Month: June 2018

One room

It’s all there in this room everything

Almost all we have

The kids sleep in their beds happy

Clueless as to what I worry about

Thank God.

Look at my lad fast growing and so full

Of the hope children have

What can I tell him?

Things that aren’t relevant to them now?

Some things never change

Did I listen to my Dad as a kid

Don’t make me laugh

I love the auld feller

But we’re not much like each other

Well we both have a laugh and a pint

Maybe it’s why we get on

And then there’s my mother

She erupts like a volcano at times

Though the wife says I do as well

I can’t see I’m quite the same

But people laugh when I say that

Next to me is the wife and I say

Thank God

Where I’d be without her I don’t know

And the little one she’s watching me

Through cot bars and I’ll hear a giggle

If I so much as look before she launches

Over the top aimed at my belly

And then we’ll both be in trouble!

Really I want her to stay in bed warm

This is so damned cold the nets are stuck

Frozen there like they’ll snap if I touch

This spot by the window is freezing

But it’s my place to take keep them warm

Don’t tell them it hurts to breathe when I wake

A cigarette is what the doctor said

Would help me to breathe except now

They say I have to stop

Smoking or breathing?

Might be both if I keep feeling this bad

And I look around the room we need to escape

Four bodies in here is too much

It eases me to see our little family

We may not have a lot you see?

But we have each other and enough

We make sure of that ,only just

Thank God.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

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A chance to be

I gave it back the thing I took away

From my very source

The chance to live and breathe and think

To become me once more.

First was the surrendering of all long thought things

And stopping worrying at my beings core.

I then found that to listen closely

Not just to others but to me

Never saying that I wasn’t worth

The me I’m meant to be.

So if I appear to have changed

I could sit and quietly apologise

But now I have surrounded myself

And learned to surrender nothing else

In my head I see your eyes.

They told me things I couldn’t believe

That my damaged heart was unable to grieve

The world it wrought damage needless

And we were unable to get through

Now I know I can carry on

Heard your words as you meant them

As you said welcome back to you.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

Mama

I’m walking over cobblestone skin tingling

Towards the lady I saw sometime

Shared a brief hello and smiles

I was alone that day just walking

Exploring a land not mine

I’m a stranger made welcome here.

This time I am in a group and she gives

A loving smile and hugs me tender hug

To her my pale skin is cold she worries

Head to foot she wears the black garb of her peers

She points to herself and me showing we are known

To one another if nobody else

She tells my family her name

I am in a foreign land I could be rejected

I am not

She puffs out her chest and says one thing

“Mama”, and again “Mama” with warning

She reaches into her bag, giving me sweets

Giving me tissues, and rubbing my arms

To warm me as only a mother can.

She points to show me where to find her

I nod understanding to this mother

Familiar yet unfamiliar

Family but not blood

Am kissed on both cheeks lovingly

By the never to be forgotten

Mama

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

Let us create

Let us create ripples on the shore

That will vibrate out to sea

Cascade across the ocean floor to heal

The damage we have inflicted

Let us create ripples on the land

Reclamation of things we allowed to be poisoned

In our name without our knowledge

But now we know let us fight

For the freedom of the earth

Let us create spaces and places

Where the children can play

We need to be heard as a collective

The ones who think and care

Come let us fight for our children

The children of the future need love

Cages break or cause hatred and war

So let us cause ripples on the shore

On the land, in air, in the press

Ripples that become the new norm

That demand equality for all

Whether you’re black or white

Gay, straight, sure or unsure

Whatever your god or gods

For your own sake and others

Let us create ripples and remember

To use humanity and caring for all.

Let us create ripples that create waves

That wash on shores, bang down doors

And it’s no longer a world of us and them

But we’re united as a people who crave

Love. No bars. Love. No barrier. Love

Full stop

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

Little tin man

It pours slowly and carefully on the place

You tried to say was a heart of good

Malicious skeletal grin on a face

Rusty metal box that passes for a heart

Purring out a faint drumbeat

A-v-a-r-i-c-e. A-v-a-r-i-c-e. A-v-a-r-i-c-e.

Words clatter forth telling of broken lives

Who were you to do anything?

Who were you to change something?

Leave it to the rest with perfect worlds

That you tell yourself they live in

A way to accept no responsibility

For the destruction that you’ve caused

Because it’s always someone else’s fault

You ask me to do it, beg me

End it all because you have misery

And I look at the acid that bubbles beside me

Pour only the water as ask for venom

To burn out the golden heart you say is there

All I see is rust, nothing gold even the hair

It’s dirty with the acts you carried out

And however much I’d love to see you scream

I won’t.

I’ll let your greed and the water, the tears shed

Rot what’s left of you

Little tin man, who never got a heart

Nor a brain just a mouth that shouts

Endlessly and desperately to the air

Scream on tin man I’m done.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

Crashing storm

All around the storm bangs shaking

Everything I knew before into newness

Difficult paths ahead and I see your lips move

Lightning cracks illuminating you

As you fall away from me

My hands grasp on to nothing

You’re trying to be heard and the raging

Seems to fight your message

And you free fall bringing another voice

You both speak my name in the scene

Technicolour and I can’t do anything for you

Either of you except make sure

You’re remembered for the good

I awake screaming at your being yanked away

My fear in eyes and voice

I know you’ll speak again soon

When my turmoil is more settled

When my seas have fallen calm

When my crashing storm has passed.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

The smiling assassin

Smile on her face reaching the eyes

Appears as though she’s listening to your voice

She’s intense in her gaze

So full of sympathy and understanding

And her mission is simpler than you know.

The pulse points, weak spots, places to hurt deep

Have to be exposed for her

To do the work she’s intent on in the name of something higher

She will watch and wait a venemous snake

Her attack may not even be nigh.

Watch out for her she sits patiently

Biding her time to show off her craft

She sees herself as a public service always obliging

Her work is devious and scheming, masked as smiling and sweet

Spins a web of lies all around you tightly.

She’ll lean in one day to give you that hug

The eyes seem filled with love

Her hand you’ll feel run the length of your spine

And you know the pain as she digs in the knife

Another mission completed by the smiling assassin

She will calmly walk out the door.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

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