Absent

One grandmother is a monochrome photograph
other people’s eloquent stories
even the only grandchild she lived to see
cannot now remember her

She was
tall, stylish and elegant on my grandad’s arm
smiling enigmatically at the camera
the wife he still mourned deeply
twenty years after her untimely death

She is
the reason I can write this
for she saved her premature baby sons lives by
determination and ingenuity when the midwife
left them for dead

So maybe she is not absent at all

Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond

This poem is published for Dverse, where the theme is Grandmothers. My paternal grandmother died a year before I was born, but she still had a great impact on my life…..

Lyrics as poetry -The Night of Santiago

Oh, Leonard – we miss you! From Mr Cohens last album, I give you The Night of Santiago.

On my first hearing I was floored by these lines – and I still am:

And soon, there’s sand in every kiss
And soon, the dawn is ready
And soon, the night surrenders
To a daffodil machete

Friday Poem: The Taxi

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

by Amy Lowell, 1874 – 1925  

Part 21 -a love poem

A wonderful love poem from Rajani – enjoy!

A story in many unequal parts, some missing

Like a rush-hour deluge, love arrived
where it shouldn’t. When we couldn’t.
Stirring up the normal. But love must
be Shakespearean: a costume drama,
poetry frothing at its mouth, selfish,

greedy, visceral. Always wanting more,
wanting so much more that nothing is
enough. Not even love. We’re raised
on happy endings. Even tragedies are
normalized as the best possible result,

given the odds. When love fails, we ask
if it was real. Seek existential assurance.
A real love should have destroyed the
lover when it left. Survival is proof of
what never was. The ledger of longing

is never tallied. The void is carried like
an abscess. Never absent. Never healing.
And yet these are just ordinary wounds.
Not worthy of even an ordinary story.
Do you think a fleeing comet is allowed

to fall in love with the moon? Do you
think the moon should listen to the sky?

View original post 22 more words

A greedy heart dives into a dream

love
is a wild thing caught in a trap

trust
a glass bridge between us

Title from Alicia Ostriker

Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond

This week’s Meeting the Bar at the dVerse Poets Pub is all about marraige and couplets. The form I have chosen is the côte, a poem of uneven couplets attributed to John Schroeder, in which line 1 is a single imperative verb and line 2 is a glossing or expansion of line 1.

On giving birth to my now adult son

I’m in love.
As in love as the wind and trees.
The Earth and the Sun.
I don’t want to die but I don’t care if I die this minute.
Except I must live for you my son.
The world is round. My eyes weep.
I could run to the ends of the Earth. But I cannot
for the world is round.
My soul expands like bread as it proves.

Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond

Amstelveen

Finally there, filling your sofa
raiding your freezer for ice.
Walking out to the river
its banks a storey higher
than the fields.

Taking the tram to the Dam
to the museum quarter
drifting through the Van Goghs
eating pancakes and poffertjes
in the shadow of windmills.

Finally with you, together at last
after years of hurt.
Finally the large barbeque
your Mums Pork Satay
and so many old friends.

Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond

We finally got to visit a dear friend in the Netherlands over the last two weeks. It was bliss……

Friday Poem: When you wake tomorrow

I will give you a poem when you wake tomorrow.
It will be a peaceful poem.
It won’t make you sad.
It won’t make you miserable.
It will simply be a poem to give you
When you wake tomorrow.

It was not written by myself alone.
I cannot lay claim to it.
I found it in your body.
In your smile I found it.
Will you recognise it?

You will find it under your pillow.
When you open the cupboard it will be there.
You will blink in astonishment,
Shout out, ‘How it trembles!
Its nakedness is startling! How fresh it tastes!’

We will have it for breakfast;
On a table lit by loving,
At a place reserved for wonder.
We will give the world a kissing open
When we wake tomorrow.

We will offer it to the sad landlord out on the balcony.
To the dreamers at the window.
To the hand waving for no particular reason
We will offer it.
An amazing and most remarkable thing,
We will offer it to the whole human race
Which walks in us
When we wake tomorrow.

By Brian Patten

Brian is one of my favourite poets, the Cheeseseller and I used to travel miles and miles to see him perform.

Another Damn Poem

Form
doesn’t always follow function

Beauty
cannot always be seen

Love
is hardly ever symmetrical

Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond

Comfort Food

We drove back exhausted
you resting that nearly blind eye
me trying to focus on the road ahead
clinging to my steering wheel

This morning the optician had taken one look and
sent us hell for leather to a local hospital
where the consultant quailed, sent us
even faster to a top specialist

Several hours driving from town to town
then to the big port city
hurry up and wait, and again
Like at an airport, but worse

Finally, a laser welded your eye together
and we made the last call home
to our anxious schoolboy son
who fretfully asked how long we would be

Finally at home, we opened the front door
to the smell of baking breads
sizzling Halloumi, grilled Aubergines
fresh made hummous

A dining table laid with the best plates and cutlery
crystal glasses and
love

Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond