Thursday, 16 April 2009

Stepmother 

Pink on brown, 
big circles that shimmered like 
raindrops in puddles, or 
when my tears splashed. 
Yellow and green was just not my colour. 
What was in you to, dress me like wallpaper? 
Purple and blue squares as 
sharp as your tongue. 
I felt each prick with your icy glare. 
Little things to please you as hopeless as my attire.
Was I really that bad, or just another layer of your life to be peeled away and discarded when you tired of my monotony?

Monday, 13 April 2009

endings

Endings 1

We whooped away all the long summer days,
Our skin thin cotton flailing in the haze.
We played until the sea swallowed the sun,
Our feet tickling the sky all summer long.

We scooped away all the long summer days,
Stuck to our lips. ‘Come and wash!’ our mum says.
Splashing and chasing, rushing and jumping,
Not caring if we fell and were stinging.

But then it suddenly came to an end,
This innocent fun with all of our friends.
Our smiles disappeared like a blackening sun.
First dad was here and then he was gone.

Alone in the vast, our hearts ripped to shreds,
Piercing screams echoed, tearing through our heads.
Innocence shattered, we’d nowhere to hide,
Footprints of youth washed away like the tide.

Shadows of our past returning to me,
Closing slowly in on freedom to be.
Dark days were ahead though none of us knew,
Dark days were ahead as we grew and grew.


Endings 2

My ring long gone, though its imprint remains,
Two decades rushed by and now I’m alone.
My splintered heart will never be the same,
Like the disintegration of my home.

Sad, peeling walls shed the dust of our life.
Blocking my sight, I see no more sun,
Now i know I'm no longer his wife!
I tried, but now nothing more can be done.

With echoes of us swirling round my feet,
Little voices dissipate in my head.
The stark bare rooms as empty as my heart,
A void unfilled nothing more can be said.

Silence, as the final box shuts on us,
It’s a different path I take from my home.
His shadow does not follow. I make no fuss,
As I head forward for once all alone.

He gets smaller and smaller as I go,
Still crushing what’s left with nothing to show.
Though my life is now mine and mine to make,
I hear his footsteps with each step I take.

Wednesday, 4 March 2009


Naliboki Forest 1942-44


Tall trees paint the infinite blue sky
with the seeping red of the weak,
whilst lower branches reach out to us to sweep
us in to protect. Nature beckons from the Ghetto, but lies.
One hell into another, longer nights but less sleep.

Eternal sleep for some, as bomb filled machines circle
above a vast sea of green, hunting,
firing death at scurrying life below.
Deeper. Faster. Darker. In we go. Further we run, the more we are seen,
forced to play this deadly game of hide and seek.

Cries of anguish near and far; death is all around
this paradoxical place of beauty.

Gold stars fade in the soil amongst the fallen leaves.
The spared few brave a naked white winter, huddle and forage for
fuels for all nature’s endurance; scarce like our squandered lives.
Keeping the forest alive, their hearts are defiant. And then

the high sun, years clouded by violence, suddenly bursts through.
The black lifts as we silently step back towards the pieces left of us.
Faster, faster, charging through these splintered acres of death.
We are finally victorious in spite of our tragedy.






My baby girl


Cocooned snug and warm, she lies deep inside
me, a need to stay there almost to hide
for forty long weeks to grow and mature,
is this my destiny to create and nurture?
My body has changed irreversibly so,
giving life to my child in order to grow.
My spine curves away, I can’t see my feet
and all my mouth craves is everything sweet.
My body is ready but never my head,
When her arrival commences, is the time that I dread.

Cocooned by myself and all preparations
I distance myself from my flapping relations.
Unable to grasp just what lies ahead,
I spend my whole days thinking of nothing instead
of my nearness to pain, how my life has now changed
for the better I’m told, though I feel quite estranged.
She’s on her way out. I panic. I’m scared,
but a strange feeling envelops me, I would not have dared
to admit to myself, first tears and now laughter, instant love that I feel as I meet my first daughter.

Sunday, 2 November 2008