Author: A. Gouedard

At the Last

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

There are dark days ahead for us all.
Storm clouds hang close above.
I see how the stars, revealing the map,
have slowly extinguish your eyes.
The future seems something to dread
when your planets never align.

Come sit here a while, and rest.

The road has been long and you’re tired
and you lost many friends on the path.
You’re the last of the fruit of your family tree.
Yes. Finally. Yes. The last.
Every day it’s the same
empty house, old dreams, gathering dust,
you don’t trust anymore in the point of this game.
It would be so damned easy to quit.

Come sit here a while, and rest.

Look into the flames of this fire,
this fire that burns so bright,
red embers that glow in the night.
There are voices hovering near.
Loved ones are never lost.
They are one sidelong step out of sight.

Come sit by me here, in the light.

Living in a fairy tale

/ A. Gouedard / 3 Comments

nice article that arrived in my inbox today – and illustrated by the wonderful Brian Froud, who really knows what The Gentry look like :)

Unknown's avatarThe Silent Eye

brian froud goblins                     Painting by Brian Froud

I’ve been looking into old faery lore lately. Not the sanitised Victorian version of miniature winged  beauties, but at the old tales of strange encounters, customs that go back beyond memory, time lost in the faery realm and the darker aspects of the hidden folk. At the instigation of my writing partner, I watched a documentary and, amongst a few other ideas, one in particular got me thinking. The suggestion was that if faeries do not have a concrete and objective reality of their own in our world, but do exist for us in the realms of imagination, perhaps imagination itself is a state of being we do not fully understand, bridging the gap between our usual vision of reality and unreality  in a way that has a validity of its own. As a concept, and after years of working with magical systems, that…

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After the Storm

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

 

A storm was above and the wind was intense,
Rattling resistant windows,
It battered against the glass,
Salt patina crazed, obscuring the view.
The sea wall boomed, a dark drum.

The rocks, veiled by mussel shell
Opening wide to the tide,
Lay hidden beneath the wild surface
Of broiling and tumbling water
Turned in a pool of cross currents

The fog horn sang out
Above the deep throated echo of sirens
Who lure sailing men to their sea graves.
The tides of the turn leave us debris,
Strange treasures with rope and mast beams,

Blue glass rolled smooth by long tides,
Smashed shells and well polished pebbles.
Fragments of cuttlefish bone.
After the storm we gather them home
To make decorative frames for our mirrors

All our mirrors face out to the ocean.
Wind chimes of shells hang in the light.
Cuttlefish carved into faces unknown
Hang from blue string on our walls.
The storm did no damage at all.

 

 

My fathers sword (a haibun)

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

In the mornings at breakfast my mother would ask ”Who are you being today? What should I call you?” It was an arrangement we had. I was an imaginative child and she humoured me. I would answer Robin Hood or Peter Pan or Galahad, needing breakfast before the quest. She kept to my names very well, but she much preferred her dogs.

you can’t go far in this life,
or do any good,
without a fantasy horse

My father never asked such a question. I was his carpenters mate, whoever I was. We didn’t talk much as he sawed and I held the board steady or passed him nails. I am sure he knew what I thought. He made me a wooden sword. It could strike a mighty blow.

in a powder of sawdust,
companionship
was always more than enough

i rode my fantasy horse
in the realm of dreams
but my father armed me well

Lost Watch

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

I lost my father’s watch in the sea
When I wandered about on a beach.
It’s well that it rests there,
He wanted an ocean burial,
But the sea was too far out of reach.
We didn’t have time for arrangements,
Time flew by too fast,
but now he is rested at last.
My family heirloom lies on a sea bed of shells,
Corroded by rust,
Informing the fish of the turning of tides
As it drifts back and forth in the currents
Showing it silvered face
round as the full moon, in it’s season.
I lost my father’s watch in the sea.
He would be happy,
But time seems to have stopped for me.
Like a screen on TV,
Gone blank.

Don’t Paint the Roses

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

 

she remembered she was falling
reaching for a cake  crumb
swallowing a draught
that completely turned her head

she was running round the roses
painting red and white
challenging the chess board
to manoeuvres in the dark

she had a distant memory
of a love that struck a spark
but the tables all kept turning
when he tried to take her hand

in the horrors and delusions
that stalked this troubled land
he loved her all the time
but he had lost his mind

lovers often lose their way
whether they are sane of mad
all is topsy-turvy
when the news is  always  bad

they race around in shadows
tying to find a light
their dreams become a nightmare
ruining their night

but up above the stars shine out
constellations point the path
if only they could both sit down
gazing up at last

the roses never needed paint
he knew that all along
check mate only brings an end
to more that can be done

lovers only need to sit
and think what love’s about
and forget the silly games
that pull them inside out

 

 

It’s a Circus

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

When Toulouse Lautrec tried to paint them he woke each morning to find his canvas was blank. Hardly surprising, given the nature of the Circus of Dreams. They are restless and always move on.

You may ask why there is a door that seems to lead nowhere.

Even the Master of Ceremonies wonders about that from time to time and the fact that he can’t discover the answer is beginning to irritate him, just a little, after 150 years.

The dancers don’t let it bother them much, though it sometimes confuses their entrances and exits to and from the stage.

But the show must go on! – or at least they all presume that it must – so they perform every night whether there is an audience or not. If the whole thing ends in chaos who cares.

They dance! And that’s what REALLY matters.

 

Circus of D2_001cropped

Matlock the Hare

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Loved the illustrations in this so much I went straight off and bought it.

niffsoup's avatarNiff Soup

“What readers need,” a portly editor from a major publishing company told me many years ago as he confidently struck a pen through great swathes of my manuscript, “is peril.  Plenty of peril. A lot less of all this ‘character and emotion’ nonsense. Ideally, it’s a woman in peril. All the drama you need in just those three words – woman in peril. Saves readers having to believe in a character, see?”

The truth was, I didn’t ‘see’.

“How about,” he suggested, scribbling over the first line of the manuscript, “we start it with – ‘She woke up to a knife at her throat’?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, gathering the remains of my work before asking, “Do you think Gulliver’s Travels would have been published today?”

He blinked back, confused. “The bloke who gets tied up on a beach by some dwarves? No chance. Where’s the peril in…

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A Book Illustration

/ A. Gouedard / 1 Comment

Rebecca Troyer has illustrated one of my poems (the copyright is hers)

 

In the Fairy Garden by Rebecca Troyer

Isn’t that just lovely ! Here is the poem

The Faerie Garden 

 

Its windows blown by wind and rain,

down the lanes where no-one came,

an ancient ruined cottage stood

with tumbled walls, close by the wood.

 

The cottage garden growing wild

with warring flowers unreconciled

was all a tangle, intertwined,

with paths and borders undefined

 

Columbine closed up the doors,

Ivy crept across the floors.

The roses grew all over-blown

Claiming all the walls their own.

 

Delphiniums, for summer skies,

near the solemn peonies rise.

Hollyhock o’er-towers them all

and Jasmin scents the evenings fall.

 

In this riotous throng of flowers

the faeries come to spend their hours.

They crown themselves with daisy chains

as sunlight spreads its last remains.

 

As evening falls they make their way

with gentle steps at close of day

to the bed they much prefer

beneath the sleepy lavender.

 

In the Weather House

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

there was a time they were together
dancers on a music box
all was peace and harmony
as they turned in clement weather

now one by one they turn about,
one days there’s rain, another sun
they move about in thunder storms
she steps in, he steps out

i never see her look his way
he never bows or takes her hand
he steps out, she steps in
they have nothing left to say

they live to serve the weather house
he never sleeps
she never dreams
when he steps in she steps out