Even fifty miles out
in the predawn I hear
the great jets lowering
readying to land
amid lights, busyness and bustle
I grew up close by
deafened slightly
captured wholly
by your dirty glamour
Even fifty miles out
in the predawn I hear
the great jets lowering
readying to land
amid lights, busyness and bustle
I grew up close by
deafened slightly
captured wholly
by your dirty glamour
Poetry is the orphan of silence
Begging for attention
Word spaces and line breaks
Her crutches
Whatever the poem describes to you
Is a shadow
A portion, a flavour
Of what the poet is trying to say
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was first published at: https://vitabrevisliterature.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/orphan/
Nebulaic drift of space glows pregnant with stars
Pulsates with unseen radiation, reflects light upon broken hulls
Billowing gases thread through holes laced by stellar blasts
Huge gas pillars glow with the light from star birth
Strange shapes eclipse the details of nebulaic magnificence
Ships riddled by particle winds after a disaster deep in spacetime
Now drift in loose orbits within a mystery, artefacts lost to sentience and story
Deep in the cloud lies a graveyard drifting to gravity’s pale tune
Gas jets burst from infant stars, glow in unseen colours
Shoot forth ionized subatomic debris
Push against torn metal, shifting orbits, prompting collisions
Against desiccated limbs, simulating life once more
The beings who struggled and died here disassociate and powder to dust
Microbes drift and seed, await rebirth in planetary clouds
Amino acids alter with the alien input
Nucleotides drift forward to the future
Ghost DNA haunts the spaces between worlds
Drifts onto comet sand meteors
Drops into planetary atmospheres
Visits us tonight as it has done before
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was first published at: https://inbetweenhangovers.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/drifts-by-kim-whysall-hammond/
Pale primrose lies by the chicken pen
Bold Daffodils stand up in the border
Screaming Marsh Marigold calls from the pond
Subtle oranges somehow manage to cool down the tubbed Narcissi
Spring yells yellow in my garden
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Silvered gas bubbles catch the light
above the oak leaves do not stir
I’m blurry in the viewfinder
with a days full tears
walls of clear glass listen
bring distant shouts to my ear
I cannot now remember her clasping
the wound of hunger and hard work
Copyright © 2023 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Tired of it all
I close my eyes
yet few in this world hear it
see my hills
feel and taste their
ancient language
that waits for us all
Copyright © 2023 Kim Whysall-Hammond
It is missing him I can tell
mourning his deft touch, firm but gentle hold
It has been in the filing cabinet drawer
in a muddle of discarded stationery
since the world
as I planned it
ended
It asks for Dad, but I cannot say where he is
instead I ask it about the last drawing it made
and it trembles, remembering pudgy three year old fingers
clutching it as they outlined a tigers sharp teeth
I was hoping for a memory of Dads art
as most of it is as gone
as he is
Then it tells me of the many years
stuffed in a drawer of tools
in the house I grew up in
where it and Dad
learned to forget what they had done together
in that glowing youth of expectations
and dreams
All too soon I will be older than
Dad was when he was taken
in the meantime his pencil and I
make new memories
Copyright © 2023 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Dust motes in sunlight freckle your face
as we kiss deep in bracken on a Welsh hill
a long way from home.
I will leave my bag there
to be retrieved in darkness and laughter
long hours later.
If I had to describe this
it would be joy crackling in heat
dizzy with all the time in the world.
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was first published by Oddball, in December 2021
Rain in Geneva
no place to go
no time alone with those egos
too long with Byron
and the risk that
Frustrated that he cannot seduce you
he may go for your husband instead
no loss you think
as you weary of his tales that always come back to
his exploits
Who proposed ghost stories?
you don’t need ghosts
you are trapped with a monster
trapped, telling tales to a mad man
so you trap time
make something transcendent
a myth for our times
We are all Frankensteins children
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
For Mary Shelley
Always night
made starless by neon
all converges upon you
all sinks deep into your eyes
silence has a shadow
the past spreads out
you walk forward into it
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond