- makeswordswork
Zest for life
Updated: Jun 11, 2021

Living...
is this what they call it...
staring up at lemon lamps
my drink dripping through
my newly greening ceiling.
Think of England they say.
This is England
your green and pleasant land?
I have fallen so far,
my mouth so eager,
such a woody place,
rocks for my head,
air for my arms.
I lie with the wild, the witch, the wanton.
So many cracks.
Like a rape in sleep paralysis.
Staring up at dreamy lemon lamps
into the yellow eyes of an intruder, England spoils its own,
lying spliced in mud
twigs in my hair, a fairy spun
from a springing sky, I am
in the lemon groves,
I will gather them in my arm
get under your skin...
we shall fill the room.
This is not the rain that we know
but the mizzle, those slow sure strokes that penetrate deep.
I didn't even know I was wet.
I am not made as he made the rest,
words upon his lips forcing them
into being, like reading a shopping list,
lemons, sugar cane,
mint, lavender
Shaped my womanly curves with hands
stroked lemon peel thighs,
made me from the mud I lay in
kissed me to life,
gave me a garden
I quickly turned to thistle and thorn.
He really hadn’t thought this through-
had yet to send rainbows
after the rain,
We make the best of a bad job-
skin a squirrel to replace the fig leaves.
Take sugar, water, acid
I will pound your skin
crush you, release you, stir you
make you succumb
to my sharp bright words.
From yellow sleep
arise my lover, find poems
in the furls of my leaves.
I will sow my words after the gleaning.
Writing by ANGELA DYE
Artwork 'Dreams' by PHIL BARKER