Caught

Agape and gasping
as a freshly caught fish
flung roughly to the grassy bank
comfortable but nonetheless dying
my sweating skin dries,
a sickly sweet pungency
organic, rotting
my crucial atmosphere so close,
parallel, but
a fathomless chasm distant.


I lose my precious sense of self,
dirt and decay seeps into pores
then my path appears,
but palpable confusion
wracking my brain,
spins me like a top,
the road ahead
lush with opportunities
beckons with a ring finger's promise,
but the form of a harlot



© Graham Sherwood 11/2015

Treize

black top hat
as Friday fades
three of clubs
ten of spades
friends smile true
red wine pours
devils seep
unlocked doors
chaos stains,
mayhem kills
a city's blood
red heart spilt
deathly quiet
sombre bells
questions form
sorrow quells
black top hat
on Saturday
world looks on
then looks away


© Graham Sherwood 13/11/2015

Row A Seat 1

Vaguely named shadows convene
to populate my past,
I hold the only front row seat, but
afraid to turn my head
cannot counsel their expressions, field their sighs
or sample any choked applause
that meets my ears, a melange of meaning
the symphonica of a life gone by.
My many ghosts all know themselves, as
jigsaw pieces boxed randomly
in the upper stalls,
ahead the fire curtain I am forced to study
forms the picture on the box,
my life in fragments, interlocked
few pieces left to set.



© Graham Sherwood 11/2015

Kit and Shadowtail

Next doors' pretty kitten, ungainly
clatters up and over my soddened fence
deft as a scrumping schoolboy
now left exposed amongst the naked trees
whose multi-coloured striptease act
adorns the lawn.

There's no whiff of a breeze, but
my bird feeder sways rhythmically
to the beat of the squirrel's cocking tail
upside down, secure, a furry barnacle
hacking through the battered mesh
daylight peanut robbery, blatant.

So a comical standoff commences
In nature's kindergarten playground,
precocious squirrel chatters
while guileful kitten inches nearer
unevenly matched, naive
I'll see you both again tomorrow.



© Graham Sherwood 11/2015

Beware the Pen

I am wary of the pen
a place where words reside,
bound and fettered
in regimented dictionary
monothelite, compressed.
As ink courses, then life begins,
my thoughts become words
given form, embryonic
ready for growth,
staring intently from the page
coercive, hypnotic shape-shifting,
mesmerizing entities.
I avert my eyes
but they evolve cynically, devious,
love to lust, melancholy to sorrow
pathos to satire to sarcasm
I correct and erase
yet still more come.




© Graham Sherwood 11/2015

Cur

Such professed innocence,
a shameful masquerade
where thoughts are slashed,
butchered by your viperous tongue
that spits its venom with scorned abandon
out into your hostile world.
You stab and fight
then cauterize your wounds
with the tainted saliva of a zealot
rich in bile and cancerous malevolence.
What made you thus?
where sprang this addled poisonous spring,
that gorges on the weak
and drowns the precious words of men?



© Graham Sherwood 11/2015