Ruthless

Ruthless.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe
When the house darkens
she takes the small ebonised chair
up the back stairs, to the closet
to hang it on its bent nail.
There is no more time to think of him-
his serious eyes are too far away
somewhere between sky and sea
he lingers like the green ray
"If only I thought hard and far enough!"
But you cannot dream to close a gap
a Druid's kiss is always ice,
it can be felt for many days
and years- at least, she always feels that way.

He Writes to his Lost Mistress

I make words like I am touching you
as though I have alchemy in my biro.
In the Hadron collider
Some small flash, an infinitesimal event
May mean I could prove your existence
By your terminal absence-
In a chocolate cupcake shaped universe
You are pasted on the front of my mind
Refracting on walls and floors
You are other people's eyes when they are brown
Not brown, but topaz, I must be precise-
I am a child in this, and search for you
In the light on the aerodrome
Where the still gliders hang out in the blue
When I hold my breath, you may reassemble
My higher faculties say it is untenable
But my limbic brain says goddamn tick-tock-tick
Makes chemicals for making love, a waste-
I am leaning on an ice cold whitening rail
In December sun waiting for your hologram
That old impermanence that ruins stuff,
I cup my hand, conjure your breast,
Unfortunate but true.

Amy Bunhouse

new sea paintings

Loads of new stuff at:

http://www.veronicaspaintbox.com





Sea change

They behave differently in water;
as though bemused, they raise one hand
to squeeze out hair, shade eyes, a mudra
of acquiescence.
The liquid space they occupy
demands obedience, compliance to its soak
turn gel spiked crops to sullen slimy slicks.
The young men have low slung trunks
brought lower by the slop of sea
incline their heads bowing to the element
they are serious, as if demoted, in despair.
The girls cope better, look upward at the sky and smile.
White seals, they sprawl and crawl and bounce
Their earrings glint and go green, until at last
they stand and chat half-submerged
fins and tails sprouting somewhere else
their upper halves, fit and shining and unaware.


http://www.veronicaspaintbox.com

2008 AD- a christmas poem

2008 AD

this month strips the twigs to black bifurcating spears
each bears a gravitational drop of water at its tip
Christmas looms and shoppers plunder cut price
sales, the shops closing down now the bankers have won
and MP3s and x-boxes teeter on the topmost shelves
as if the moon were not important any more
the lack of moon, under those dark wet clouds
the mindless metallic lodestone of the stars
their glorious loveless spaciousness of space
that dim enchanted internet we ape.

The fact that you seem very important, but you are not.

Dessicated ghost , can you remember
how pliant the days where when you stole across my vision
your stain on retina, I was undone, and still I talk to you
even though you are no longer a viable proposition.
Do you remember me? Or do the winds
blow across the marsh to meet only a wisp of seagrass
drying remotely on the shore?
I want to ask you about unkindness:
specifically the need for it, and whether
love cancels it out ?
I might bring a priest flapping across the dunes
or a bureaucrat's sealed files upon my head
dropped from a supersonic aircraft.


An armillary sphere blocks my vision
and the tick-tock clack of mechanised
institutionalised misuse.
Love, can you change the elected government?
The betrayal and the use of power against the woman
clad in rags with the child against her slackening breast?
Love! It couldn't even bring me to you.