Charlie's Afterschool

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Charlie’s Afterschool

Charlie scribbles his thoughts in exclamation marks,

He’s just learnt how to use them at school,

And so adds them to the end of every sentence,

Even if it doesn’t quite fit!

Trying to ignore the demonic mould in his bedroom,

He draws and writes,

And wonders if it will eventually swallow him alive.

Two heptathletes competed again tonight,

Throwing insults like shotputs in an empty arena,

Sometimes, aunt Sheenagh would come and quiet the place,

But she’s been away for a while now,

And well, they have to get along somehow.

This round: council tax and that forbidden name,

Then the food bin of old sin was brought from outside,

Dumped in the middle of the living room with a muffled thud,

T.V. off.

The crawling lid was flicked open and they began to drag five years’ worth of muck and foolish mistakes,

Worsening the chafe,

Splatting them on the walls and carpet,

Throwing them in each other’s face.

As for Charlie, he doesn’t understand the things of adults.

How could he?

He’s just a little boy.

They order him to go to his room,

His simple obedience like a small candlelight in that mottled house.

Four Feet Tread

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Four Feet Tread

Four feet tread in Eastville Park,

trying to find a rhythm, a synergy,

something’s just happened,

life has done what it does every so often,

it’s hacked at the knees,

and silence is uncomfortable, but required…

Words from a wise friend sooth like shea butter or aloe vera,

starting the healing process,

but it takes care and attention,

like a mother in tune with her infant child,

it takes a heart alert with restraint,

and eyes that glance at fidgety fingers,

and a sixth sense that says ‘wait’…

But the fool (and we’ve all been the fool),

already knows the answer,

“everything happens for a reason”

And an already cast down friend is cast a little lower,

and in the heat of desperation, we all need a reason,

we’re all looking for one.

Light: a Prayer

Light: a Prayer

embers: crackle my fears,

make them escape,

let them find freedom in the nape of

twilight's neck,

open my ears.

moon: light my path through an unknown wood,

sword and shield,

fortress ahead,

keep my mind on that bright open field.

dawn: gather my soul before it slips into night,

wearied in battle,

emptied of love,

gather it with violent ushered light.

noon: bless my forehead with sun and rain,

touch my hands to lay down my weapons

at the softening terrain.

eulogy: gentle Maker of all these things,

I kneel on your mountain of transfiguring,

help me know, even in dark hours

that Light swallows death and all of hell’s powers.

Mother

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Mother

Mother is world, chaos.

Mother is whirlwind of love and comfort and chastisement,

all at once lovely and terrifying.

Mother is mouth open wide with laughter and shouts of battle cry deliverance.

Mother is disdain at my nakedness,

mother is monster with eyes charged live

with contempt at smallness,

mother is muffled tears behind closed doors over drowned years of suffocating pain,

mother is perseverance and collapse,

I, a grown man, run around this world with an umbilical cord tied to her lap,

Chair board meetings with her eyes in the shadows,

See glints of her wild smile in my daughter’s folly.

Mother is all at once swallowing ocean and frightened suricate in the corner of a desert somewhere,

Forever nesting and alert,

…. surrogating the dreams of her own mother.