Zest for life

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