Fossil (as published in Andromeda Spaceways)

Fantasy, love, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetry, , , , ,

Transfixed by desert heat
we scan the cliff once more
new techniques allow us
to find smaller and smaller variations
display greater detail
and so, next to the dinosaur bones
we found the stone tablet, embossed
and also, carved ever so finely
a flower blossom
so not a counting of prey killed
as found before
debate rages, but preliminary analysis
indicates the planets oldest love poem

Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond

This poem was first published in issue 76 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, September 2019.

Thank you Tom and Michelle!

Andromeda spaceways issue 76 cover

Friday Poem: First Love

Friday Poem, love, poem, Poetry, , , ,

Falling in love was like falling down the stairs
Each stair had her name on it
And he went bouncing down each one like a tongue-tied
lunatic
One day of loving her was an ordinary year
He transformed her into what he wanted
And the scent from her
Was the best scent in the world
Fifteen he was fifteen
Each night he dreamed of her
Each day he telephoned her
Each day was unfamiliar
Scary even
And the fear of her going weighed on him like a stone
And when he could not see her for two nights running
It seemed a century had passed
And meeting her and staring at her face
He knew he would feel as he did forever
Hopelessly in love
Sick with it
And not even knowing her second name yet
It was the first time
The best time
A time that would last forever
Because it was new
Because he was ignorant it could ever end
It was endless

by Brian Patten

Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner……possibly the last one…

Poetry, ,

This isn’t poetry, just me being indulgent on a Sunday night….yet once more. Sorry! ;)

I was born in London, went to university in London and still love my home town, even though I will never live there again.

This is an old ad for Capital Radio, using the even older song ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’ and updating it a bit. Well I think it’s funny!

Friday Poem: The Cloud

Friday Poem, poem, Poetry, weather, , , , ,

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Untitled Poem by Li Shang-yin

Guest poem, poem, Poetry, , , ,

Leonard often shares Chinese poems, and this one is simply wonderful:

Leonard Durso

It’s so hard to be together, and so hard to part: a tender
east wind is powerless: the hundred blossoms crumble:

the heart-thread doesn’t end until the silkworm’s dead,
and tears don’t dry until the candle’s burnt into ash:

she grieves, seeing white hair in her morning mirror,
and chanting at night, she feels the chill of moonlight:

exquisite Paradise Mountain—it isn’t so very far away,
and that azure bird can show us the way back anytime.

translated by David Hinton

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Careful!

Life, poem, Poetry, , , ,

I have to carry myself carefully
as I did when a small child prone to tripping
carrying flowers for Grandma
held tight in both hands
all along the road, almost to the moon
it felt, admonished to be careful
continually.
Clumsy they called me, lackadaisical
cack-handed
but my feet turned in
and a treatment had been refused

I have returned to my start it seems
after a fall in the dark
and a crack to the head
this wavering shaky plod
rather than that old vivid
stumbling run
makes me clumsy again

Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond