Napowrimo

Rear-view Mirror

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Objects
seen in the rear-view mirror
might be closer
than they appear.

This warning,
you said,
could apply to us.
All the time you were there,
very near.

I considered those words for a while.
I thought I was far down the road ahead,
far down the road and free.

Following on behind,
you were moving
much closer to me.

You were far closer up than I knew.
Now I consider more clearly
nothing about this is strange.

When the view is so wide and distorted
our impressions can often be wrong.
Things very rapidly change.

All that you see behind you
may not be distant, but near.

Things from the past still affect us.
They creep up on us from the rear.

I thought I could go and forget you.
We were closer than we appeared.
Between glances, the gap had been filled.

Accident happen so fast.
We might have collided
or spun off the road,
or rolled.
One of us might have been killed.

This thought fills me with terror.
To leave you behind was an error.
We should travel in future together.
There’s no sense in having two cars.

Alas! Poor Yorick

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Alas! poor Yorick
his head is disturbed.
His skull’s been exposed
for hundreds of years
with holes that were once
eyes, nose and ears.
He’s only just realised
he’s Yorick, the Late.
Words have been bandied
over his pate
far too profound
for the mind of a Fool.
He can’t understand it at all.
Poor Yorick, alas
his body is gone.
What he wants is a grave
not a place on the stage,
somewhere to rest,
his poor addled head
hopefully blessed,
in a place he belongs,
now he’s dead,
very dead,
very finally gone.
I hope he’s in heaven,
not hell.
Who can tell.
Alas poor Yorick,
poor Yorick,
farewell.

The Last Bus

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

‘The answers are within you’,
is not a phrase
you often overhear
in the street
as you hurry along in town.

The rain was pouring down.
It was sudden.
People rushed into doorways
avoiding hail.
The pavements were pooling.
Gutters glugged.

‘Your ability to influence the world
may be greater than you think.’

I turned to see who was speaking.
Someone looked at me.
I shrugged.
I hadn’t said a word.
I realised
someone else had heard.

‘That girl Tracy makes me sick,
acting innocent. I told her
if i see her again, I’ll mark her’

Now we are back to normal.
And here comes the last bus.

 

Briefly Narcissus

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

He was arrogant, self-centered,
manipulative, demanding,
and utterly, flawlessly charming.

These things can’t exist
in a vacuum.

He was propped up
by admiration,
adoration,
from those who worshiped
his beauty.

He cared not a jot for any of them.
He was far too absorbed by himself.
No one could pull on his heartstrings.

Beauty brings love
to those of no virtue,
and youth is admired
above wisdom and age.

Photographed, interviewed,
followed and praised,
his face filled the magazines.

With no special talent, he faded.
No one remembered his name.
His body was found
in a cold empty room.
He had covered the mirrors
with pages
torn from the old magazines.

Outside the window
a narcissus bloomed,
a symbol of sunshine and spring.
Cupping the sunlight
they may last a week.
They never last longer than that.

Alone Time

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

The girl at the checkout counter
gives me a
side-long look.
She seems bemused
by my words.
Did I say too much
or too little?
How much is ever enough?

I always liked solitude,
it’s as vital to me as food.
But five days alone is my limit,
more is too heavy a weight.
One more ounce, and I’m crushed.

I speak out loud to the mirror,
checking I still have a voice.
Sometimes I answer myself.
I sound like a rusty old clock.
I seem to be losing my tick.

I brace myself for the day
I strap on a shell,
a brave carapace,
to keep the dark moments at bay.
I’m an expert at living this way.

But when friends come to stay
and then go away
I feel that my heart
has been opened and filled
and then,
quietly,
clinically,
stripped.

Mythologies

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Paris often told Helen
that her hair falling down,
partially covering her beautiful face,
and her gesture to push it away
was the first moment he felt
the infatuation
that would alter and shatter his world.

Pygmalion must have spent hours
whispering to Galatea,
recalling the shock,
and the joy,
of his granted wish
when she took her first step
from the plinth.

Philemon and Baucis
whisper their truth
through their leaves
as trees
grown together, entwined

Romeo and Juliet
never had time
to look back.
So many didn’t.
There are too many famous lovers
soon parted by death.

Orpheus should never have looked back at all.

Lovers love to repeat their stories.
Where they met,
how they watched each other before.
Their song.
Their words.
They remind each other,
adding small details,
confirming their private and precious thoughts.

Kisses are careful punctuations
and seal every paragraph.
The ritual of repetition
strengthens fond bonds
to the last.

Insomnia

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

The lighthouse keeper fires up the light.
All you have done is seal up a crack.
Reading at night can’t shut out the doubts.
Nothing you think is quite as it seems
and unwelcome thoughts keep coming back.
Praying is futile. You drift out of dreams,
hanging suspended, close to the edge.
The horses are running.
They’ve broken the lines.
Water is rushing over the ledge.
All that was small has now become large.

Collaborators

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

On Day 12 of NapoWriMo (for which I am writing a poem a day throughout April) I was sitting in a 1940’s themed cafe called Fourteas in Stratford-upon-Avon. Two of us come from the UK and two from Australia. We have known each other online (as avatars only) for quite a long time but had met face to face for the first time only 2 days before.

The Day 12 poetry prompt for of the day was to write a Haibun about your surroundings. I wrote The Rain it Raineth Every Day (my post for April 12th) but suggested we all do one while sitting in the 1940’s cafe.

This is the result ~

from Keith ~

I’m sitting here out of the wind and rain
with the water running down the drain.
Oh, how I wish I was home, in the warmth of the sunshine.

Oh, happy days, happy days

I’m drinking tea
instead of coffee

Oh, happy days, happy days

We’re soon to leave these lovely people
to make a twenty-hour flight.
That will give us a fright.

Oh, happy days, happy days

We are going on a cruise and that’ll be swell
so hopefully all will be well.

Oh, happy days, happy days

We’re still sitting here with sandwiches and tea
and hope to be reunited with thee and thee

Oh, happy days, happy days

From Cath

Rain-soaked streets and drab shops
Bring back dog-eared layers of memory
Dragging dreary days filed in melancholy feeling.
Make do and Mend. Waste Not Want Not.
I remember factory girls clattering past,
Cloths tied around their heads,
Brushing by laughing and gossiping.
It was austere, all right.
They never had brie. Or grapes. Back then.
Only bomb-sites. And empty buildings.

Slipping realities. Sitting in a 1940s café with
A good friend I’ve only just met.
Are pixels more real than flesh?
Or prims less fake than war-time décor?
And what about that waitress with a German accent?

In the street, we dance Swan Lake in boots and coats,
With a real swan.
Who hisses. Pissed off.
It still rains.

from Barbara

Four fabulous friends, who met on the internet, find each other in real life,  laughing and having a fun and living the moment, enjoying each others company and hoping the day will never end. Amid spiced tea and sandwiches, precious memories are made, never to be forgotten.

Passing food amongst us all
Amid many smiles
Happiness is tangible

and from me

Churchill yells from the wall, ”Let’s go forward together!”
I look across the table. The Victoria Sponge is behind us. On closer inspection it’s dry and too heavy, rather like the days that are memorised here, in glamourised nostalgia.

I was born a little after the war and all I recall is the sweets still rationed and the bombsites; the sad, damp wall-paper flapping from shattered bedroom walls in the wind.

My newsfeed bleeps from my phone. Missiles aimed at Syria.

Back then Pearl Harbour was bombed.

The Chattanooga Choo Choo just keeps choo-chooing on.

Let’s stay at the tea table and just keep moving around. I’ll be the Hatter. You pour the tea. Be ‘mother’.

People have got to stop killing each other.

We’ll meet again.
Don’t know where.
Don’t know when.

 

 

 

Footnote: The word ‘prim’ is an abbreviation of ‘primative‘ – a word to denote a building block in alternative reality