Offstage

 

Offstage

She’s backstage in wardrobe,

Being measured up:

The final touches to costume,

Hair and make-up.

She can hear muffled voices,

Layered on the silence:

The ruffled noises of actors and audience,

The occasional scratching of applause,

The sharpening of the critics’ claws.

 

She shuffles around the stage -

Her slippers scuffing the polished floor -

Rearranging the props,

Shifting the scenery,

Changing the backdrops.

 

She’s working on trying

To remember her lines,

And how to figure in her cues.

But she keeps forgetting,

Drifting off … is carried away …

 

Then, prompted,

She exits stage left,

Wanders down the abandoned corridor,

Past the glitzy Stations of the Cross

That line the walls,

Climbs the narrow, crepuscular

Staircase, gripping the twisting,

Muscular bannister,

Calmed and worn smooth

By familiar hands.

 

At the top, a door ajar;

She finds herself in the gods,

Looks around, takes a seat,

Takes a breath,

And stares down

Into the teeming, atomised dark,

Sits waiting for the next show to start.

The Slanting of the light

 

The Slanting of the Light

 

You left them sitting in a room,

Backstage, behind a closed door,

For years,

Waiting for it to open

And for you to come back in

Larger than life - spotlight, drum roll – ta-dah!

With an invitation to the reunion;

Or perhaps they were hoping

For something small:

For a supplicant’s tentative knock,

For something to rouse them

From the stupor of sour memory,

For some good reason to cross the floor,

To ask who’s there, to open the door,

To set the dust motes aflight,

To change the slanting of the light.

 

But no one ever knocked

And the light remained unbent,

Unbending.

And now the door is locked,

And the room is empty and unaired,

Filled with music - no one has ever heard -

To announce the happy ending.

An ocean

 

An ocean washes the shore of this island

 

The days roll in upon the beach,

Seethe and foam and then retreat

And the sand sucks in each one;

Footprints roam, fill and dissolve,

The years are erased and scrolled,

Experienced and then gone –

Scuttled or shipwrecked -

The water clogged with wrack;

Yet still the sirens sing along,

Whilst tides wreak havoc at your back.

 

Beyond the beach, the trees …

Out of reach … and on your knees.

A moment

 

A moment

 

The wind has dropped, coming in over the lake;

The storm, with its wild unrest, has moved on,

So now the ripples barely reach the shore:

The muscle of water relaxed; cloud borne away.

And the light lingers now, is altered and slow,

More smoulder than burn, as if the lifted lid

Of sky were hesitant to be lowered -

The moment is time, gathered and stored -

Only, finally, to slip from your fingers,

To slide shut on the darkness.

 

On the far side, away from the house,

The trees are gathering in the shadows

To separate black from blackness.

And soon the moon at your back will slink

Quietly into the water, quivering

Just below the surface, like a thought,

And you won’t turn to stare it in the face

But simply watch how it dances - elusive and alone,

Amorphous, trying to keep afloat -

Only, finally, to feel it sink like a stone. 

Windfall

Windfall

 

I have grown old;

A shrub turned tree

Now lost in the forest of itself,

Where dreamed of maidens wandered,

Where fires were built

And the heat was squandered

On vast star-filled skies

In a universe that was at a tilt.

Now the fruit has fallen to the flies.

 

I have grown cold,

The branches without a single leaf

To cover what was faith, what was belief. 

Betrayal

 

 

Betrayal

 

There’s an intimacy in blood:

A map of his heart upon the wall,

The shape of a country

She’d thought she’d fully explored,

But now the borders were closed,

For good.

 

She envied the mosquito

That last touch of his skin,

That kiss, the taste of him.

 

The betrayal, the fall from grace;

With death, like a slap in the face.

Unhappiness

Unhappiness  (an extract)

 

John believed that it lived in the cupboard

Under the stairs with the forgotten

Boxes of candles, and other odds and sods;

That there was a redolence

Of mouse droppings about it,

Or something pissy and fishy;

That it was silent and needed to be spoken to,

To be taken outside, bashful and embarrassed,

Apologetic, and given what for.

 

Janet imagined it skulking around the attic,

A stranger in a stranger’s house,

Rooting through the relics of the past

With bony fingers rimmed with dirt,

Releasing the clasps of old suitcases,

Wisps of dust, looking

For something of us to wear,

Swearing with a lisp in the foul air,

Rank and jealous,

As it hunted for something holed and frayed

And reeking of musk,

Seeking a skin to fill that had been flayed;

That it was simply unspoken,

And unspoken of.