Turquoise Monster

National Poetry Day is a day of celebrating and taking part in all things poetry, this year it is on the 1st of October 2020 and there are lots and lots of virtual events taking place, readings, write-ins and so on.

This years National Poetry Day is a little different to previous years where I’ve trekked out to events or run online chat groups and so on. This year no one is going anywhere thanks to the virus and I am too ill to really take part in much at all even remotely and on line.

However this years theme is actually very relevant to me as since the fever in March I have been having hallucinations – visions if you like and vivid story like dreams which I have been attempting to capture in sketches and writings. I have also had server eye problems due to side effects of the covid and the resulting graves disease (an autoimmune system disease) which has affected my sight – my actual vision. This too is taking some adjustments but I think I am getting there.

Then of course we are looking at the much wider definition of vision – that of the future and the world – this is particularly pertinent at the moment thanks to the political situations in various large powers, our own political mess (and it is a mess what ever political leaning you are – it is a mess!) and the climate chaos that has descended upon us. This year the world has literally been on fire!

Other things I am personally going to be thinking about for the day are: ancient petitions and soothsaying, the visions of shaman and holy practitioners. Thanks to the Gloucester History Festival I have recently learned about an interesting Nun who’s visions look similar from her drawings to what I have been suffering with.

Poets like Shelly where obvious plagued with fever dreams and opium stupors.

And then there is just my own “vision” of the future and myself – what do I want? What wishes do I hope for?

On the day if I am well enough I will share some writing prompts and poems on various platforms:

@saffy

@TheMonsterBlogs

Insta WoPo

Writer and Artist Facebook

World Poetry Facebook

Pinterest WoPo

Ducks swimming in slivers
Green-pink spume as the sun is setting
Whistle shriek, a dog barks

Time
Time Ticks
Time Tick Tocks
Time Tick Tock Tricks
Time Tock Ticks
Time Tocks
Time

Inspired by a paining at the Wilson Gallery March 2017

The bridge was fragmented arches
Three of them, crossing the river
With grey stone feet
Growing slimy from the water
The spill and stuck around them

Remnants of a tower still rose
On one side, but not it’s twin
Nothing but decay
Little windows stared blank eyed
At clouds shattered by row boats

Wakes

People still lived here, in the shadows
Behind jagged triangles of wall
Make shift tents, hardly holding together
Moth eaten and thread bare

They never sort the shelter of the stones
Beyond the gate bridge stood the city
Devolved and reverting
The people knew the horror of it

A tower and a bridge
In ruins – guarding
The Hall of Ghosts
No one wanted the resurgence
Not of that evil

The boats carried seeds
Encouraging natures engulfment
A warm rain added deadly ripples
To the tranquil stream

Beautiful angel drinking red wine
I see her eyes on fire
And I know the blood is mine

Heavenly angel setting out bait
I know it’s a trap
But its also my fait

Shining bright angel walking the earth
I hear her singing
The songs of my birth

Beautiful angel lips ruby red
I feel the cold sky
As I join the dead

The forest is dark,
the trees –
their branches are heavy with leaves of dark maroon,
their trunks are stark white and smooth,
you walk here,
with warmth on your breath,
clouds bloom from you,
white and incandescent,
a veil pours from you,
drifting up that’s also down,
so dark though the sun is a silver ball of harsh fire in the sky.

The light is more sharp
more precise than it ever should be.
It’s a light that does not drive the darkness with its primordial fear away,
instead –
it focuses the shadows,
making them seem deeper, darker, abysses of the mind,
you look at them and they look back,
sucking, pulling at you,
wanting you and you wanting them.

But what of that dark and
the velvet veil beyond,
fear keeps you from it as surely as knowledge.

The trees stir in the icy breeze,
dark red swirls to the ground,
to lay in pools that blanket the feet of the bearer.

Silence would rain here but it may not,
as silence is something,
the trees with slender branches,
reach for the sky quelling any substance to the air,
you walk alone waiting,
trying to look to a sky that hurts the eyes,
that where never there.

I did not want to
I did not want to hate
I did all I could to love
But it stuck in my thought
Memories would not let me abide
And it wound around me
Gorrotting hope from the inside
Stumbling
I was a nugget not a pearl
Swerlling in the currents
Abbradded I lay
Growing smaller
Buffetted by things
I could not see
Sick to the core
Ground down
By the mutual body blows
Of others like me

Too bitter and twisted
Stuck in the stream
Tumbled in their back water
Rut
Again and again and again
Drowning in hate
I did not want
I did not want to
I did not want to hate
But I did.

Glinting crystals within my sight
Blood and roses mark the fight
As my eyes begin to sting
I can’t identify this thing

Is this akin to a shame
Do I shoulder all the blame?

Underneith the winter snow
Where the snow drops wait to grow

Here I wait for my doom
Twilight shadows begin to loom
My heart it twists and spins away
They say that I have gone astray

In my heart strikes the pain
They’re telling me that I’ve gone insane

Underneith the winter snow
Where the blood drops wait to grow

Images swirl within my mind
They’re seeing less I think I’m blind
Feeling sick within the night
Searching, blinded by the light

Trapped within eternal dreams
Who out there will hear my screams?

Undernieth the winter glow
Where the blood drops wait to grow

And so the beast from the cave
May bring us back from the grave
Who wants that within this age?
When pain and blood score the page

Hearing this may bring to bare
How we break for those we care

Underneith the winter glow
Where the blood drops begin to grow

Pain is striking from behind
Love and life are there to find
But for those who are lost
Lie behind the veiled frost

I want to show them this scene
hidden minds behind the screen

Undernieth the moons winter glow
Where the blood drops begin to grow

Hurt is laying behind their eyes
At the words no more than sighs
Fear within begins to grow
At the knowledge that I know

They are lost out of sight
I wish they could see the stars so bright

Undernieth the moons bright glow
Where the blood drops begin to grow

As the light slows and ebbs
So we must all creep to bed
I whisper songs to the air
Casting looks at those who stare

Pain and love go hand in hand
There to make a finial stand

Stand beneath the moons bright glow
Where the blood drops begin to grow

To a river wide and bare
Waters run bright and rare
Hope to see the midnight sun
When all the colours are as one

This a song of despair
But no more for the one who cares

Stand beneath the moons bright glow
Where the blood drops begin to flow

Regrets slithered blind to the pain
They struck, and the hearts they withered
The dark sweet tears marked the passing
And drips of sorrow carved new lands

One full of hollows echoed, what had been
Rebounded but the wells were drained
By the more numerous memories of supposing
Could ofs, should ofs… would have beens

My heart lies on the floor
Rancid rotten meat
It began dying
Decades ago
When yours refused to beat