Robert Wylie is our resident poet and salonista who discovered the joy of writing poetry very recently whilst shielding from Covid 19. We hope you enjoy his work.
Disclaimer What a Poem Is Blank, alexandrine and sometimes couplets Provide the stays for some. A sonnet or a villanelle Epic, lyric, pastoral Sacred or profane To me are all the same. I don't know what a poem is Or meter, cadence, rhyme. I know when it comes to burbling up Ineffable and true I feel compelled to eructate And write it down for you For those of you who think, I fear, That poetry I slaughter Much better then to micturate And write it down in water.
Dissonance A carapace Rock-like Protects My newly tongue-tied Muted voice - My inmost being - From choking On the nacreous tumor Growing lustrously Within. You dive A willing Cygnus To reach A protean Phaeton Misreading in the depths This sea-change Of unabortable Conception We drift In etiolating symbiosis Slowly unknowing Un-embracing Letting go.
Gulls Outside Gulls pillage Patrolling streets for trash Self-appointed terrorists Marauding Squawking Insolent Showing fledglings how it’s done Inside Memories gull my mind Lulling into safety Then with impunity Shape-shift into howling Shades Shrieking Shredding all behind Lacerating all before Self-spawned and spawning Furies Leaving no-where to go Outside Gulls withdraw in twilight Inside Black and darker still.
Sick Tongue Silent Isolated No cause to speak Hear a voice from inside out Once supple and fluent, Now impeded, its own gag A clumsy weighted flabby slurring mass That chokes on itself Chokes on the poems that were Once a voice, once internal Now unheard Unknown Silent
Smoke I light another cigarette Self-isolated pariah Spot-lit under the the cooker hood Inhale Exhale Watch In the phosphorous light Smoke, diffuse, from my lungs And narrower bluer smoke from my cigarette Co-mingle on their ways to oblivion In the extractor fan. Another minute killed Killing Time. Inhale Exhale Watch Through the glare Smoke Furling unfurling Elegant on its way to annihilation In the extractor fan Another minute Killing Boredom. Inhale Exhale Watch Smoke Swirling toward a false sun Spiraling upward like Icarus Doomed to a different fate. Another Killing One last exhalation Ash Temporal Drops to the floor Not yet Eternal I light another cigarette.
Personal Development Please Accommodate my Robot-like, jerky, Kinetically challenging Idiosyncrasies. Not to mention my gNomic Slurring and Overwhelming Need to just Sit. Deep Inside an unexpected Sea Change Embraces and Acclaims my different Self or selves Emerging.
Voices Voices Echoes Out loud (or not) Whispered (or not) Internal (or not) Voices From the street (or not) On the phone (or not) On the radio (or not) In my head (or not) Voices Constant gabbling Nonsense mumbling Just below audible Filling air, ears, head Scrambled Scrabbling for meaning No heads that talk Voices No lips to read No tongue that moves Just Voices Voices Urgent Furious Voices I Hear Voices None mine All mine.
Half Masks In the grace of a harsh light In an unflattering glass My living, lived-in half-mask Regards the almost unlined beauty Of its undisguisedly asymmetric pendant Not living Not dead Not ageing in tandem, Granted early The embalmer’s art Of neutral still life Its lines are shadows Of pathways whose names Once fashionable, Renamed after this season’s Taxonomy, Would map sense On to Non-sense And other dead ends Ward off With nomenclature An all-too inevitable transformation Taboo in others’ eyes. The glass accepts Reflects My unmasked halves My face In all its fragile Glory.
Proust versus Beaudelaire Out of Ennui Alone I Thought to bake Bread To succor myself in self satisfaction Breathing in Tasting Indulgent Reminiscence’s Warm Fraudulent embrace Odorously revivifying In Now Now past Instead Yeast’s Sulphorous swelling pustules Unswell Releasing Breath-taking Furies’ Carrion stench Choking the air with Acrid ash Smothering Now and Now past In petrifying Dust.
Games and Tapestries
Jigsaws and Solitaire for the mind
Needlepoint for dexterity
And virtuous Patience,
With its unknown hand,
Patiently frustrating –
Not out,
Missing stitch,
Lost piece
Murderously redone
In hapless isolation
All become
Fretful
Obsessive loops
Re-running imagined and
Unimagined
Games and tapestries
Played and woven with intention
Now
Unintentionally
Unraveling.