Grisaille

(The inability to recall dreams).

Wednesday yawns, and the call to sleep,
to rinse the once fast colours of my memories
that history feints to vague affairs.
Who was that beauteous girl
who ran like the fawn, quink on her fingers,
who smelled of cold toast?
Alas gone, forever
dancing through the flimsy leaves
in a Morphean maze of tangled veils,
no footprints left
my brief ecstacy turned to loss,
no evidence caught as lambs wool on a briar,
tumultuous pleasure at such costly price.
I wake, full knowing of the robbery
but cannot list my loss.

Grasmere

(The shifting aspects of Lakeland scenery).

Of course the hill does not move,
although the waking eye is fooled
to think so.
The pale slate backdrop slides by
from right to left,
a trompe d’oeil
that sends me back to bed confused.
Later three sooty trees silhouette
their veined fingers
as the picture turns to breakfast blue.
Distracted from a crossword and eggs Benedict,
I take another surreptitious glance.
Now, this pretty girl who doesn’t disappoint
is dressed in green velvet frocks,
she tantalizes me throughout the day,
resolute, not to move an inch
or look my way,
as each act of the day’s pantomime scenery
is wheeled past my eyes,
a vulgar cereal packet colour box.
Crushed, I later dress for dinner
and almost miss the teasing ripple
of her cowgirl rump
as she waltzes to the wings.
Exit stage right.

© Graham Sherwood 3/2012

Dark Room

(A comment on the hypocrisy of so-called multiculturalism).

We are not multi-cultural
neither you nor I,
merely atheist and zealot shackled,
singularly suspicious, doubly wary,
you of my painted skin
me, your voluminous robes.
I hear the barbed vowels that
you cast to the quickening wind,
which cuts to ribbons
my shell-shocked hospitality.
Quietly I show my bravery
by plotting your final days
behind thick oak doors, camouflaged
in sugary platitudes.
Remember what the common cold
did to the Martians, a generation ago.
Empires fall,
and our futile resistance
will then reveal your olive shadows
as nothing,
but paper shapes of last night’s
nightmare.

© Graham Sherwood 3/2012

Essencia

(Inability to describe the indescribable).

Whenever birds fall silent in a troubled twilight
or that fleeting moment before the millisecond of a sneeze,
in the waking blink before we lose a dream
and the confusion as we cry whilst smiling,
then the thought of food be food enough for thought
our deafening lives are numbed by newly fallen snow
it is special.

© Graham Sherwood 2/2012

Muse

(An observation on the sexualization of the young).

Almost sated
I wash my hands of you
like Pilate.
And with one eye on dessert
the other, your naked back
I’m thinking
“this one could spell trouble”.
Your adolescent guardians
innocence and inexperience
lead you from my sight,
but not before
through jet wet hair,
and the flicker of a smile
you silently answer,
“but trouble can be fun”.

© Graham Sherwood 2/2012

Ode to Pain

(A dietary conundrum).

We are separated,
and it seems that I can no longer
look you in the face.
I know that you would take me back
in a blink,
and I would love to come. But
four painful weeks have dragged by,
a lifetime, after which even your smell
is now a distant waifish breeze.
Pining, I am fading too,
I am less without you,
Isn’t that the point to prove.

© Graham Sherwood 01/2012

Recovery

(The nursing of a relative).

Your flaccid sausage cock slaps me around the ear
as I slide damp pants beneath your arse,
and your watery words,
sorry! sorry! sorry! spill on my head
like harmless rubber bricks
along with your tears.

Life’s lottery brought your numbers up
but took your legs as the ticket price.
So we both begin here, base camp one,
the brooding mountain,
visible only to our punctured imaginations,
with you in the harness, me on the rope
we start the climb.

© Graham Sherwood 01/2012