Precipice

With the slightest flicker of cold eyes
my seppuku is complete, and I fall,
honour restored, my salvation intact.
But what really kills me
really twists the knife
are the wet slate tears
that you allow to come, witness
for my prosecution.
We eagerly devoured ourselves,
gorged,
any ration being useless
until our bowl of desire, once brimming,
was left only with pallid dregs
flecked in the cracked shallows.
Our pathetic disbelief
that this banquet could endure,
is scorned upon by our jurors
and I am the one to notice first.
My love has staled,
yours still blooms
and I can no longer satisfy,
this tragic appetite.

© Graham Sherwood 01/2014

Lux

(An observation on the Mandela issue and collective grief)

Can a light be born?
It seems it merely becomes apparent
as we begin to notice, first its light (ness)
then its growth in power, illuminating
both ourselves and those around us.
Light can be dangerous too,
when we need a dark corner in which to hide
yet comforting when we need to shine.
Of course there are occluded days
when light is hidden from our view
and we feel that such a time must last forever,
then the clouds clear and once again it beams
a rainbow through the tears.
How old is light and can it shine for all time?
Perhaps it loses some intensity but gains a golden serenity
a face that makes us stand erect
and proud to feel its glow.
But light can die too
as all things born surely must
leaving us waiting for a new dawn.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2013

Ballet du Jardin

I sit amongst the slow death of autumn,
mourner for the splendid season passed,
still warm, but draped with funereal shades
and the keen astringent tincture of musk.
Like the wily fox
a breeze steals between some broken slats
carefully, but slowly, circling the listless leaves
then with a single bark
stampedes the cackling henflakes into a panicked spin
rising up, now plunging, crashing
like skating claws that scar the garden fence.
Empty flowerpots tack and yaw
Like paper boats atop this maelstrom
Then spin noisily away to safe harbour.
Sated, the zephyr idly slinks away
to leave a magic morsel for my amusement.
Two brittle-slim willow leaves hang impossibly
in plain sight, an illusion, tumbling like gymnasts
or bronzed ballerinas held in time, performing
on the slightest line of spider’s web
puppets in a sallow requiem.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2013

Event

The pain, a stiletto, a scalpel, a betrayal
The fall, an avalanche, a demolition, a house of cards
The cry, white noise, soundless, unheard
The visions, mother, father, family
The sound-scene, measured voices, sirens, wind
The sensations, massage, shock, wrestling limbs
The audience, eyes staring, bright lights, electronica
The wait, first hour crucial, lifeless, Houdini
The outcome?

© Graham Sherwood 11/2013

Sunday Haiku

Dream Shower Toast Tea
Newspaper Leaf-Mould Hail Storm
Walk Five Fish Dinner

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

Awaiting Erato

(Study of a blank page).

Alone again, what is Muse?
What kind of entity
as light as breath, heavy as guilt, capricious as faith
that holds me in such crushing torpor
of impatient anticipation.
Be she young, or she at all?
who points my gaze, loosens my tongue
and sets ablaze my thoughts,
before, with scant indication
gone.
If a he, Muse is brutal
a fierce prodigal who bears no kindred spirit
no brotherly bond
and will not fight my corner,
who lashes cruelly with barbed whips
that rip the sleeves of my recoiling aspirations.
No, Muse is she
who, tosses tendrilled locks
with a curious, unsure countenance,
the promise of a smile, the treason of a frown,
the blink of embrace, the furnaces of loss,
why else would I wait here?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

Going Back

(A reflective thought on a planned reunion).

Later over dinner we re-assemble
like old knights with their ladies,
to study surreptitiously one another’s lifelines
and to hear what japes have come and gone
throughout these last fifty years or so.
The weight of our armour is now replaced
by the fat of too few battles fought.
Of course what we really want to know
we are all too afraid to ask,
of how a lifetime drifted by unseen

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013