Audacious, ericatious,
delicious and ambitious
faudulent, ebullient,
turbulent, transparent.
Words spoken at random
devoid of any meaning.
Running rampant, freedom and ruination.
Vive la revolution.
Ravishment, ready, replete.
Author: A. Gouedard
Day 9 ~ Shoreline and Shallows
The foghorn off the coast of Trevone
Warns of shoreline and shallows.
It’s a sound that could always lure me back home.
Night or day, its sense of loss swings round the bay
Echoing distance and sorrow.
When my life ends I will hear it again,
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Day 8 ~ No ghazals this season
I don’t want to write a ghazal.
You wouldn’t either with a brain as messed up as mine.
I have forgotten how I wrote them before
And now I can’t fathom instructions.
I’ll tie Celtic knots with Italian spaghetti.
with no sign of Persian delights
or patterns of beauty and promise.
Love is all a repetition of form and illusion.
We fly or we fall as we scribble old thoughts on our walls.
Day 7 ~ Poised for Flight
My tutor made a cast of my foot sealed all the way up to my ankle
It was a demonstration of how it should be done
My foot became uncomfortably hot under enveloping plaster
And my arch was slightly flattened under the pressure.
When he cut the mould away it was a relief.
Fifty years later I wonder if my youthful foot still exists
Locked away in the dark of an art college cupboard
Hidden with still life props.
I wish he had posed me on tiptoe like Hermes in the Louvre
Or Peter Pan in the park always ready for flight.
Day 6 ~ Coriander
I dont need some fancy foreign name.
Call me a drip ~
To me it’s Coriander!
It doesn’t smell very gentle. It’s strong, persistent, invasive.
It’s the scent of a Magreb backstreet
When it’s mixed with olive and cedar.
It’s worth more than saffron and pearls
To me in my soupy kitchen.
Day 5 ~ Death Metal
A power chord ascends to a screech
Ripping through darkness
And crashing through bones
Spreading electrical sparks.
Death metal in tempo di murder
Curls in the lap of the gods
Staking a claim to the gothic throne
In the home of Odin and Thor.
Day 4 ~Unillusrated
Where are the angels?
where is the child
too young to understand
the darkness of this world?
I have no evidence.
The image I saw is lost.
I don’t want to find it again.
Day 3 ~ I could paint a river
I could paint a river
in a wash of gentle colour
defined by softest blue
and tender grey and green.
To give it strange translucence
a splash of silver light.
I could paint a river
and never get it right.
Brush strokes can be deceptive
but when described with words
the image you will see
isn’t mine,
it’s yours.
Day 2 ~ Ancient Volumes
Old words are valued by some
But old thoughts are lost in translation
Or twitched and reshuffled to serve a new master
In tales that dwell on disaster
Dispelled, disabled, diverted
distorted away from the truth
as history turns a new corner
and books rot away on the shelves
stained with mildew and dust.
Day 1 ~ Elven Revenge
To enter with dignity
I begin an adagio
Played in a dark minor key,
Serious and sombre,
A step to the side of my natural presence.
It attracts your straying attention.
Then a plaintive air played without pity
Lures you to sleep
with lavender scent on your pillow.
Mellow with sadness you dream of the hills
And wish you were free to wander.
Swiftly switching we play an expanded cantata
In brisk and rippling allegro
Shifting to pizzicato
Through gladness and frenzy
to uncontrolled magical madness
where, without looking back,
I chain your feet sole and heel to the dance floor
And retreat to the windswept moors.
The Dreaming Path 