NaPoWriMo 2025 (part II)

Days 4-7 of NaPoWriMo

My home is not a gallery

Hushed tones, and the whisper of shoes on marble,

Soft light glinting off gilded frames.

Safe, sterile, art at an arm's length.

But my home is not a gallery

I make it a celebration.

Dancing with my husband under a print of Van Gogh

And the strains of Vivaldi in the air.

An original: cat under a rainbow, in crayon, from my niece

Portraits, and photographs, and lino-prints

In dusty frames, and the curled, fading corners

Of posters, taped to the wardrobe doors.

The canvas from my year 10 art exam,

Its clumsy, bold colours are pride of place in

The living room, and each wall in my home

Begs for more.

A calm and frenzied life

Within the every day narration of

Your life, it is important to construct

From any source, a monument of love

To which no tender heart could object.

These brief departures from the tidy humdrum

Routines of your day, will elevate

The whimsy and the wonder that can come

From setting on the path of your own fate.

Deep within your bones you feel the yearning,

A hint of frenzy under every steady breath,

Vanilla scented moments in the mornings,

An honour on your future self bequeath.

So with each step, and with each strike begin

To shape a world that's ready to reclaim.

Spearmint

In river banks and marshlands

Wet soil underfoot, and moss green air.

That primitive feeling of leaves between your fingers

And you tug, not too hard

Don't pull out the roots.

The ice-clean scent stains your nostrils

And nearby a blackbird sings.

Then from the bracken ahead

A rabbit shoots forth, ears flat

He boings across a fallen log.

You set a single, toothed leaf upon your tongue

The taste of early mornings, and soothing tea.

Pink Moon

The magnolia blossoms first

Large white petals reaching up

Towards baby blue skies

Forget-me-nots and grape hyacinth

Light blue and dark

Amidst the tender green grass

The raspberries are coming

And will swell with sweet red fruit

Under an April Pink Moon

 

NaPoWriMo 2025 (part I)

Yes, I know it's already the 14th, but I didn't think about posting my poems here until now. Oops. I'll do a few posts to spread them out though.

Mezzotint

The soft screech of metal on metal

Echoes of the noises in my mind

I smooth away the imperfections

Burnishing the jagged lines

Ink seeps in the crevices

The stark relief of black on bronze

The fibres of the parchment sheet

Capture every varied tone

The rhythm and the repetition

Brush and ink and rags and tint

I smooth away my imperfections

And etch my heart in every print

Social Transactions

O, self creators

Mistresses of makery

Masters of testosterone

And artists of non-binary

Strip away your carapace

Reveal your inner glory

Sculpting flesh and bone

To your gender ideology

Our future is in stasis

For the progress of society

Is slow as metamorphosis

But just as worth the journey

So raise your hands and hearts

Find and forge a family

Live the truth within yourself

Transition to your beauty

Why am I an artist?

I am not an artist because I create art

Just as I am not a sleeper because I sleep

And I am not a worker because I work

I ask the sparrow if he is a singer

    because he sings

And he says, "No

    I sing because I am a bird"

I ask the flounder if she is a swimmer

    because she swims

And she says, "No,   

    I swim because I am a fish"

I ask the gazelle if she is a runner

    because she runs

and she says, "No,

    I run because I am a gazelle"

So I am not an artist

    because I create art

I create art because

I am

    Alive

I caught a glimpse of tragedy

Yesterday, my father-in-law was driving us (me, my husband, and my mother-in-law) home from a holiday in France. We were somewhere on the M11 or the A1M, I don't really remember, and it doesn't even really matter.

There was a dead deer on the central reservation.

I've seen roadkill before, plenty of times, too many times to count. Hedgehogs, squirrels, the occasional fox, pigeons that couldn't fly out of the way in time. I mourn each one. The casual cruelty of traffic.

But this deer.

I don't know, there was something about her. I only saw her for a split second, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but that moment felt life changing. Earth shattering.

There's so much I want to do for this world around me, and I have no idea where to even start. Even if I did, would I even be able to? Being disabled is so frustrating when my head and my heart are urging me to try and do spectacular things.

I remember reading about Wildlife bridges in the Netherlands, and instantly wondering why they weren't a thing in more places. A quick search tells me that the UK government briefly talked about trying to build some back in 2015, and it never really went anywhere. I want to rant and rave and shake the politicians by their shoulders and demand to know why this plan was abandoned. You hear chatter about the decline of native wildlife, isn't it such a shame about the red squirrels, and hedgehogs and badgers need protecting, and it feels like it's all just talk.

They're making paper straws, and charging for single use plastic bags, and it's all just small acts of greenwashing that hardly scrapes the surface of the changes that really need to be made. Rinse out your glass jars, and remember to take your reusable shopping bags, and ignore the dozens of private jets that flew into the G7 summit, and the seven nuclear reactors it takes to power google's AI assistant.

I can stop eating meat, and compost vegetable scraps, and only buy second-hand clothes, and it's a drop in the ocean, and I hate that I don't have the power to do more.

That shouldn't stop me from trying though.

Capitalism relies on every individual realising they can't make change by themselves, and not realising that together we are no longer individuals but a crowd; each drop in the ocean is part of the tidal wave.

"You'll see how much a snowflake matters when we become an avalanche" - Grace Petrie

This quote echoes in my head every time I start to doubt that what I'm doing can actually help. I am one person, and I am limited, and some days I can't even take care of myself, but I don't ever want to stop trying. I want the world to be a better place for me, and for you, and for the deer that shouldn't have to die, cold and alone on a stretch of tarmac cutting its way through her home.

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works

I remember reading that Terry Pratchett quote about 15 years ago, and it resounded with me thoroughly.

Science does not have to negate belief.

Plants use sunlight to aid in photosynthesis and grow leaves. Bacteria decompose those leaves and turn them into compost. No matter how intricately I learn the biological and chemical processes involved, it will never not seem magical that light can become soil.

For so much of my childhood, science and religion stood firmly on opposite sides of the argument. Belief is unscientific. Faith is inherently against the scientific process. And yet, as I have grown and learned more about science and about faith, the more I disagree with that stance.

I have always been a big fan of science. I studied chemistry at university. But all along, under the surface, a kind of shame - my belief in spirituality. Shame because I had been taught that is is shameful to believe in things when you can simply know things.

I'm not exactly religious, I don't follow Christianity or any other major theistic religion, but there is that yearning in my core, in my soul, that knowing is not enough. Why not believe?

Of course, in the current climate of anti-vax and flat earth and so many patently unscientific ideas, I understand the importance of knowing and learning, but I also understand the importance of faith. The problem comes when you try to put one against the other. It's not us versus them, it's not science versus religion, it's all of us against the vast mysteries of existence.

I collect hagstones and set them near windows to keep evil spirits at bay. Do I believe in evil spirits and the magic of stones with holes in them? Not really. Do I believe in my own mindfulness, that seeing that hagstone will help reassure me I am safe and secure in my home? Yes.

I carry crystals in my pockets and read tarot cards. I don't actually believe that rocks and gems can influence our days, or the future can be read in a pretty deck of cards, but I do believe in mind over matter, that setting my intention and focusing my thoughts and efforts can yield results. 

I wish on dandelion seeds and stray eyelashes. I stir my tea counter clockwise, and count to six, and salute magpies. Just as I go to my doctor when I'm sick, and I take prescription medication, and I listen to the scientists and experts when they tell us that space is expanding, and there was water on Mars, and solar power is the way forward.

Egg whites become meringues, and your stomach acid can dissolve bone fragments, and maybe magic is just science we haven't quite figured out yet.

Words

 I sit to write, and at first the words come easily to me. But eventually, every time, as it always must be, they stutter to a standstill. Five minutes, or five hours, who can tell. No one can write forever.

The words used to flow, snaking rivers through my mind. Before. I wrote every day, and every day it was never quite enough. I held thoughts on the tip of my memory, balanced like spinning tops, my fingers weaving them into reality.

These days, the words skitter across my brain, clumsy lumps of ice. I reach for them, and they melt at my touch. How can you write when the words have been washed away, by fog, by fatigue, by the rebellion of your own body against itself.

Caring

 Don't you care?

Where is your public outrage, your performative grief?

You must post about it, protest about it, or else you do not care.

But I care

I care

I care so much I might bleed with it

And that is why I do not post 

My love is the ocean

This feeling is too big.

I curl up under the blankets, a cup of tea in my hand, the thrum of rain on the window, and I try to calm the storm that flutters in my chest.

I can't begin to name this thing, this mass that unfurls its tendrils, creeping from my lungs to coil around my heart and stomach and up into my brain. Is it love? Is it obsession? Is it infatuation? All I know is the tv static mimics the tinnitus in my ears, and I so desperately want to drown out all the noise and focus, but the thing won't let me.

There are many things that draw out this feeling, and enigmatic cannibals falling helplessly in love shouldn't be one of them. I cannot begin to control where this desperation comes from, what drives the tingling of my fingers and the tears spilling from my eyes.

Special interest. Hyperfixation. My jumbled autistic brain reaching out for connections and finding that people carved into roses, blood on snow, and shy glances between psychopaths is just the thing to send my heart racing.

Is this a reflection of me? Do I long for love, and fear it, in the way a killer longs for blood on his hands and cold air in his lungs? Do I see my own broken, confused heart and allow it to fill with the love that they share? 

Or is it just the soaring strings and bright colours, the tender hands, and poetic speeches that grip me and hold me under. They could speak of anything, and I would listen, and take it as gospel, these beautiful, damaged men and their heart-breaking journey. 

Maybe all I'm really searching for is that feeling, that's too big. I don't want to contain it. I want my love to burst forth, spilling from the edges of my soul, and let all the people know that this is for them. This is for you. It has always been for you.

I step tentatively into this ocean of my love, trailing my fingers over waves of emotion. There are sandcastles on the shore of my mind, each one dedicated to a friend, a lover, and if the storm of my love grows, I will destroy you all. So I caress you, gently, an incoming tide, and you feel the cool touch, a promise of what could be. This feeling is too big for me to let out. So I settle for their love, their storm, that grows and rages, and breaks them upon the shore, and I dream of the day I will be brave enough for my own storm.