Tag / Carol j Forrester

by Carol J Forrester

“Stars, Like Policemen, Often Come In Pairs” Giles Sparrow, A History of the Universe in 21 Stars (and 3 imposters)

After chapter six I get distracted, put the book down, and leave it
on a shelf with likeminded volumes of good intentions
I mean to come back to. 

Ursa Major makes a den for itself among scattered thoughts
hibernates until night unfolds, then The Great Bear yawns
stirs like memory and steps into the sky. 

It takes the right kind of observation, to find binary stars. 
They huddle so close that they obscure their own pairings,
burn as a single pinpoint to the naked eye. 

Two magnitudes in perpetual orbit, moving as one, 
two halves of a whole, it is easy to paint a romance on devotion 
so far removed. 
 
Our sun is solitary, though not extraordinarily so, or oddly so. 
Stars (I read) are loners just as often as couples
And it makes no difference to their brightness. 

There is nothing wrong with a little loneliness. 
Sometimes the only light you need is the one you hold
sometimes space is what makes you seen.
by Carol J Forrester

Bluebell Wood

In the woods there are houses

and bricks like broken teeth,

pockmarks in the bramble thorns and climbing ivy,

vines like fingers, tucked in deep on walls

battered and spat into tumble-down ruins

sinking further into the banks

where the river coils and drifts

between the reeds and weeds

and the washed up refuse

of someone’s empty pockets,

as the sky passes over

those flickers from the undergrowth

until it all, eventually, grows still.

 

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I was really stuck for what to write for this prompt and in the end this was about all that I could manage. I’m not sure if it fits exactly with the style of ‘ecopoetry’ but I’m hoping I managed to get the mix of human and nature into this piece.

 

by Carol J Forrester

The Women I Come From

1.

The women I come from

learnt how to thicken their skin.

How to tan it, and beat it,

until inch by inch

it covers all those soft spots

we might have thought to share.

 

2.

The women I come from

never learnt how to bow their backs

so far that vertebrae fossilise

into constant arches

that creak beneath the weight

of someone else’s moral compass.

3.

The women I come from

learnt how to carry their secrets close.

How to tuck away their thoughts

into deeper shadows

until the faces we painted on

become the only ones we knew how to wear.

4.

The women I come from

have hearts cocooned in armour.

They are riddles without answers

twisted into people.

They are worriers, and they are lovers

and they are more fragile then they act

when they take all of what they are

and entrust it, to someone else.

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I was a bit at loss for which poem I was going to chose to write a response to for tonight DVerse Poetics. In the end I chose ‘Dragons’ by Sarah Kay, one of my favourite poets, and a poem that I find a lot of myself in when I read it.

My favourite bit of her poem is:

Me – I was not born with enough fuel. My anger often melts into sadness, it will just disintegrate into shame or fear, my clenched teeth release into chatter.

I come from a family that very much takes the ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ approach to life. In some ways it’s a fairly good ethos as it has encouraged me to stay calm in stressful situations and I don’t collapse into hysterics in the face of an emergency. Emotions get bottled up until the practical side of things is out of the way. I get it from my mother, who gets it from her mother. Out of the three of us I’m possibly the most outwardly emotional person and some of that perhaps comes from my love of writing since you have to make use of emotion when writing.

I had a couple of busy days so I’m now going to try and get through a few of the other DVerse Poets’ entries. I haven’t had chance to read through many of the poems from yesterday’s DVerse Event either so I’ll try and get through as many as I can tonight and tomorrow.

As always I love to hear what you’re thinking so feel free to leave a comment if you want. Other than that, happy writing and goodnight.

by Carol J Forrester

Sky High

Captain Martin Renke did not like strangers aboard his ship. He didn’t trust strangers, and being stuck with someone you don’t trust twenty thousand feet above the ground in something that for all intensive purposes should not be flying was a dangerous thing.

Dr Grass was a dangerous thing.

The scientist was escorted aboard the ship an hour before dawn by a retinue of armed guards, most of whom were only one twitch away from unloading their clips into the back of the man’s head.

‘He’s… odd,’ their commanded had explained. ‘Really odd.’ Then he’d thrown the papers stamped with the royal seal into Renke’s hands and left.

Grass had been smiling.

Three hours later Grass had stopped smiling and was puking over the side of the ship.

Tucked away in his cabin, Renke ran his thumb over the seal and examined the papers.

‘Murderer,’ he read. ‘Yeah. Aren’t we all.’

 

by Carol J Forrester

Rock’n’Roll

You’ve grown older with these years.

Sagged into them, your worn out chair,

too comfortable to discard.

I have too.

Now there are knots in these bones.

A lattice work of knuckle and knobble

and I cannot help you to your feet

propel you across the kitchen sidestep,

kick, flick, turn and lift!

jitterbug us into three am.

I cannot swagger with the same strength

of 1970s rock’n’roll

disco room dance floors.

We are old together it seems.

These feet became stepping stones.

Smaller ones, with laughing mouths

who clutch the knuckles and knobbles

without thought.

We were always old to them.

They are young,

and so very youthful,

and I will show them

how we danced.

This Tuesday’s DVerse Poet’s Pub prompt is a corker! Write a poem from the point of view of someone who’s not your gender. Check the challenge out for yourself and see what the other Pub Poets have in store!

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