Commonword Blogs

I am all the lost socks
your washing machine has eaten
And dog has desecrated for you-
Scattered fragments for hungry hoovers

I am every sparkly object that's
Lost its shine
And misplaced its twinkle:
the lack-lustre sequin
And the forgotten glitter

I am all the coluring books
with scribble round the edges of hard black lines
That can stick up for themselves
The pictures are shaded in kind colours
harsh to themselves
They dont fight back

I'm random snap cards missing from the pack
Which spoils the game
One Mr Tickle hides in the wardrobe anxious and jittering

Thanks everyone for all your comments. Here's version 2....

Until I call your name
you speak with glass voice
make my slow sonnets fade and curl

The dry trees crackle with
unconscious blossoming

Conscious of brittle bones, of cracked teeth, sand scatters
It echoes dust

Will your grieving bed prevail?
Direct dry tongues to dying towns?

Your eager fingers grasp - and clutch
life measured with tales told, words sold
And how to calculate the weight of feathers, or of gold?

You unfurl dusty half-deserted sheets

With a chilling cup of tea in one hand
I tell them how their icy words sliced me
irradicated facets of me i can't get back
Emptied me of the innocent jollity
I should have felt
The belonging I had every right to:
That I was denied

Every night I prayed
Every night I cried

The alpabet failed me:
Words let me down and they didn't read my letters.
My silence summoned them: louder than any vocal strains
My oddness was noticed more than their oneness
Their group surpremacy paled in to insignificance
In the radiance of my difference
They desired that glow, that individuality

TINY SANITY

Tiny sanity walks up misty lanes and down dead ends
Her shabby black dog for company
A rain cloud hovers above her
Threatening to burst

She sees missing pieces of jigsaws and odd socks lying around
she smiles ironically at the euphemism
wishes the void could be filled that easily

Tiny sanity is continually misplaced
Left behind on the bus and discarded on the train
no one calls to reclaim her
or check she's been re-homed

Tiny sanity speaks in flat grey now- a -days
her passion for the cute and fury and the arty is waning

Innocense

Innocence is bliss induced not knowing
It's closed eyes and ears not seeing
Fresh untouched pores un-feeling
Not-sensing the trauma
The pain
The fear

Innocence is staying clear
Open to suggestion
To positivity
To hope
It's the clean slate clear freshness
Of baby soap
Lots of time
Lots of energy

Sunny Paddling pool days dreaming
Laughing
Smiling
Uncaring
Forever sharing

Making a life full of daisy chains
Happy rainy days
The squelching greyness
Did'nt matter
Sweets didn't make us fatter
No nastiness
No lies
No flabby thighs

Just sweet dreams

Ordinary Men

They took us out into the bush at night
And made us sing liberation songs till dawn but they couldn’t –
Dismantle the image we'd built of white men as gods in our minds

They spoke of Independence
Of Ghana, of Nigeria, of guerrilla warfare but they still –
Couldn’t take the fear out of our hearts

Finally, they beat us
When world war two began they told us to resist but we still –
Went off to enlist

Until we saw them –
Ordinary men
Comforting weeping wives
Kissing screaming children on their cheeks
“Back before Christmas!”

OFF PEAK

What if I dared to dream
And took a journey and had a look around a new life
A new sound and a new way of being
A fresh way of living
What if I took a chance and had a glance
At how it would be
If I wasn't shy
And was brave and didn't cry
What if I lived sunny side up and
Butter side off the ground
And I marvelled at the new luck I found
At the life I gained
What if I lived more free range
And courted and settled with a
Major change
The soldier of choice for this lost soul
For this wandering minstrel
With a special goal
The alternative doesn't seem so glam

This is an edited version of a poem I've been working on:

Make Love not War

Two women
One from the North of England
Saleha was her name
her parents good Muslims from Pakistan
she scattered Yorkshire vowels
drove a red, convertible babe-magnet

The other, her lover
from the South
we’ll call her Sangeeta,
her parents good Hindus from India
with a good Hindu daughter
Concentrating on work
Never chasing the boys

Old Kent Road

Did 80s Kids have the monopoly on joy?
Always a sunny day and
And a brilliant toy
We etched a sketch of our future life
Where we became a happy husband
Or a wonderful wife

We played doctors and nurses and
Parents with mums old purses
And journeyed baby doll around in her pram
And sang about Mary and her little lamb
We wore underskirts made of nylon
And remembered the lamb attached to the pylon
Our small lives lived dreaming of being bigger
Reciting rude rymes made us snigger

We wore dungarees and ra-ra skirts
Had illustrated plasters for
Where it hurts

Maybe On The Stars

Maybe on the stars
You can eat all you like
And not get fat
Sugar smothered or cocolate coated
Toffee moonbeams from a vat
Maybe you could wear clothes that clashed
Like purple dungarees and an orange cravatt

Perhaps on the stars
Its never far
To local shops and events
And all inside places are marques and tents
Maybe inside cafes and bars
Folk sing, dance and play acoustic guitars
Maybe natives travel by cable cars
And glide from star to star

Its possible that on the stars
The only chocolate is Milky Way or Mars
But you could always run a marathan