Category: Imagination

Unfolding fear

I watch as things unfold slowly, deliberately  

Can feel the newness like putting on brand new bed linen 

The crispness, feeling like nothing there has been sullied  

Stroking things to see how they feel, if they bite 

Or just caress me back 

The familiarity rubbing softly against my cheek 

Like a soothing hand stroking  

The fear tried to sink in its teeth slowly 

As it did once before and it was jubilant over me 

This time I turned giving chase so it skulks in the shadows hoping 

But it knew another me  

One whose fear was of being enough of everything to everyone 

A more alive me knows now that I should push back 

Unless I do I cannot hope to get anywhere  

I beat the unfolding fear with songs of my own 

It’s are drowned by my out of tune happy noise.
Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

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

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

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 need to
What do they take (eyeing the room like it’s at fault!)??
You feel your heart shift first
Your mind following after if it needs to imagine
Some hearts are more logical resistant to impulse
Tell me child,  where does your heart bide?
Where can you find wildness,  desolation,  beauty and more
Do you feel peace and tranquillity and everything more
Do you see storms and run away or need to stay
See light play in morning and evening and magic dance in the air
Tell me child,  where else can you fare?
I nod you’re right is it really that simple
As a tap on my shoulder
Whose voice tells me we’re going are you ready?
I’m just….
Talking to that wall I know,  first sign of madness he laughs
Looking back she is gone mercurial mairi
Like she never was there…..

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Wolven ways of working

The sheeplike face changed to my confusion
As the lupine features emerge as a free beast again
I had to hide from the fears that cause hate
He nods to emphasise his point
If a harmless lamb you see before you or a wolf
What would you choose?
You’re taught from infant to reject all that’s clever
They say I’m cunning,  sly,  so I played
Their game as they like it and won
Did you see me as I really am behind what I presented?
Eyes question my thoughts but lips never move
I heard the exchange in my head
Now my panic sets in and I am certain I’m mad
For since when can an animal shape change?
Squeaks my human brain
Terror strikes your heart as I break the bonds you gave
Turn dead eyes to me dull like a fish that’s sacrificed
The sheeplike face hiding behind it’s sameness
Show me the wolf her difference and honesty
She will warn if she is striking
I take the wolf in the hills as my creature any time
It’s the sheep facade I care nothing for

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016