Author: ailsacawley

I have written since I can remember, devouring the stories of Roald Dahl under the covers by torchlight. I have always loved fairy tales, myths and magic. A good deal of the things I write has some truth in it. Others, not. I’m pleased you dropped by, please feel free to leave me a comment or if you’re kind enough to share that’s fine. ☺️

Liquid walls

You haunt my nights with light and dark
My days uneasy with fire or sparks
What are you? 
Being of another world seeping through
Touching at the edges burning cold
No-one can see you on edge of visions bold
I’m needing to look deeper but I might get lost
Worry less by the day of the cost
Are you the me I really am bleeding through?
The barriers broken and I am you
I find the thought enticing I can be this other soul
With something more to show a  purely fluid goal
It sounds alien and scary to have liquid walls 
But they flow these barriers best of all.
Try them, push hard they do not bend or break
Nor shatter like glass ceilings but more effort they take
One small stone, to break the glass smash it good and right
But liquid walls mean you wanted movement and put up a fight
So turn to your dark corners where you feel the world ends
Push hard, push well
For here is where worlds meet, mingle, blend.

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Execution of fate

I turn away because I have to or I will not leave
My face a mask of pretence
I am abandoning my own self here
If I were to know that it was forever I would be raging
Like a tossed about ship I feel the force of myself
Emotions race clamouring for first place
All afraid not to be noticed
Yet not wanting to be the winner of this race
The unseen bolster I have put between us
Guarding as a centurion against the destruction you wreak
And swear you didn’t mean to cause
But you have
Time and again after lulling my mind to sleep
Not this time I know
Feeling the cold wave of certainty wash over me
Keeping me alert,  cold, removed but alive
Never again will you penetrate this cocoon
I have gladly placed myself in
Only until I am strong
Enough to say the words you know are coming
No exoneration
No reprieve
This hanged man built his own noose
Whether he tightens it or not
Is no concern of mine

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Edge of breathing sunshine

Feeling myself drawn into the whorls towards the seething mass
Like a deep spectral cloud of darkness
With occasional flashes of gleaming sunshine
I sense the leeches take hold to succeed
Draining me slowly, carelessly dry
Of light and hope
Fight the fuggy mass I hear
But how?
I can’t see from which direction I’m attacked
Surrounded from every angle
Till I lose my bearings and grab in the light I might have seen
To a person I might have been
And sometimes reminded of the far off promises
That you would be there
It was only words, balm you laugh
I shrink smaller than Alice
Slip under the nearest doorway close
To the edge of reason
Urged over the edge as you try to haul me back
I fling myself to oblivion
The leeches slide from my battered self
Eyes snap open as my wings hurtle me
Not safely,  never again that
Towards my own beginning of life
It will hurt but I can feel again and I whoop
For pain over slowly suffocating to extinction
Is the only option and I have chosen it
Now I’m free of your chittering spell

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Clockwork heart

Tick, tick the seconds chirrup away
Like crickets counting between hours
Waiting for the chime
To reverberate loudly clanging
Through me
Shaking inside
The crickets stop their lazy chatter momentarily
Waiting for the explosion which
Never comes
Nothing
Happens
Thought chain almost lost in the mêlée of wondering
How did this just go this way?
Relief floods the clock face
As it sees it can go on
Ticking selfishly away
It’s tune not interrupted but improved
The information contained within it has been preserved
Behind the blank dial of smiles
Fooling nobody
Foolish to the last
Tick, tick
Stop

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Purple Ink. By Chimera Poetry

chimerapoet's avatarChimera Poetry

The letter came
I don’t know when
it may have just magicked itself in
from another dimension
I wasn’t looking for it
….not exactly
but when I saw it I knew
 it was all I knew
all I had ever known and would ever know again
and my atavistic DNA rose up in defense
as I felt my world start to tip over
slide
at the smell of the envelope
the scent of something young and fresh and exciting and not-me
the sight of purple ink handed me a disdain edged tool
 I wanted to hold it up and jeer 
but the words
the words
no gushing childish midlife crisis doll baby
this was a letter written in confidence
and in solidity by a woman
and that rock scree shifted underfoot a little more
a little faster
with my eyes wide and burning I tottered
waving it unsteadily as you…

View original post 153 more words

And you know

Yes you know, you know whatever they say 

When it comes your time to go 

The fear of those demons is floating up, away 

Your soul is learning to make it’s peace will show 

Fair slender hands as it steals your life again. 

Have you been before you wonder or do you really care 

It seems everyone wants you to think of things 

You’d rather keep, never share 

So you hold it close in skeletal grip while the ice inside increases 

Yes you know, you know whatever they say 

When it comes your time to go 

Worlds ahead they matter more than whether breathing ceases

And so my friend I watch you as you shrink from nothing 

Fulfilling your own prophesy by giving death your word of honour 

And showing him he has no sting 

Keeping till the very last your darkness so there is no clamour 

No grand following, or exodus for that was your farewell 

You knew, you knew it was your time to say things in your fashion 

You said with such passion

As no other ever can, my friend, my friend you know.

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Stardust rising

My own small tribute to the inimitable David Bowie

And he fell to earth this stardust man
To help us find the way
Of moving forward beyond prejudice
But for more than just one day
Kept telling us to be our own heroes
Has anyone listened to his message yet
How many more clues do we have to get?
Showed us we can change the visage
Even the essence of who we are
This man who asked if there was life on Mars
Reinventing himself without any fear
Proof he was always going to keep learning
All the way through this Lazarus kept returning
You know that he’ll never go beyond those stars
See him shining there this man of stardust
Of powder,  paint and circus clown
Telling you all to see if you must
The difference an open mind makes and heart to match
Read the message that goes with the pictures
And thank you Star Man for your chapter
Neverending. Nevermore.

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Deep water still

She’s confused at her emptiness feeling..
Like the sea dredged of all life
Only the murk floating around her face
Clarity long gone
But it shouldn’t be this way and she’s fighting angry
Though you’ll never know as it’s hidden
Behind a rock and in the gloom
You choose not to notice
None but she can ever enlighten and pride tells her
In an urgent voice to say nothing
Bury it away for raw disappointment in you
Can take her nowhere but down
To the bed of the ocean where you dwell
Waiting to cause pain
So she smiles and dances to lift away from the author of doom
And forward to forge clean new waters

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

To walk away

And I try to wipe the cry from my face
Before I can be seen broken
Breathe deep my head says calmly interjecting
So I follow the command
How else can sense come from mayhem?
You didn’t say the words I heard
Even shake my head to convince myself
And lose the battle
Numb from words I have to believe are spoken in desolation
I remember long ago words of love or whatever it means
Had taken them as shielding walls
Oh how wrong
You can’t feel as a puppeteer only pull control strings
Watch as the tautness makes you feel warm
It’s all you feel
Deep down I know this but I have to pretend
I am in control until,  until I’m strong enough
To walk without a glance back

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Mercurial Mairi

ailsacawley's avatarailsacawley

She arrived slipping out from the wall it seems
A liquid flowing form so mercurial
Yet I’m drawn to speak with her as if an urgent need has arisen
What exactly troubles you child, she asks soothing,
This place
Exactly what she emphasises with a smile
Encouragement or amused by me I cannot tell
It’s stealing me
How can it get into the very depths winding
Like Ivy it is surrounding me from all angles
Ahhh is her reply
Her grasp cool on my arm
Be still child, it is not predator and prey we discuss
Don’t you feel it, the difference here?
Nodding without a word
It’s the gods, yours, mine, any, none
They have answered your call do you see?
They take something first to be sure you don’t feeeel it, hmmm
It’s a sense of something shifting, slipping
When they’re sure they take other parts if they…

View original post 146 more words