VERSEWRIGHTS
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives

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 Chrysalis

A 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





Picture

Comments?

***

​Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights.
© 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.:
Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems
Catalog Poems
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems
Epic Poetry
Fairy Tale Poems
Fishing Poems
Funny Poems
Ghazal Poems
Haiku Poems
John Keats Poems
Love Poems
Math, Science & Technology Poems
Ode Poems
Pantoum Poems
Question Poems
Rondeau Poems
Rose Poems
Sestina Poems
Shakespeare Poems
Ship, Sail & Boat Poems
Sonnet Poems
Tea Poems
Villanelle Poems
William Blake Poems
Work Poems

To translate this page:
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives