Tag / creative

by Carol J Forrester

Ripples

The ripples are gone when I look,

searching the water for a slip of silver

twisting back on itself

leaping skyward in panic

or ecstasy perhaps.

I think about you and I,

or at least the phantom of us

that clings to my lungs on slow days,

crawls onto my shoulders

to press my face down, down, down,

down where I deserve to be

when my own body twisted back on itself,

my mouth searching for a way

to swallow the words I’d spoken,

to return them to the saftey of unspoken

rather than the spotlight

of my glowing red cheeks

as I fumbled to dress myself

in what I thought was maturity.

I can feel nails along my spine,

when I think of how much

I wanted to be loved.

by Carol J Forrester

Stone Seed

I lost the end of myself somewhere near the start,

among the scattered sheets of blotting paper

sprung up on iron girder stalks.

Parchment alliums staked out like skeletons,

petals more like teeth,

 

poems in the stems of them,

but no air for the words to breathe.

 

 

Between the leaves the stanza’s curled,

coppered, golden, burnt and burnished,

rhythm rolling hollow in the echos,

tongue twisted through the skirmish

as syllables clattered in and out

silver toothed, thick lipped, broken.

Turned over once, then twice, then thrice,

poetic promised poured and stolen.

dverselogo

 

 

 

by Carol J Forrester

Home Retreat

When the world shudders,

I still seek shelter with you.

I still cocoon myself in your arms

and pretend

that I am a child again.

Knowing you will keep the bad at bay

until I am ready to gather myself

and face the world.

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I’m going to blame my other half for the lapse in memory that made me miss last night’s Quadrille prompt. He returned home with twelve Israeli Koi for the new pond in the garden so our evening dissolved into me staring over the edge of the water, trying to pick out any signs of their colourful little bodies after they’d been released.

by Carol J Forrester

Uncompromising

Uncompromising does not mean unbreakable.

Even the strongest machine

has its fragile components.

When they falter or buckle beneath pressure

the whole thing will grind to a halt,

until someone can come and sift through the metal,

down to the root of the problem.

But us, we cannot wait.

There are too many mountains to climb

for us to wait for our broken parts to be repaired

by other people’s hands.

Instead we have to carry them with us

or learn the best way to tape ourselves together

so that we hold just long enough

to make it to the other side

or past that ceiling that keeps the sun from coming in

and us from breaking out.

Uncompromising does not mean unbreakable,

it means we will put ourselves back together,

return to our feet and carry on forward

no matter how many times we are shattered

or forced to the ground.

It means that though you may not be listening,

we will certainly be heard.

Daily Post: Uncompromising 

 

by Carol J Forrester

Dust Blind

When the facts were laid out it made sense.

One by one

I could pinpoint where everything fell apart,

where the track first bent

sudden and broken into barren desert,

the initial dust cloud the only cover you needed

to keep me from realising what exactly had happened.

 

I didn’t understand where the thorns came from,

why I had to pull them out from under my skin,

when they had even found their way beneath it.

Surely there should have been a warning,

a prickle of pain or a bolt of lightening,

small or large,

there should have been something to say

this was not right.

 

By the time I noticed you’d carried on,

left me standing stranded

miles away from the path

I’d thought we were following,

night had fallen.

 

For a while I still thought

you might come back.

Daily Post: Fact