Tag: feelings

What you see

With thanks to Paul Brookes at the wombwellrainbow.Wordpress.com for the ekphrastic January challenge.

Picture credit Kerfe Roig ‘handeye’

Every time you look at me you glance

At your hand and I imagine

That in the centre is an eye

Because you say the same thing

I see in an all knowing way

Generally you don’t see, but it’s said

The expected comment to pretend at

Listening to what’s being said

Instead of what you want it to mean.

A shell described becomes a butterfly

A key a lop eared rabbit and so on

Until my heart says why share the acorns

That grow into truth trees

Or rose bushes that hold thorns

And not everything is neatly packaged

As a diamond ring

The sky doesn’t only hold pretty birds

Or the sky hold only sunshine.

All is a mix , unpicked threads that make

Something different or new

You see imperfections, ruins

Rusty keys, thorny flowers, cold nights

I look for both sides neat and messy

Both bring their gifts making up a new

Pattern in my palm to see the world

In colours swirling in my palm.

As I watch the moon shine and stars

Vie for place in the palm of the sky.

Ailsa

AilsaCawleyPoetry2021

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Flame in the snow

My feet are blue with cold

As I trudge the snowy hills

To find the signs of those gone

Ahead leaving wispy wisdom

Like golden coins in the drifts

Of feather like flakes

Heart thudding as I hear a whisper

It is your turn to pick up the baton

The lit torch in your path

Forge on with it, it’s magical light

Guide for head and heart

My feet cold no longer I see

I am clad in shoes to protect

A cloak grown warmer around me

Heart steadier and surer

That my path however different

Is the right one to take

And so I shall

Head bowed I thank the ancestors

The hills, and wind

The quiet now gone and a bird sings

Heralding my newness.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2021

Climbing

I see the hill to a hard road ahead

Slippery climb through earth

Wet, sliding and falling

Hit the ground, teeth grinding

Against pain as I force myself on

Enduring to win and take back

My power , my path.

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2020

Fooling all and none

He says he’s misunderstood and made

Into a devil of someone else’s choosing

As he fists hands and his woman bade

Face in sneering but charm oozing

Like an oily glut from his mouth.

He orders her to do something small

And it’d be easier to do himself

But he’s proving it just takes the call

For him to take precedence over herself

And she even considered dissent.

His words more chilling “she’ll learn eventually ”

To me “you all do, after you’re shown..”

Cold smile and words mock me

But eyes say loudly she you own.

I see her eyes and wonder if she’s quiet always

Or if she’s learned that silence is safe

Silence is the way to survive a day

And I’m asked later at another place

How I could stay in the house of a monster

Who thought he fooled all

But just because you choose not to see

Means only that you’ve chosen blinkers

You might not see the blood he spills

He still spills it saying it’s her, always her

She made him by whatever she didn’t do/say/think/like

He is fooling only himself

Your knowledge in silence is fooling all and none.

And he carries on knowing he has accomplices

She dreams at night of peace

No escape she will maybe see she needs to

She may leave it too late, could be you or me

Does it matter if she’s fooling all and none?

It may be all that keeps her alive.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2018

Wishing away

We’ve all done it before

Wished away hours, days, months.

I watch as you wish life gone

To cut short your endurance.

You chuckled like I’m still a silly child

Annoyed every word spoken is not believed.

The automatic yes of course you demanded

It brooks no questions, there are no answers.

That you can voice.

Tell the lies to yourself that all is well

Same old platitudes of being fine.

Even the ranks have closed around you

They know but won’t say

See but won’t look

Avoid my eye when answering simple things.

The barricades are up in the town where all’s well

Defences being built upon daily.

I see cracks in the veneer, a hand span

And know I’m not only a lone creature now

This black sheep that left the fold to live

But I’m a deserter whom none will hear.

As you close down your world almost announcing gleefully

That you’re closing shop, pulling shutters slowly

You know that I’m the one who can see you

And can do nothing as you fade away.

All carry on in unspoken agreement

Tiptoe around what you don’t want to see.

And carry on playing the same old game

Of everything’s wonderful in summer town.

Wishing and fading away.

Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2017

Sins of the father

The sins of a man should carry forward to his son 

What sort of person you ask lets things carry on? 

But I observe from afar and see 

The man he was is the same as you’ll be 

Your example you’ve sucked in like air by a swimmer who is drowning 

In trying to be more and tsk tsk and frowning 

At his mistakes all you’ve done is copied him like a man possessed 

Because you can’t bear to start again have memory undressed 

Your line you follow with no subtlety or clue 

All you can see is you’re not him, he isn’t you. 

Like a copied page of carbon you will fade to naught 

While blaming all around you for what you were sure could be bought 

And can you buy affection, love and care? 

Look who you’ve left behind at the man you’re afraid to stare 

Once you could have changed your dreams of a pedestal 

Now? All that awaits is you fall. 
Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Walls close in 

I am entombed in this concrete world where houses rise 

They appear overnight it seems like monuments to no man 

Only a case in which to place, contain him 

Your world begins and ends here he is told  

This is usual, normal don’t wish for escape they tut 

Scold you as a child for your naivety for even thinking 

Imagining you could want anything other than this cage of plaster and dust 

Showing you only to what you will return one day 

Dust, earth a piece of something carried on air 

Shut yourself inside, or enter the gardens of highest fences 

Everything but barbed wire not as its billed to keep someone out 

Remove the scales from your eyes 

It is there only to keep you in the little allotted box 

Break the walls down, smash the fences to splinters 

And scratch your fingers with just one so you know you can still feel 

Escape the institution you were placed in and carve your own way 

You can do it. You can do it. You always could 

Stop the walls from closing in.
Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2016

Return to the woods

There’s not a soul around and it’s just getting light
Watery sun trying to break through
Clouds not strong enough to stop the progression
She smiles as she tethers herself
With a cord unseen to the earth beneath her feet
Wriggling toes to feel the connection
That she needs to sustain her very being
Feeling the oneness as energy sparks
A sigh escapes her lips and her shoulders
Drop to let her breathe the very essence of this other realm
Her ankles are tickled as grass reaches
Beckoning her forth be with us again it seems to say
We belong to one realm
She lies next to a gnarled tree on a carpet of leaves
Her fingers trace patterns in the bark
Rejuvenation is here in her forest retreat
The place she is centred
She will return in the morning but sighs with the wind
And makes her way back to the place termed the real world
If only they knew….

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

Creeping gloom

I watch it leech forth like a noxious gas
Wondering why nobody else seems to notice the cloud
Gathering slowly above, around
But who looks up when they still feel the suns warmth? 
Would you check to see it were there or trust
Do you ever see the fog coming at you to swallow you
Until it has you enmeshed inside
Then you panic and scan a horizon that can’t be seen
Heart racing because direction has deserted you
Surety all gone to hells own home
Hearing noises that weren’t there before you’d swear
Or maybe you just didn’t notice
Wrapped in your security blanket of sunshine and harmony
And you stumble afraid of what awaits
Here in the dark dank gloom
The biggest fear may be spending too much time with the monster
That resides in your head
Telling you this may be your ending place
Feel the hands that claw at you hand and foot
Trying to bind you to a place you’d rather not go
Quickening heart
Slowing steps
Body trying to give itself to the inevitable
Fear and gladness,  confusion reigns
What waits in the dark murk of a mind unhinged? 
Come inside
The voice lisps in your ear

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

The thorn that repels

You’re the thorn that smiles and then stabs hard
Thinking I’m unaware of you
You smile as if you mean it maybe in that split second
It’s genuine enough
And you keep harking back to anything you imagine happened
In the halls beyond the veil of time
Self centred pity removes the smile
Twisting it to suit you
For you try to wear two jackets simultaneously and they have melded
To and with you
You tell the world I am victim and victor
Garner the pity of the gullible
As you eat them alive snaffle snorting to yourself
At the fools who believed 
In your dreams you see only yourself
Hero and villain too clever to be caught by any means
Still not understanding that they’ve all turned away
Seen through your bullshit bravery
Your cringing at the touch of a human hand trying to help
Outrage they thought you mighty one needed that
And now alone no-one to repel
You cry because you are alone and misunderstood

Ailsa
©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2016

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