Stuart McPherson
Paracetamol
I have no words today,
Just a sack over my head and a greyhound running the racetrack of my heart I have no words Even though I looked for them Spilling the guts of bedside draws Pulling curls of snapped consonants from a wardrobe; pine flimsy An empty corridor I knew you’d taken them, Silhouetted in the silence of a clock, Perched and knees tucked Folded like gentry At the end of my bed Even now, I sit teasing unripe mango with a fork, A bowl filled with lutescent slugs, Hoping for torchlight from these last paracetamol Three Words ☊
Out of all the words
There are three That define some value Our place This you and me and him and her and them and us And family Three words plus a dictionary full of emotions To place before or after what should be so profound And it can be Can be seen and felt and is Yet more often than not a mirror to reflect our damage In the why said not said left unsaid And all the explanations in-between Maybe it’s about the history and the hangovers And our struggle to be free from dichotomy so redundant in the end Because we end, it ends, don’t we? And for those three words the acceleration of time becomes an unwelcome friend But still we want to feel them Just the same To mend beaten snares, a rhythm we all share So who’s to blame The shoes without feet or the feet without shoes Who spins the records on repeat to reopen old wounds Those three words, just three And questions of peripheries And subtle combinations somewhere in-between As simple, and complicated as Do I love you Do you love me The Pepperpot Cliffs
Her footsteps softly clipped the
pampas grass, so luscious in its trail to the Pepperpot lighthouse Neatly folded licked and sealed A white flag flying, so quietly, Just tucked inside a handbag It sat alone And I thought about her, With little feet loose amongst the cliff rock; tentatively, Whilst spring tides whispered their allures I thought about the colour of her eyes, her brown ringlets, Lifting in the breeze Her heart Somewhere in-between the slap of the Atlantic and the wind whistling through the gull pecked lobster pots, a child cried And the cliff teeth jutted like a skinning knife, Waiting for its next meal |
Won Back
It was a tie that broke him,
Turned the heat up on a simmering pot Full to the brim Rim spilling, The request from top down Trickling from frown to fist like clenched teeth on cotton wool To live in that place That moment The silent walk down the floor Out the door Fellow desk jockeys eyes so wide in awe A heart full and jangling The thought of kids and empty plates, Responsibilities wrangling It was a tie that broke him, One he wouldn’t wear, So one back for sanity For humanity For birds rooftop flying and the winds litter whip And from my lips, my jaw, One word I wish I could have said before he left, ‘Hero’ I would have said And nothing more The ChrysalisA Red Admiral in January
Impossible, But then a pupa Plucked from beneath the lip of my garden wall, Waxy between finger and thumb Suggest secrets And something I might know that you don’t and vice versa, Like the sight of red and white splashed on forewings, Opening gently Against the old paintwork Blue Suit
Lined and cubed like ‘man in blue’
I’m Bacon painted; ill fit face eschews my nose, my mouth, my mind elsewhere A paintbrush dipped in ester; bare And familiar scene the office meet Bland branded by the undercurrent, mirth’s deceit Jaws trembling; glancing eyes, they wait For smirks, dead hearts defibrillate The Nightingale
Time like water wears away
Life’s scatter in a written word Or muddied boots left on display Get cleaned and dull the voices heard Like hues from red to grey and blurred Quite unbeknownst to widows lost Who must release the heart-thorned bird that sits inside lovelorn like frost 
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