Your Eyes — a poem

April 23, 2019beauty, love, poem, Poetrybeauty, love, Marriage, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

It is your eyes that pierce me
Bright baby blue
In Sicily they marked you
Erroneously
As German
In Jordan, both men and girls followed you
Hoping to see your wonderful eyes again
It is your eyes that hold me
Windowing your soul
In your much loved face

Hidden Dragon

April 21, 2019astronomy, dragon, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetrydragon, Eastercon, Mars, NASA, poem, poetry, speculative poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

In deep time when the air was fat with moisture and warmth
you soared in low gravity, swooped over and along deep Marineris
scrabbled amongst rust red rocks, seeking the treasure of tasty morsels.
Then, as the air fizzed away to trail behind your little planets orbit
and the planetary heart chilled to immobility
so you chilled and slowed.
Settling down to a hibernation, waiting the warmth of a spring
that has never come.

Blanketed by wind borne dust you have been slumbering
in your crater nest.
Now those selfsame winds have scoured away your cover
revealing your raised scales.
Massive glider, hidden dragon.

(Thank you Nesa, for the idea!)

Bunge Crater Dunes — Fans and ribbons of dark sand dunes creep across the floor of Bunge Crater in response to winds blowing from the direction at the top of the picture. The frame is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) wide. This image was taken in January 2006 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter and posted in a special December 2010 set marking the occasion of Odyssey becoming the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history. The pictured location on Mars is 33.8 degrees south latitude, 311.4 degrees east longitude. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University

Dockside

April 20, 2019poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, SF, speculative poetryEastercon, poem, poetry, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Poetry, space, space station, speculative poetry, teenagersThe Cheesesellers Wife

Neon shattered voices ring across dockside
joshing, laughing.
A gaggle of youth, glories of hair and beard,
jaunt along a just washed walkway,
looking for nothing,
arms linked, heads thrown back
deep laughs mixed with shrill cries.
Pocked skin drawn
tight over smashed cheekbone,
hair frizzy and sculpted
or flopping over acid kissed eye.
Wide grins stretch mouths
faces marred by occupational hazard
adorned with tattoo.
Brightly painted prostheses refract
glitter, crack together
as shoulders nudge hard
in proto-embrace or witty retort.
Tonight, youth’s incandescent joy uplifts,
they will launch into the dark
escape this gravity well tomorrow.
Other crews drift along
washed by unfathomed
tides of rumour and gossip
pushed-pulled to entertainments
you cannot, would not, share.
Our girls and boys josh on
exchanging joyous insults,
impervious to all.
An enclave of companionship
in a lonely night.

First pubished in Wizards in Space 3, a print journal, https://wizardsinspacemag.com/

I’m at Eastercon (the UK national Science Fiction convention) this weekend, with paintings in the Art Show……..

The Colour of Dragons

April 19, 2019Amsterdam, art, dragon, Fantasy, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetryart, Berlin, dragon, dragons, Eastercon, Fandom, Fantasy, London, Paris, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

The colour of dragons
Depends

Sweet green for new hatchlings
To hide in high grasses

Black and red for an Emperor
Or a burner of crops
Many turn as gold as their treasure
Perhaps part of ageing

What colour a city dragon
Lurking on rooftops?

In Paris, creamy white as the buildings
In Berlin and London
Perhaps a glassy hue
Criss-crossed

In Amsterdam?
Turquoise and purple
With scarlet undertones………

I’m at Eastercon (the UK national Science Fiction convention) this weekend, with paintings in the Art Show……..

Bookivore

April 17, 2019Life, love, poem, Poetrybooks, love, pleasure, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Reading on a screen is a hollow sham

Handling a real book
Feeling it’s weight
Looking at its cover
(Often old fashioned)
Turning paper pages

The way a second hand poetry book
Can fall open at a poem
That was once loved
And repeatedly read
By a stranger

All pleasure

Poem : Our Secret

April 13, 2019Fantasy, poem, Poetry, speculative poetryFantasy, poem, poetry, published poem, speculative poetry, timeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Take the third turn over there
by the weeping willow at the barren stream.
Turn sharp now into brightness
or you will miss the crease,
that flaw in time’s weave you must push through
(sometimes my shoulder gets stuck, but I persevere).
Once through, stay low, part and peer through high grasses
watch the herds roll past.
Tusks upraised, immense cinnamon woolly hulks,
regally righteous, grassland behemoths,
lords of the plains
(yes, indeed, the land is flatter here that it was back now).
Be ready for the noise when they cry out,
it reverberates all through your bones
oscillating ears to numbness.
The hulk and bulk of them is prodigious
and worth the squeeze.
Whether it is worth the panic
when you finally realise
the directions home are missing?