Tag / Poetry

by Isla

Hidden shallows

In which I didn’t get the memo

It turns out my niceness is only skin deep. 

Beneath the surface, I spit glittering vitriol in an acid arc around myself. These spattering thoughts blister words into the dirt: ‘Join me in lockdown… feel this grief for a past life… falter here with me, in this stuttering uncertainty.’

But there are those who continue to grow within four walls, plucking opportune plums from a laden bough and making life sweet. They barely stutter at all.

The bastards.

I, meanwhile, simmer in my acid bath, my skin growing thinner with every slow second. The liquid blooms rose-pink and rises.

At some point I should stand up and wade out, before too much of me is lost. But the burn is comforting and the return of full gravity is too much to bear.

I’m staying here. Hip deep in shed niceties, I pass the time by drowning well-meaning platitudes until they dissipate to nothing.

by Isla

Afloat

In which I drift

The water felt warm, a soft lulling comfort that whispered my eyes closed.

In the months that I’ve been here, floating under a gentle sun, I have drifted further and further from the shore I once walked. 

The longer I lie here, the less I remember why I fled land for sea. There was something about pain, I think.

Soft waves sluice away thoughts before they can take shape. 

This was a safe place to wait.

But there’s no longer a shoreline on my horizon. 

Panic hears the skip of my heartbeat as a starter gun, and she charges toward me, eyeballs rolling in a rearing skull. Her hooves syncopate with heartbeats.

The water starts to churn.

And I open my eyes.

by Isla

Stellar remnants

In which I define expectations

My night sky is scattered with heart glow – a bunch of flowers, just because; a birthday card with both sides filled; a glow-in-the-dark keyring from a long ago trip; a scribbled post-it in mother-tongue handwriting. 

Over time, a light might fade alongside memory, a dull white dwarf then nothing. But another always arises in that same patch of sky, burning fierce with love. 

One day, I’m scared that those dark patches will stay dark, as every note and card and piece of kitsch crumbles to dust, and she’s not there anymore to set the sky alight anew.

I will not live beneath a dark sky: I will seek someone who sows stars and together we will strew galaxies.

by Isla

Choppy water

In which I take a deep breath

There’s a rhythm that jerks my chain. That winds me up to creaking point. That cuts me to the tender quick.

Question – 

Answer – 

Silence.

Pause.

Question – 

Answer – 

Silence.

Pause.

Question – 

Answer – 

Silence.

Pause.

And repeat.

My stride is repeatedly drawn up short. The chords halt before resolution. My words hang in the air, wisping to nothing as they fail to penetrate ears. 

Question – 

Answer – 

Silence.

Pause.

I occasionally break the loop, with the faint hope the system will reboot. That the floundering whale of conversation will find its way back to the ocean of words.

Question – 

Silence.

Half answer.

Pause.

The whale drowns.

by Isla

Temper, temper

In which here be dragons

Ware the Mind, Gentle Traveller. 

Step not upon a neuron lest she feel the ripple in her web. 

She’s been sharpening her blades, testing them on unsuspecting thoughts, dousing the scene with flammables, and dropping matches with cheerful abandon.

Her tolerance gauge is whistling urgently, her wheel is jammed toward destruction, and she’s out of damns. 

No bumbling backtracking, plaintive pleas, or earnest excuses can be heard over her jaunty hum. 

Best you traverse this path another day.

by Isla

In time

In which we’ll meet again

Perhaps we’ll meet there

When the arches slump and weather

And strain to keep edge against edge.

The willows’ eyes will be dry by then,

Their hair will hang heavy in the water,

And gazes will fixate on stagnant twins.

Perhaps we’ll meet there

When these slabs no longer grind away

Under the patter of endless feet.

The stone lacework will have spindled 

Dark marks will marr the porcelain,

And safety bars will swing wild over water.

Perhaps we’ll meet there,

In air as thick as water, in the heat of a dying planet,

We’ll take flight against a purple sky.


by Isla

On the horse

In which I do something useful

It’s been a while since we got to do this, you and me. 

We’re clanking into gear, picking up speed, finding those tracks we’d neglected and re-railing. 

There’s a beautiful flow when we get going. Clacking puzzle tiles that constantly shuffle and reshuffle as more information gets added, or new ideas nudge their way out of the bag and click onto the board.

There’s a game of hot potato afoot, email ping pong, a chance to make a tiny piece of the world as I wish it were. And this absolute focus and the desire to shrivel apathy into a puff of long-forgotten ash. 

I’ve missed this.

by Isla

Tube Love

In which all is fair

The hearts in the air are visible.

Her hands are locked at the small of his back,

His arm snugged around her waist.

Unfortunately for the girl behind them, every besotted peck

Rams his shoulder into her grittedly neutral face. His lady’s

Scent courses up nostrils with the delicacy of turpentine,

Dissolving each follicle in its path.

At least I’m not that girl behind them, whose neutral façade is belayed by eyes that burn with a

Yearning to take her bag strap, wrap around cooing necks, pull.

by Isla

The moment

In which we visit the office (III)

Written on a particularly cheery day at a desk…

There comes a Moment,

Hurtling out of the morass of meaningless days.

Ululating its discontent, the Moment snaps at heels,

Ripping at sinews and seams until the morass

Stills. There, entwined in the purr of the Moment, it

Dawns on you that the sludge of your life is slithering away,

Another day. Another

Year. Gone.

by Isla

Hydra

In which we visit the office (II)

Written for a particularly exasperating shared drive.

Fortunately, my sense of self-preservation

Rode to the rescue before I slaughtered the

Imbeciles who birthed this hydra.

Data spawns from myriad folders, incomplete,

Atrophied, unnamed. I know not, as

Yet, if my self-preservation will remain horsed.

by Isla

Spindle-fingers

In which we visit the office

The spirit lives in the confidential waste bin.

Huddled in paper blankets of names and addresses, he

Unabashedly trills as he dances over keyboards and

Runs spindle-fingers over files.

“Save your work!” comes the cry, a

Desperate click comes

A second too late.

You watch his backside drift away, snigg-wiggling.

by Isla

To the rescue

In which we meet a memory

Wellies call to mind

Eight year old me, ankle-

Deep in sloppy peat and sinking.

No Prince Charming, he, but adept at

Extracting be-boggéd maidens nevertheless.

Scooped up beneath my arms, I

Dropped into adoration as he dropped me onto solid ground,

And watched him go back for the lone welly, its

Yellow rim indignant against the mud.

by Isla

Ankles

In which we Rome around (IV)

Rome 17

On a modern-day teenage gladiator at the Colosseum, I salute her.

Cocooned in a padded jacket and still freezing, I traverse the old

Oval. My wind-teared and sun-squinted eyes

Latch on (in horror) to bare ankles accompanied by a sullen scowl.

‘Oh darling, I told you that you’d need a coat!’ The not-

So-

Subtle maternal ring of ‘I told you so’

Exacerbates the scowl.

“Um,” comes the response,

Mumbled through chattering teeth.

by Isla

Broadbrush

In which I use time

I grind up hours and daub them on canvas.

Ten o’clock is a carmine that has a mind of its own, eleven o’clock an aquamarine that I never quite mix enough of, twelve o’clock is a delicate pink with an unsuspectingly tenacious stain on my palette. 

Daylight momentarily resists, then crumbles under pressure and feathers the bottom of a milky jar. Time pours into a stained yoghurt tub, pours out, pours in, pours out.

There is barely a moment spared for eating, cleaning, or rolling sore shoulders: every second needs to be channelled into pigment. 

When the last of daylight has been scraped from the jar, the colours begin to warp. 

The colours of the night like to deceive. Ten o’clock is a deep purple that looks black under the electric lights, I know eleven o’clock to be a light limey green but I can only see yellow, twelve o’clock refuses to blend smoothly, chunks of burnt orange floating in a tangerine base.

The canvas sits and waits for time to dry upon its surface. I scrub minutes from my fingers, seconds from beneath my nails, and an unruly moment from its attempted escape onto my shirt. 

I discharge time from its monotonous polytone task, and release it to transform into other things.

by Isla

Filigree

In which we Rome around (III)

On Castel Sant’Angelo and its contents.

Chest number four stands

As tall as tiptoed me, with

Sturdy stained panels warding off

Treasure-seeking fingers.

Elsewhere

Lies the worn steel

Dance of a sword hilt,

Accompanied by a polite sphere of cream filigree that

Nestles quietly against the pitch barrel of a pistol.

Generation after generation made this

Edifice their own, building into,

Layering

Over, growing with.