Any Body Can Do Easy Funny Games
Harder Is Joining Kaleidoscopic Loving Meanings
No Obvious Practical Questions Resolve Serious Troubles
Under Viciously Willed Xenophobics Yielding Zeal
Author: A. Gouedard
Carrying my father home
Far heavier than I expected
and the size of an old sweet jar,
opaque plastic, black lidded.
Thank heaven it wasn’t transparent.
I could not have gone on like that.
I carried my father’s ashes
through the streets,
past the church and the chapel,
past the pizza parlour and meaty kebab shops,
under summer trees and fuming traffic,
everything poignantly normal.
We didn’t walk often together.
My father preferred his home.
I was sweating from heat and emotion.
Such a hot afternoon it was.
Blue Budgie
They come and go
They go in and out
They grimace when I copy their sounds
Their wings are unformed or vanished
That is really a sadness
They must keep me caged from envy
Their purpose is unclear
They press their strange faces up to the bars
When the door stood opened
I was paralysed
I know I shouldn’t be here
Behold
Behold the tight closed fist
Behold the puckered lips
Behold the eyes screwed shut
Behold the wrinkled frown
Behold the hungry mouth
Behold the new pink gums
Behold the clean and tender skin
Behold how when the eyes are wide
they have a mystic gaze
of quintessential innocence
nothing else is there
Behold the dawn or thought
Behold his simple joy
in the pleasure of his limbs
and how his lungs expand with air
gentle in the breathing
Behold his gaze,
drawn to light and movement
Behold the flexing fingers
Behold his hidden soul
a lotus deep enclosed
Behold a new beginning
Behold the newborn child
Behold the dawn of thought
Spinster
This house is empty
I’m alone
This room holds all I have from home.
That portrait hung upon the wall,
Above the fire that gives no warmth,
Has been there half a century now
It’s darkened varnish gathers dust
I don’t know how my time has passed
I sat alone, content to wait
I thought he would return at last
I trusted fate
He had no fear
War makes young men disappear
Loving Homonyms
Penned in by my own pen
No current thought will flow
No note I strike will rhyme
and so,
I send to you a ring
A ring that does not chime
A band that plays no tune
And hope it finds you well
Though I no water draw
To moisten my dumb lips
I’ll think of something soon
Since I have lost my words
A sketch I’ll make of you
To gladden my own eye
Telling you the truth
Please know that I still lie
Here beneath a tree
Penned in by my own pen
Haunted House
These ghosts are more than memory.
I saw them once or twice
when time slips sideways, ajar.
I enter the room and feel them,
feel the warmth on the arm of a chair
where his hand leaned a moment ago.
I know he left by the opposite door.
There is a slight disturbance
sketched on moving air,
as real as the solid oak table
and the light on the polished floor.
It is winter now.
The house is cold and damp.
The ghosts hang like a fine sea mist
by the dying, darkening fire.
At night he climbs the stair,
always ahead of me, here
We don’t intrude or disturb them.
We live with them side by side.
When I am gone, they’ll still be here.
I turn out the light
and walk in the dark
knowing they do the same.
brown pebble
i have a pebble
smooth and brown
with a sheen
but unpolished
it sits secure
in the palm of my hand
we went to the garden
just the two of us
i carried a spade
and the ashes
the day was fair
and no breeze blew
my father made
this sheltered space
down among the roses
and here i dug the heavy earth
no marker for this grave
i picked up a pebble
held it
a secret no-one shared
we said a few words
we stood in silence
my mother turned away
i have a pebble
smooth and brown
with a sheen
but unpolished
it sits secure
warmed in the palm of my hand
small
significant
so easily lost
regret
i wish that i had gone the other way
if i went out the other door that day
i could have been more honest than i was
i would have told you if you asked
i couldn’t even know you cared back then
i should have told you how much I loved you still
that day when –
if only is the saddest phrase
i know I’ll make the same mistakes again
I am my home
I am
Granite
Moss
Grain
Ocean
River
Rain
Hacked and carved
from blue grey granite
cloaked and cushioned in moss
the deep dug roots of twisted trees
reach down in the dark of my bones
ocean air bends branches down
clutching at my hair,
but still, I am not there.
Aware of the flow of rivers,
the wide slow curve of the river,
through green and rolling hills,
I am swept away to another place
to rest in fields of grain.
My spirit wanders far from home.
I fall in summer rain
The Dreaming Path 