Broken Wing

When she was born 
I hoped she'd be an eagle
but like a feather
torn
from a crippled wing
she got caught in a stinging breeze
spun through grey mist
and swept into a turbulent pool

Numb to the ache of an ancient break
I thought I was healed
until she tried to take flight


©Jane Paterson Basil

The Theatre of Life

Sometimes
I feel like a bad actor 
in a play I thought not to rehearse. 
fudging my lines, 
smudging the plot.
Sometimes  my mind slides to 
a distant place and time
and I forget I'm on stage.
The fans must surely 
perceive I'm a sham.

Sometimes it's like
I've failed an audition
for a part in a thing called The Human Race
and having been banned 
from the theatre of life
                                       due to some kind 
                                        of failure or something I lack 
                                        that no-one explained
                                        and I don't understand
I've broken through the roof 
and am watching the acts
with my back to a grey-blue sky.

                                        Sometimes 
                                        I see evil, destruction,
                                       hunger, need and corruption
                                       and I find myself screaming again and again
                                       Not In My Name
                                       Not In My Name.
                                       At least it was not me
                                      who stole a killers role in the play.

Sometimes I know I am inept with those 
who sprang from my womb 
and I think of the myriad ways 
in which I have failed, yet 
I see 
their wisdom,  insight and grace
and feel forgiven.
I am inept with friends 
yet they see me, understand, love
the why and what of who I am.
Even strangers like 
the incomplete face I display to the world,
so I leap from my peeper's perch,
my alien ship,
to embrace the living earth.

Sometimes I cognise, re-cognise
I belong.
I am real.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Trophies

The gulls cry to be fed
and the woman raises the sound on the TV.
Hungry for love, the gulls screech
and the woman preens her hair.
Desperate, they beg.
The woman 
slings slices of white bread 

They land just within reach

She straightens their feathers, takes 
them to a place where a man 
coils words around their beaks, their eyes
and shoots
framing their formal guise

The woman 
places the portrait 
on the living room wall.
The gulls see.
This must be love, they say.
The woman
Switches on the TV
to drown out their squall.

The gulls grow.
 raise families of their own.
Their polite poses  
crowd the woman's wall.
Not a hair out of place,
Many mouths saying “Cheese”
many obedient eyes gazing 
into a stranger's face.
He clicks, and it's done.
He clicks.
He clicks, and the children - for
they are children - stretch their muscles,
appreciating release.

The proud matriarch of three generations
turns from the TV
and and reaches to make space 
in her spick and span home
                                            for another trophy.

©Jane Paterson Basil

One Bright Hue

You twist the cube,
try for one bright hue to fill your eyes, 
fumbling to build a blue wall 

that shines 
like a clean childhood sky, 

but the fingers fail and the cube bleeds, 
refusing to comply, its fuming patches 
bragging bitter truth,
describing the sickness that grins 
between the seams.
You drop the cube,
close your eyes 
and dream.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Written for Reena‘s Xploration challenge #196. Sorry, Reena, my WP editor has a glitch: hard as I try, I can’t get it to highlight the whole name of your post when creating a pingback.

Fairer Sex

A beautifully crafted poem penned by my guest poet, PW.

Abuse can take so many forms
the worst of which a bitch that's scorned
who shoots untruths from lips not hip each time her man takes stand or slips.

Her hands hold grip around your throat and with her words she bounds and chokes. No room to breathe, your freedom gone and with it youth, the truth along
with peace of mind and decent times - deceit then reaps to beat you blind. So blind in fact your tragic eyes can't see the traps or magic die.

Imagine why, I can't, can you? She kills the thrill of love so true then blues come back with blackness too to swallow up and hollow you. On borrowed time, the signs were clear as years of tears had disappeared the hope you held so very tight to live and love and bury spite. My plight can't end, my friends are hers to bend and break, my mates dispersed and curse me now just how she likes while I bleed red on beds of spikes.

She fed them lies and tied them well while hellish bouts of shouts and yells consume me still and fill my mind, an ever-growing hill to climb. So now I know, I start to grow and leave behind the crime and crows and start out fresh the best I can but torn, I warn the rest of man - don't be a sap, this patterns old. Be bold and brave, don't slave or fold and hold your head up high and cope, don't mope, just mend. I'm sending hope.

©PW

PW’s heartrending verse highlights the sad fact that men – as well as women – are sometimes subjected to repeated acts of abuse… yet their voices are rarely heard or listened to.

Kensington, Philadelphia

They stutter and creep along filth-ridden streets, 
tattered sleeves hiding the blood as it seeps,
far from the arms of mothers who weep.

Turn away, 
cover your eyes, 
blind to the shame of the crimes you perceive
as you hurry away from the flesh-eating streets.

They wade through the scud of society's greed,  
shuffling their feet, hungry for succour 
then numbed by fulfilment of lethal need.

Turn away
pretend you don't see,
blind to the shame of the streets of pain
or blaming the victim for all our mistakes.  

They're slipping through cracks between fleshly paving;
our brothers and sisters struggle and bleed 
and end on those streets.
Who finds the dead and where are they buried?
Do we really not notice? 
How can we not care?
How can we not weep as they slip between 
the cracks created from selfish greed.

Few of us focus and few of us see
that there but for fortune or luck of the genes 
go him and her and you and me.
There but for fortune  
go we.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Everything In Its Place

 
 
 
  
 My father was a talented man. 
 He drew, painted, pressed clay, carved stone 
 into naked feminine shapes with big bums and 
 tiny waists. He was practical, too. 
 When my family moved to Devon, he mastered 
 the art of plant husbandry, and grew 
 much of our food.
 He pulled nails from reclaimed wood,  
 saved metal scraps and screws, used them  
 to build, to make tools.
 When I was eight, I helped him 
 create a two-room caravan from waste.  
 This space became a base 
 for his creations. Wood, chisel and clay 
 lived at the front end with his workbench.
 Hammers, drills and related accoutrements 
 were neatly arranged on shelves. 
 Beyond lay his photographic studio, complete 
 with convenient divan and blankets. 
 Everything had its place -- cameras, hammers 
 and home-made pottery wheel of his design, powered  
 by peddling a recycled bicycle -- all
 neatly in reach.
 
 When one of his scented women came -- her waist 
 not that thin, her bum
 not that big, and her painted face never 
 as pretty as in his imagery -- we knew 
 The Artist Was At Work 
 and we must turn away. 

 When they left, some 
 made a quick getaway, while others 
 played innocent, dripping 
 into the kitchen for a quick visit. 
 My mother was friendly, polite, never 
 accused, never raged or complained, 
 ostensibly dismissing his sickening betrayals,
 gently raising them on the pedestal 
 of art. No-one could have seen her pain, or known 
 she was afraid.
 
 Yes, my father was a  
 gifted man. Every possession  
 was kept in its place. As 
 an innocent child, I worshiped him.
 Then my breasts grew, and I began to understand  
 the depth of his despot views:  
 e-v-e-r-y woman's place was
 pressed
 in the palm  
 of his 
 grasping 
 hand.  
 
 
 ©Jane Paterson Basil 

 Written for Word Of The Day Challenge: Practical

Obscure Miracles

 Morning brings a fragile visitation: 
 the hint of a poem whose silken threads
 ebb and flow,
 playing hide-and-seek with my mind, 
 gradually reproducing into compatible flecks 
 which swim like dust motes 
 on a sunny day.
 
 Words and phrases  
 float through an open window: tender gifts 
 bestowed by an unknown source;  
 obscure miracles which mingle with the mix,
 transforming raw verse till it fits, 
 displays a hint of beauty, 
 and on occasion, blooms 
 with exhumed truth. 

©Jane Paterson Basil

Poor Old Santa

Written for Word Of The Day Challenge: Reflect

With apologies to the oft-disputed author of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas

 It's a dim little Christmas we're having this year,
 stranded from family and friends we hold dear.
 Factions are splattered all over the place,  
 there is fear and denial, ragr and bad grace.
 World leaders sit haggard on prickly fence
 while scientists struggle to make them see sense.
 Conspiracy geeks prittle predictable prattle
 and the papers continue to treat us like cattle.
 Mother is shielding and father is fraught
 by the dreadful cost of the gifts that he bought.
 Business is failing, his debts are a-growing,
 since Covid put paid to the seeds he was sowing.
 His children are sleeping in confident bliss
 faithfully dreaming of generous gifts.
 Santa has packed up his sleigh with great care,
 he's padlocked his storehouse and fed his reindeer.
 He's flying up high on his usual rounds;
 although visits are tricky, he won't let us down.
 Since rulings preclude him from entering chimneys
 he drops down the presents and flies away nimbly,
 with a groan in his throat and a tear in his eye;
 he'd be glad of a drink or a lovely mince pie,
 to fill his fat belly and give his heart ease -
 but he cannot risk catching a nasty disease.
 As he smoothly directs his crew through the air,
 he's pleased to be giving but filled with despair.
 He reflects that it's been a difficult year:
 There's lots of goodwill, but damn little cheer.   

©Jane Paterson Basil

Spring

 
 
 
Winter
      had clung,
  its bitter wrap of ice-flinted snow 
             suffocating  fleets 
                       of sunny seasons,
          clenching my gut.  
                     
Fevered hope 
            pricked me 
                    with uneven heat.   
      Faith
          was feeble, thin;
                 a hand-spun fishing line, plucked 
                          from the gleam of halcyon days;
            it frayed and broke,  
               frayed and broke, to be knotted  
                                          again and again;  
     my fumbling fingers fighting in vain 
                   to cease their trembling shake.
 
 
 In the end,             
                estrangement
       felt safer, less painful, yet when it came,
                    it bit,
                            it stung;
                  as events remained uncelebrated and months  
       mounted, it 
                   ate me away.
 
Sometimes, change is sudden:
 
as if on a whim, the world spun, 
whipping up a conglomeration of fear and isolation,
an unheeding pandemic of sickness and death, yet 
 
grace 
 
was the gift this year brought me; 
banishment hit him,
helped him to battle his searing addiction;
his demons had scarred him 
but now they were bleeding, while 
his wounds 
were healing;
I could see they still ached, but
Spring 
had returned. 
Reunited with my child,
with pride and relief I can see
he carries the family genes:
the blood of the Phoenix  
surges 
through his veins.
 
 
 
©Jane Paterson Basil
 
 

Over the past few months, I’ve found it difficult to write. I put this down to the fact that my soul is less tortured. So, last Friday I began a poetry course which was offered by our County Council as part of a mindfulness programme, to help people through the difficulties of Covid, so it wasn’t really designed for poets. However, I thought it would be useful as a kind of refresher. The above poem is the fruit of my first session’s labours. I hope you like it x