Ten Strokes

You are my queen he said to me
I love you more than words can say
There’s never been a love like ours
I want you with me everyday

I want you by my side said he
I love you more and more each day
I never met a girl like you
He said, you are my dream come true

He whispered this to me and things
Were good so very good
He really stole my heart away
I thought I understood
How much I loved him
Till further down the line
Imagine my surprise one day
He really took my breath away
He struck me that first time

He rent his garments wept and begged
On bended knee he screamed remorse
And I said yes of course
I do forgive you

Blinded I did not foresee
His fevered bellicosity
Kicks blows and bruises thick and fast
Now looking back I feel aghast

The seventh time he broke my arm
The tenth my collar bone
So now I live alone
I’m free from harm at last
no longer broken
Healing slow
With still a little way to go

No longer cherished by a thug who loved me
As his punching bag
Gave me the sense of flying
Through to air
the day he kicked me down the stair
Or waking on the floor concussed
From where he’d thrown me through the door
Rainbowed bruising raised and round
My evidence of battleground
My lie of ‘falling in the bath’
My friends and their derisive laugh

I’m free from harm
no longer broken
Healing slow
With just a little way to go.



Memory Lane

Lead me to my memory lane
Edged in pretty flowers
Chocolate box desires
Heady scents of love
to make you swoon
All drenched in beauty
lured to spires of gaudy blooms
Behind their lurid fumes
the fetid stink of biers

I stumble in the fumble of their undergrowth
Pain flowers sweet
A barbed white rose

White climber tumbled in your heart
quick thorns to pierce and strangle your desire

Seeking pearls of wisdom midst the thorny tangles
Bony spikes of hurt
The present loses savor
And tainted dirt of yesterdreams
clings dusty to my tongue
The florid sun dries up the longing for some fun
Down memory lane



recuperation


he creeps inside
while no one looks he pricks out
sutures in her broken heart
let them bleed
and drain that black blood all away
drain the bile till blood flows clean
hoary furballs shattered dreams
pustulating hopes gone bad
nameless torpor lays her down
confounds immobilising her mind
flits frantic to be free
of this vile place
this waiting room
of me