Big Bren gets Shaved, 8th July 2017

We watched the Big Man being shaved

My pocket containing ten pounds

And Michelle

With her illusory beard

But I bought 2 drinks, anyway

“It’s a beautiful thing,” I thought

“Sacrificing your hair for charity”

And the lamb remained in stillness

Like a 21st century Buddha

Whilst anxiety gripped me

Like a gynaecologist’s fist

From the bottom of my empty pocket

To the nicotine tips of my conscience

My Mother and I had argued, you see

Before I left home

So I fooled myself that I wasn’t all bad-

Pneuma in a cage of beer and cigarette smoke

But smiled, like Satan’s symbiotic sister

Until Patrick walked me to the bus

And my smiles became tears, I didn’t shed

My Heart is Warm

By Louise M.Hart

Melancholy

Please…

 

Spread your wounding comfort blanket

Upon the form that carries my heart

Perpetually in tatters

Forlorn

Because only love matters

And it gathers none

 

I am a malfunction

A cogitative

Breathy

Soul shattered

Aborted foetus

That should never have been

 

My heart is warm

But my body like ice

Repels touch

And drip drips

Fleshy troubles

Beneath cold showered obscenity

Please…

Melancholy

The Revelation

I stand upright on revelation hill
When Prometheus descends
Flaying his flaming hair
His body is soul personified
He arrives on a chariot of silver clouds
That glide through the air
Like angel’s distant cries
Around his neck, he wears a wreath
Of human hair
Seized from dead men’s chests
Dressed in perfectly pressed
Violets
And sick charcoal leaves
His smiles
Slowly
Give way to grief
Silent as silk
I hear him calling
On revelation hill
The grass has eyes
And lips that bleed
Like cherry wine
And Prometheus holds a torch
Whose inherent flame
Dances
To the shapes
Of the letters of my name
The flame consumes my being
From head to toe
Until my mind radiant with heat
And mightily aglow
Surrenders like a moth
To a glare of light
Revealing my destiny
With a quake and the power
Of renewed insight
Before me stand gargantuan doors
I open them, in pursuit of a cure
And contemplate
Whether any other human form has lived to see
The vision that projects to me
Made from ivory and gold
The doors of perception
Reach from the sky to the ground
And the trees are bare
From the waist down
Wasting down to the ground.

The soul of The Poet

Hope by Emily Bronte

Hope was but a timid friend;

        She sat without the grated den,

Watching how my fate would tend,

       Even as selfish-hearted men.

 

She was cruel in her fear;

       Through the bars, one dreary day,

I looked out to see her there,

       And she turned her face away!

 

Like a false guard, false watch keeping,

       Still in strife, she whispered peace;

She would sing while I was weeping;

       If I listened, she would cease.

 

False she was, and unrelenting;

       When my last joys strewed the ground,

Even sorrow saw, repenting,

       Those sad relics scattered round;

 

Hope, whose whisper would have given

       Balm to my frenzied pain,

Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,

       Went, and ne’er returned again!

Emily Bronte’s poem provides a glimpse into the soul of the poet. She casts herself in the role of an outsider, experiencing existence, like a flower, threatened by a fateful wind. Hope is not, “A timid friend,” but a creature of two faces; one promising to sooth her pain, the other rebutting her distressed advances, like a jaded existential psychiatrist.

The soul of the poet is a fragile entity. It is created by the spirit of observation, only to be destroyed by inevitability. However, when the soul marks reality’s soil, culminating in strokes of a pen upon paper, it helps shape the texture of the universe.

After Emily Bronte, other souls visited the physical realm. To how many of these have we humble, flesh and blood women and men gained access? The soul of the poet exists eternally.

Goodbye Sweet Soul

Goodbye sweet soul
I loved you well
But, now, your presence honours hell
When morning breaks
Amidst the glow
Of sacred Mothers suckling foe
There lies an essence of a smile
Washed ashore on a golden mile
Of sand encrusted frowns and shells
Whose destination-
No one knows
Some say that it decays slowly
Like a blood red rose
Then, pricks the heart of pain’s repose