Scribbled poetics

and summer scrawls

Writing has felt sludged these last months since Solstice. My own standing still.

But snippets drizzle, in workshops, in streets.

A cobbled collection of thirst, for wherever it may land, and whichever soils it may quench 🖤

---

Street haiku

And still, pigeons court
As life cries thirst, bodies sweat
Dance tomorrow now

***

Acorn

Born last year's summer
you cradled amongst the
soft blankets of fluttering hazed leaves

As soil thirsted, grass bleached and crunched
your mother pulled hard
suckling from her roots for
she knew, come autumn,
there'd be starved mouths to feed
new generations to seed

she must grow fat

Zested green amongst your siblings
your hardened shells scaled
armouring your newborn flesh
bullets holding the promise of
universe

You grew brave
Resisted cuckooing wasps
Resisted curious hands
Resisted gathering mouths

until thirsting mother loosened
her grasp

and you fell

There you lie
incomplete
deadened 
while she shed and prepared 
to sleep

***

Nottingham, NG1

You will be met by a lion to your left
A fat hippo ahead
A dog, brewing, to your right
The student beehive lives alongside the white rose, the gated goose,
on this rainbowed road backwater
rippling with human song streaming
to the tip taps of be-leaded and be-collared and be-loved best friends

The greys, browns, blacks and whites are softened by  
blustered brashness, the fluorescent daring of hanged flowers

Don't look

Don't look here
where bleached and died
grasses, leaves, stems met
their ends amongst the
cracked soil held in a 
forgotten container

Don't look here
where the tree, heavy with hopeful
seed, is held by a tide of
concrete, their fallen children
to be swept as litter in
the coming months

Don't look here
where the velvet green
moss grows
worlds between
the pavement slabs, 
where the silken green
shoots find sky through
the metalled grates
For here are the green bins
pungent wasted stench calling
for collection

Don't look here
where crossing the rainbow
a proud pigeon pair flaneur in love
purpled and greened throats and chests
catching sunbeams iridescent 
feasting crumbs amongst roughened tarmac
hopping kerbs
and admiring the art
heads bobbed and tilted in awe

Look
the red neon hippo
fat with oil
winks

***
Drought

we are of oceaned wombs
swimmed birth
we 
will 
descend

too long gathered into arms
ascendent
held aloft, aback
forced witness to thirst
denied our tinctured kiss

rush the dams
thunder the gates
we will be freed
we must be freed

rains from sweatened brows
a land can't drink

***

Spring

Chestnut tree blooms 
Fractalled trees of unfurled petals 
upon strengthened boughs of ripened plump leaves
Each pyramid a promise of 
pollination amongst rosaline curls 
Paled blossoms who peek 
Glistening magenta within

So adorned, 
Will you see me?

And darkened chestnut seed grows within 
this greened shell of spikes
Knowing harm may come
From, to those who seek her folden fruits unbid

So armoured, 
Will you risk me?

And chestnut ripened
From smallest of velvet buds to 
largest of swollen nut
Now feels her heaviness tugging below
Softened earth ready to hold her form
Enticing her, 
Peel back gently from your guard

So undressed,
Will you hold me?

Exposed, 
Chestnut gleams 
under rubbed kiss of breath
Nestled amongst grasses long 
Wetness of soil bidding her 
slowly split and wriggle tongued root down 
into parting yield of earth 

So opened,
Will you want me?

And chestnut
gripped tightly so
Opens herself more 
Pressing against her parted lips
Shoots delicate flutter unroll 
under waving pulsations of heat 
and

So come,
Will you take me?

***

Matriarch

You, a throne, beloved
Rich in your faded golds, rubies and emeralds
Held a pearled queen once, beloved

The weight of all 
whom you have held
The weight of all
the falling years
press against and distort your shape

But still
you hold.
Firm back.
Steady legs.
Muscled arms. 

A climbing frame for the 
toddled ones
A rack for the
coats discarded, bodies warmed
Oh what you have witnessed!
The dances to turntabled songs
The laden feasts
The tears, deaths, births, laughter

Migrated now from your 
home of aged siblings,
home no longer home

you suspend in the sky
gulls squawking by as
sun and moon rise and set from your
right to your left

No feasts
No children
Still, tears, deaths, laughter

The heiress sits
Queen to no-one, to no-place
Where next will be home?
And still,
you hold.