Vaseline Farmers

Hi!

I'm late. I've never really written poetry. I'm not good at it. I don't know what I'm doing. So this should be interesting right? (mostly terrible though).

I've spent 7 days wondering whether I should do this, getting insecure about being judged, being terrible and generally falling flat on my face while the whole of YWS watched. But so far this has been super cathartic for me and I just thought why not?

#1

A thousand utterances,
trapped in a parade of the past.
Where the water carries away
the laugh that touches your smile,
but doesn't find me anymore.

Left behind. Left beyond.
I don’t know this anymore.

A thousand shapes of you,
all have lost a resemblance.
Where the road cracked into life
and the feet that paused mid-march
will never come back.

You don’t know me anymore.

#2

Necessity in the shudder between breaths,
the hooded eyes of betrayal
and aches pressed into springs.
Inevitability occupied with words,
clashing with percussion and,
the artificial glow of night,
pulling forward dawn too tired,
to wake.
(Limbs awkward and languid,
weighed by time stolen,
and lost,
and forced into repetition)

#3

She says her name is courage.
And she treads soundly,
in the fact but mostly after.

In the third iteration she speaks,
of action,
and logic.
She smiles with teeth black inside.

Made for believing,
or deceiving.
never in the fact but always after.

Courage cannot live,
in a throat always closed,
and a chest that forgets breathing.

#4

You stand there cut off at the knee.
The tastes of wine built on your tongue
in decorative empty words.

The books delivered to your hand,
thick with the money built
on the opinions of others.

And you say (sneer hidden beneath the torment,
of geniality)
interests that aren’t yours,
are less.

#5

This place has no magic
but is steeped in wonder.
The one eyed cat tucked in straw
chases a scampering spell between hooves.
In pieces the bench has given up vigil
from the hill shrouded by mountains.
And inside the old lady lives in two rooms.
She is seven dogs and more cats.
She is the pint of milk at the end
and the wry grin in the middle.
This is her enchantment.
Where the bones crack
amongst rafters and feathers,
the girl with seeds in her pockets
is a student of witchcraft.
Mud slick, eggs hatch
and new life arrives beneath pallets,
some in the jaws of opportunity
say they had no time.
But this isn't trickery.
The girl merely wishes it wasn't so.

#6

Spoiler

This is a variation of a story me and my brother used to tell as kids

There are monsters in my room
and not where you think
and not that either.

You look in the wrong places,
see decided what is simply impossible.
You think too clever,
see more than what is right before you.

Not is the right word
but with the wrong beginning.
Wood is the right material
but with the wrong expectation.

This mess you see is not my making.
You accuse where you should be watching.

Bangholes,
and Slids,
and nighttime raids.

There are monsters in my room
and that’s just the truth.

I see you're playing catch-up! I like the fifth poem especially, and I'm glad you've decided to hop on the NaPo train!

#7

Swallows sit in a neat row
on communication lines.
And shrews find themselves
trapped in a father’s shoe.
In the toilet creatures live,
across the yard,
found by a torch beam
cut through black and
opened by a rust shaped key.
And where ripples catch
what has washed over morning mountains,
a man steps free of a shower
onto the loch’s edge
and lambs bleat for a rubber teat.
At night the children are woken
from bodies deflated by bagpipes,
antlers alert in high beams.
And above them the sky is green,
too bright for the stars
but the only thing they wish on
is the desire to go back to sleep.

#8

Time travel is possible
in the closes filled with steps
and the sandstone fleshmarkets.

Mary likes to tell ghost stories
underground where arsenic lines
the wallpaper and
The cobbler haunts next door.

The writers collect behind tenements,
their mansion has words on the walls
and glass case memories.

It is possible to see history in the wrong order
says the weary volunteer.

This way to the masked men with crooked beaks.
Past the woman with the metal in her face,
spinning songs and stories
on her wheel.
Find the man with the blue face.
His sword is fake,
as is most of his story.

On the mile you will find no royalty.
Just pamphlets stamped into cobbles
and the taste for what has been.

#9

The street exists in scrawled letters,
on a crumpled envelope
and then again on the lips of locals.

To enter,
listen to the beck.
Follow from where it trickles
determinedly through rubbish,
to where feet dangle,
toes a touch away from wet.

The people you will find
climbing through windows.
To houses where stairs
go into walls
and gardens
share drunken sermons
from pulpits
with blue bottle backdrops.

In snow there are races.
Divots in new years joy
from a boiler suit man
and frostbitten fingers.

Children talk between windows,
over cracked cobbles
and through bent railings.
Darkness is a curfew
made for breaking,
with thighs cut numb
by stone steps.

At number 12,
in a back room
of frayed carpets
and distant doorbells
guinea pigs rule,
as their owner’s hair grows whiter.

Vineyards grow in conservatories
behind the house built of
empty homes.
The floor sinks
in plush carpets
and when religion comes
so do the troubled.

Leaving comes slowly
and then all at once.
The people disappear
without leaving
and when grown she returns,
there is nothing left.

#10

I get scared there'll be a day
when I'm not enough
to keep you here.
When my love
can't cancel out mass hate
and other people
decide our future.

#11

Summer drawbridges
and paint chipped battlements.
The sycamore in pieces
of ivy stepping stones.
A girl bounds from a window
pretending to be a door.
And rescues earthworms
from rogue trowels.
Her eyes skip over
the rhubarb graveyard.
A jungle grown
from the bones of fallen birds.
In wellington boots and carpet tubes,
mice make their nests.
The gate sticks
and the wood shed leans.
Beyond the red wall
a motorway rages of coming home
but the embankment is
thorns pricked with blackberries.
Ants make their pilgrimage,
pathways between the girl’s toes,
and find elderflower strained in muslin.
Next door Mrs Neevason shouts
and Quaver the bunny
is loose again.

#12

The men,
is the simple answer.
Simple enough for a five year old,
who sees what cannot be seen.
The castle chapel is just her and her father.
Is just cold stone,
and what her father sees that cannot be seen.
One is more plausible.
To an adult.
He asks again,
Who are you talking to?
The men.

#13

The scree cuts her palm
And angles her boots to the breaking point.
Above the clouds
Is enough to stop.
And onwards are boulders,
And the sky,
And the satellites to guide a stranger.
The twitch of noses wish to carry on.
The dig of claws
But pads too sore.
Sgùrr Alasdair does not trifle
With wee things.
The reds look on.
I’ve done two in the time of one.
And onwards is scree,
And Skye,
And the mother waiting with a sketch.