Vernal

The change is tiny,
But it is enough
For the treacle sunlight to ooze into the room;
For the frost to slough off delicate bouncing petals
And for grey clouds to slip off the edge of the sky.

The shift is small
But it is enough
To realign the broken rattling parts
In our highly-strung guitar-hearts
And unwind a tune we thought we’d lost
To frost;

Yes, the difference seems no different,
But it is enough
To nudge our compass points,
Inch us onto new courses,
And find our soul-sails
Filled with Spring’s warm breath.

Still Life

I shall stay

here

a Lady of Shalott

Pulling threads from my tapestry

instead of adding them.

I shall have less

I shall do less

I shall be less

Until I am only the sum of my thoughts

Translucent on the sunbeams

in the perfect quiet of this room.

I shall light candles

and meditate

and live on the dust that falls from my skin.

Barefoot on the carpet

I shall walk spring meadows

and the distant traffic

will be my sea shore.

I shall uncouple from human speech

I shall become the art within the frame

The upright stone in the sand garden

Poised just so

in this beam of sunlight

unbreathing

unmoving

marvelling.

Remembrance

Brighton’s fountain war memorial

Is full of teenage seagulls:

Smooth, sleek birds 

Barely out of the down of their youth. 

They splash and preen and posture,

Unaware of the poppy wreaths;

They are young

And invincible.

Aunt Melancholia

Aunt Melancholia has come to visit,
With heavy bags blocking doors,
Weighed down on chests,
Under the eyes;

No need to get up for Aunt Melancholia;
She’d rather you didn’t leave the bed.
She’s seen how tired you look;
She’s certain you’re not eating right;
Let her tuck you in tight
And throw that nasty to-do list away.

She sheds and spreads
And fills the space,
Certain this time she’ll stay
Oh, forever, forever…
Will someone check on her for me and see
How many tears she wants in her tea.

The Busker

Beneath the beanie
And stolen raincoat
Hides golden-glow,
Summer apple skin,
Dew-drop, sky-split eyes,
Velvet, breath-warm,
Ebony hair,
And wings
In slings.

Gloved hands
Clutch at the memory
Of a harp.
Through siren-traffic
Rush-hour busy-busy,
And the January sales stampede,
Golden music wends
Melting the slush
And warming small smiles.

In a winter doorway,
Spring blooms.

***It’s Beltane! I love Beltane 🙂 Dug through my old collection to see if I had any spring-related poems, and this one has the word spring in it, so this one’s for you. I hope your Maytime is a fruitful one.

London Poems

We did the Joshua Crisp 20 Minute Poetry Challenge. It takes an hour.

You pick a theme, or some words that must be in your poem, you set your timer for 20 minutes, and you write. When the timer goes off, you share what you have and offer suggestions and improvements, which often takes 20 minutes, and then you set the timer for 20 minutes to rewrite. Then you each have at least one pretty good finished poem.

The first time I did the Joshua Crisp 20 Minute Poetry Challenge it was at the Mesmerist in Brighton, I was in love and in possession of a pint of good pear cider, and I wrote The Prince of Moths. This time our theme was London, and I got two things out of it. I think I was in a better mood than Josh, his poems were much bleaker than mine, and they’re great, check them out. But here are mine:

London

London is the termite mound;
Its tunnels go deep underground;
It echoes with the scurry-sound
Of worker feet.

London is the concrete space;
The nine-to-five, the rodent race,
Where robots dance the market’s pace –
A binary beat.

London is a time forgot,
Nos-tal-gi-a, a tourist spot;
A gilded town built on the rot
Of workhouse grind.

London is a unity;
Grim humour and a cup of tea –
A place where us and them can be
Of one combined:
Where we stand in solidarity
Of heart and humankind.

 

Slave Labour

The Romans drained the swamp
and raised Londinium
on the backs of their slaves
out of the tidal river water.

Today it is raised for a minimum wage
on the backs of the weary willing
in service of new emperors
still promising to drain the swamps.

***

Which do you prefer?

Love in Brighton

I wrote this one for Smeuse Poetry‘s first anthology competition, calling for poems inspired by Brighton. So it’s thanks to them that I am now a paid, published, prize-winning poet! Here is a poem about Brighton, and a true story.

***

You came with me to talk to the sea
And made me imaginary key-lime pie scones.
The grey waves
Gnawed at the spindle-pier-legs
Angry as you were
Hungry as I was
And we skittered stones at seagulls
To keep them from eavesdropping on our no-words.

St Anne’s Wells to Moulsecoomb is a long way to walk
Unless you’re a student
Or in love
Or both.
We paved the way for each other
Hop-scotching half-remembered poetry
Dancing glances and howling laughter
Over the roar of mainline traffic.

And did you know (I never did)
The best Japanese restaurant in Brighton?
And did you know (how could you not)
Where to see the cyclops skull in Hove?
And did you know we walked on ley lines?
And did you know you could travel for the price of a lemon?
And did you know about the Great Wall of Vagina?
And did you know about the graffiti walls?
A paper chase through town
Threading all our secret shining Brighton moments
Into a chain of events
And did you know where we were headed?

Cocooned in the bubble world
Of a fringe within a festival within a city
Where everything is flyers
Where actors bellow their wares
Like fishmongers at market
And puppets crawl the grey May streets.
We heard the buskers at Pavilion Gardens
And did not lay in each other’s arms under the trees.
We stapled curtains to a pub wall
And hung lights
And ran lines
And pretended our lives weren’t falling apart.

Train after missed train
Sat under blinking timetables
Struggling to find words in the echoes
Of the high station roof.
Silence stoppered in an unexpected kiss
That should have been a full stop
And became an ellipsis
Through the barriers and onto the train
To scalpel slice me out of the seaside town
With sea salt fresh on my cheeks.

(C) Amy Sutton 2017

Nothing Beside Remains

I wrote this for Brave New Word‘s Legacy slam. Their focus was on what we leave behind. When it’s being studied at exam level they’ll recommend you read Percy Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, a great poem about legacy, to see where I pinched lines – I mean, paid homage to a poetic master. It was performed gorgeously at the slam by actress Orla Sanders. Seriously, I wish I could gift you her performance of it. Anyway, enjoy 🙂

***

When we’re gone,

When we’re all gone –

When we’re fried by solar radiation

Or nuclear irradiation;

When something like the heart of a star

Pops too close to our

Little blue glass marble world

And scours the surface clean;

When we’re hurled into a brand new scene

Of constellations

On our tiny planetary space station

As we make our way around the Milky Way –

(I say we, I don’t mean we,

I mean where we used to be,

Where the cluster of dust that used to be us

Is barely a memory)

What is left of humanity?

What is our legacy?

What would be seen

By a traveller from an antique land?

Our buildings, our cities,

Chewed up by trees,

Crumbled into forest fuel;

Our great stories forgotten;

Our languages rotten;

Our continents gone walkabout

On this brave new old world;

What survives us

When the earth sighs and stretches back

Into the cramped spaces stolen by humanity?

Because we couldn’t just go quietly

And leave the space free,

As we found it.

We’ve left our vast and trunkless legs to stand

In the future desert:

We’ve found our immortality.

We’ve sown a new strata in our soil,

And it swirls like a soup in our seas;

Lining the bellies of beasts,

So their stomachs will outlive them, poisoned, preserved,

For whatever set of opposable thumbs

Digs into this earth after us

And uncovers,

Discovers our legacy.

Professors will study the Age of Plastic,

And chart the line of our mass-produced extinction.

There’ll be great debate

About the last of the great apes;

How will those future minds

Circle that square?

A people smart enough to tap the black bone soup

Of our own dead titans,

But stupid enough to sip from that same

Disposable picnic spoon.

They’ll study, but they won’t see

The lessons from our history

As they send their workers down underground

To dig in the plastic mines

And bring up those twice-buried, twice-cursed ancient bones,

That filled our world like ghosts,

Unseen, unnoticed, unvalued,

Used, abused and thrown away,

Out of sight and out of our minds.

We will be survived by our synthetics,

Undead, undying and ready to rise,

To scrawl across our little

Blue-glass marble world:

“Humanity was here.”

So take up your used water bottle

Pick up your one-shot coffee cup

Save your supermarket salad pot

Your straws

Your cellophane

Your sticky tape

Your smart phone

And your polystyrene packaging

And carve on each and every one:

“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

And know that when we’re gone,

When we’re all gone,

Your words will still be there.

(C) Amy Sutton 2017

Pickled

This is how we keep our stories beyond their season.
This is how we preserve our words
for others to taste in their mouths.
This is how we bottle the abundance of ancient summers
to warm us around cold campfires in uncertain futures.

This is how we dry out the rich music of our mouth-words,
the tumble of our thought-song,
down to ink-pickled letter flakes,
and press them
one by one
onto paper.
Word-blossom dies in the air –
pickled words keep;
Pages stacked into books like tins stacked onto shelves,
full of prose and preservative.

So chew on my words, pickled connoisseur.
Digest them slowly.
Spread them piquant-sweet across your tongue,
full of rich sugar vinegar memories.
This is how to feed your soul
in the lonely winters of your life
when fresh words are hard to come by.

(C) Amy Sutton 2017