To space

Through the double rings

Of their arses.

Double rings

Of Saturn

Of no return

Light years old

She puts her finger in his bottom

And he falls in love

With her penetration

Of his heart.

Who says the way,

Is through his stomach?

She has a thumb up her arse

And calls him dirty.

2016