The Uninvited
 
We flew to a country of golden temples,
golden Buddhas six times as tall as a man.
But now, here’s what I think about most:
 
Garden lodge. Petal-strewn bed. Bowl of fruit
on a table. Banana skin partially stripped, flesh
well chomped, not by us. Too munched for a mouse.
 
I ransacked cupboards, peered under chairs.
Searched for a hole, a gap, a crack big enough.
Had I left a window open, a door unlatched?
 
Someone delivered a metal cage, banana-baited.
At first, not a squeak. Then I woke to a maniac
rattling of bars. The thing and I stared at each other.
 
Fingery claws, breathing fur. The naked flex
of its tail; those eyes, onyx-black. I could just about watch
as it shivered there in the cage. But when it was gone, 
 
it was still here. In a sealed wooden house.
Me and the creature: all one, according to Buddha.
What lives in shadow is always seeking a gap.
 
 from The Uninvited (Indigo Dreams)


The Horrible Haircuts of Childhood

I remember the horrible haircuts:
trapped in the chair, tied up in a nylon gown,
condemned to watching it happen, mute,
full-face in the mirror. Like viewing your own
execution, while the Serial Hair Killer witters
about holidays, shopping, school, the weather,
pretending there’s no ritual sacrifice going on
as she shreds you with eager scissors.
 
My hair was never long enough in the first place
and the short, blunt cut was always wrong,
the way a pair of curtains, hung,
but chopped in half, are wrong. My face,
stripped naked, too plainly showed I longed
to die quickly, all hiding places gone.
 
from The Uninvited (Indigo Dreams)
First published in Ware Poetry Competition Anthology 2017

 
Lost 
 
We have run through the city too fast.
We must wait for our souls to catch up.
We are searching; we fear they are lost.
 
We have grown unaccustomed to waiting.
We are restless as children in silence.
And how to be still without wanting?
 
All that we have is nothing. All that we know
is nothing. What must we do who rely on doing,
now we have only breathing, being and now?
 
We cannot be sure they will return at all,
our souls. Our hearts are hollowed-out bowls
we hold under a fevered sky for rain to fall.
 
We are lonely without ourselves and each other.
We call out all the names we know for our souls.
We call them again. We call them over and over.
 
from The Uninvited
first published in The Rialto