Tag: Poetry

Winter Solstice 2022

Published on by Sarah Drury4 Comments

Hope everyone had a happy solstice and Yule, and wishing you a very merry Christmas with everything beautiful for 2023! Here’s a little poem I wrote! 


The sun has slipped below
the monarchy of the moon
its cool, harsh Winter glare
clings on, a moment longer

From here, the days have turned
The daylight stretches out its
icy respiration, Pagan gods
and goddesses scatter

blessings on the crackling
mirror-glaze Earth
the sparking lanterns
lifting jovial voices into

balmy, freeze-breath skies.
We merrily turn our faces 
upwards, praise the solstice
pray for hope reborn. 

© Sarah Drury 2022

Ophelia (1910)

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after John William Waterhouse

              Be thou as chaste as ice:       as pure as snow:
    your purity a catechism.
                 
 Flowers grace your palms, in repose.
                          Get thee to a nunnery:
                                     a virgin?      Can we know?
                                     
 Anoint your flame hair -
                                thou shalt not escape
                                     calumny:    your visage:
                   
your chaste lips, a phantom kiss
                   cheeks smarted rose with denial.

                                The trees are vessels of your        sorrow.

                                                 Ophelia,     love is a dead Hawthorn. 




Waterhouse, J.W. (1910) - Ophelia [Online] Available at: " https://arthive.com/johnwaterhouse/works/255253~Ophelia"

Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 (Hamlet to Ophelia)

39 Degrees

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39 degrees

 

Today I could cook my breakfast

on the pavement, spitting there,

between the doc ends and

discarded cheap-lager cans. Save

 

on the energy bills, al fresco

cuisine – dine with the homeless. The

eggs would gaze up at me like that

woman’s breasts sweating in her

 

Lycra, skimpy top. The sun has

hit pasty limbs hanging from

cheap shorts, chests bared to

the air – Men thinking that is

 

what we women want to see, as

we point, and ponder unbaked

baguettes. 39 degrees and we

are pink cuts on a butcher’s slab.

 

 

It (a poem)

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment 
My son is struggling at the moment with school anxiety. This is for him...


*It*

Another photo – kid in school uniform - 
new ribbons in plaits doused in nit repellant
Smart hair £8 at the foreign barber’s in town

*Insert shop label* (elitist?)
*Insert school* (abbatoir?)
*Insert toothpaste brand* (fake toothy smile?)

I am not allowed to refer to *it* (school) - that hellhole
I am screamed down, sworn at; *it* demonised

*it* is not a quirky grin on your face when you get home
*it* is not a spring to your heels as you see the bus
*it* is not a babble of news about your day of learning

Maybe you will stream through the door
This morning, like the sun yawned til you woke
Maybe chirp, ‘love you, you loon’…

Put on your uniform, slick your hair
Guzzle pop-tarts for breakfast, cup of cha
Smile, ‘bye mum,’ as you hop on the bus

Maybe not…

You

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I missed you this weekend. I missed the feel of your pasty, doughy body curled up beside me on the crumpled sheets. Wetness between my legs, deluded dreams in my hoodwinked head. You, my inebriated trainwreck, breathing asthmatic whisky fumes, and stealing my innocence. My red lips had bled onto your cheek, seeking words, seeking I love you. But I don’t think you did.

I only wanted to see what was on the disc. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but when your father was a cheat, all men are manipulators. I am not a misandrist, but I know you have parked your car in many places. You disappeared, flew off to Dublin, left my bed cold and barren. Carelessly left this disc lying around, next to the single dirty plate beside the empty spirits glass, and the tear-stained tissue.

I didn’t know what to say, really. My tongue had cleaved to the roof of my mouth, and I felt nauseous. I don’t know why I was surprised. Fidelity was never your strongest virtue. A naked woman screamed out at me through the computer screen, poised like a seedy hooker, flesh spilling out from lacy bras and French knickers. I couldn’t hear her voice, but she was American, you said, and the silence of her dissonance screamed at me.

I am not inhibited or prudish, but I don’t want to feast my eyes on another woman’s genitals, I am not sleeping with the enemy. “Perfect pussy’ you said, and you may as well have shot arsenic arrows into my heart. You didn’t know the meaning of pain, as you never did hurt. You just went on collecting broken hearts in jars, and notches on the headboard above your bed. I still loved you.