Void

photo credit SXC http://www.sxc.hu/

Have you ever
Woken from a dream
Filled with such clarity
That it makes reality
Dull by comparison?
Have you ever
Felt the thud as you
Realise that this grey world
Is the one of your
Actuality?
Felt the dawning perception
That part of your living,
Breathing, beating heart
is left forever trapped
Within a world that
You cannot ever
Gain access to
In your lifetime.
Disappointment that rises
To fill your soul
With the sadness of
The incomplete.

Minimal Word Monday

30.12.13
Wet…

Seven Words for Sunday – Feeling Bad

7WS
Tired, crotchety, guilty, wakeful, tired, crotchety…cyclical

Six Words for Saturday – Catching Up

28.12.13

Peaceful
moments alone.
Pen to paper.

Be-squalled

27.12.13

The wood invites us in; blurring the boundaries between light and dark as coldness draws us into its perceived warmth. We start to walk through. We notice that no trees have toppled here – unlike a less exposed place where we counted 30 fallen trunks the day before. As we reach the other side, drops begin to fall – bouncing from the branches, halting our progress. We take shelter under a tree, then behind it as the weather worsens. No use. We try to move around and away from the brisk needles of ice, my back is flat against the bark as a vicious wind threads in and around the trees. A similar sized guardian of the wood sways to and fro in front of where I stand and I feel an uneasiness rising within me. A refuge no longer – this place holds malice.
Then, as suddenly, peace returns and the squall has gone.

Mirrored

26.12.13
Between here and there is where
You’ll find me.
Half within this world and half in
Somewhere else.
I hover above the surface ripples,
Below the air currents that show
Hope of tomorrow.
I lie between reality and reflection –
Where it really doesn’t matter which is which.
I am today, tomorrow and yesterday.
I am what is, what was and what could be.
Set me free.

Musings of a Midnight Nature

25.12.13
My brother knows me too well – he knows that I’m often to be found typing away into the middle of the night. My creative drive seems to wake up at about ten pm and the other night I finally got to bed at four in the morning. Obviously, this only works when it is the weekend or the holidays and I don’t have to get up for work two hours later. It is the same with whatever I am creating. When I had my little salt dough craft business I would be baking at 3am quite regularly. Now writing has taken hold I frequently find myself lying in bed thinking about what I would like to write. Last night I got up twice to jot things down and, in typical disorganised fashion, I had to scrabble around to find something to make a note on. Well no longer! I have been given the perfect Christmas present….complete with a (ok rather backhanded) compliment. ‘Midnight Musings of a Sleepless Genius’ it says on the cover and it is filled with lots of inspirational quotes and blank spaces to fill in by torchlight, candle-light, gas-light…whatever.
He thinks I am a genius. Wow! Ah hold on… ‘sleepless genius’ that suggests sleepwalking, sleeptalking, sleepwriting, being in possession of involuntary genius genes is not really a compliment at all – unless by association he is claiming to be full of it himself…hmmm

Preparing Ahead

Christmas Eve
Waiting, wedged between my feet and the kitchen counter, she sits ready for any vegetables to go astray – it’s almost as if she senses that I’ve had a little too much wine (both mulled and straight from the bottle) not to mention the rather large glass of Tia Maria with my coffee… as expected a carrot does mysteriously catapult itself off the counter and straight into the slavering mouth below.
On to the next root vegetable. An escapee is eagerly pounced on only to be immediately spat out again. It goes back in followed by a crunch or two then three pieces fly back out. For someone who will, at the drop of a hat, snaffle anything within snapping distance of those crocodile jaws, she’s showing quite an aversion to parsnips.
She is not usually this fussy. Horse pooh, seaweed, cardboard, the odd shoe…not to mention umpteen unidentifiable objects that she pilfered from the bin before the dustmen got a look in.
Parsnips, however, are clearly one item off her ‘most wanted’ list.

Silver Ghost

24.12.13
And so the tree, which has stood its ground
Since Queen Victoria was standing hers,
Which has seen seasons come and go;
Breathing the smoky aroma of things
Long dead in the air all around,
Has finally sighed its last and bowed
Too far to the night-time howl…one final
Groan then sinking to the earth to sleep
The sleep of Nature’s innocent.

The house hadn’t existed when our friend
Was planted these many moonshines ago.
Its collapse surprisingly hindered by
Bricks and mortar; clay, wood and stone. As birds
In its branches, wingless the inhabitants peer through –
Wondering what guardian angel must
Have been watching over them this first hour
Of Christmas Eve. All should have been crushed to dust,
Splintered like that tree which will no more
Look through into the windows of their lives.

Fortune indeed smiled, on some, that night.

A Greater Power

23.12.13

Underneath the ferry
The sea is alive with movement.
Flecks of foam swirl as eddies
Accompany our journey
Across the Solent.
The storm is not here yet but,
Like giant rolling presses,
The ocean heralds its
Imminent arrival with
Surging undercurrents
In the depths below our
Anxious gaze.