Basile Jean Barès

Seen from inside, the open store front’s

a kind of trapezium, in it there are passing

legs and torsos but seldom faces, unless

someone bends, genuflects to check out

what’s boxed in the shadows beyond the

young man’s back, him in vest, sleeves;

outside it’s hot, sweaty; inside hot, dusty;

there’s a smell of fresh wood and the tang

of metal wire rubbed by his fingers – look,

there’s a callous on one tip – and I wonder

what I’d feel if I placed my hand on your

shoulder, how the muscles would move, if

your hair would scent bitter because you’re

male; and if I’d somehow hear what you do,

a little waltz running around in your mind.

.

Let’s trip a little mazurka like the flip of a silver

coin, like the first shout from the street at early

light, scratch the first bar of an allemande on

the back of an envelope, hum the melody of a

possible valse, think “And this belongs to me.”

.

,

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©Marie Marshall

Angelique Jamail has kindly featured on of my poems in her blog today.

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There’s too much dawn

.

.

There’s too much dawn, far too many bees,

for me to write about love, the damn terrain

where I lost one boot, my mind, and several

pounds; spring, you see, means hacking at

the weeds again, more time for the new light

to show the awfulness that winter hid away;

we come too soon to Easter, pain, but you,

you, you – the word hammers in my head,

what more could spring reveal about you

than the stuff I’ve tried, failed, to conceal –

and funnily enough that says more about me

than you; so here I am, my arse cold, numb

from sitting on a rock, me refusing to get up,

and love, that old bugger, like your present

image before my mind’s eye, like self-rage

and laughter, joy at dawn and those bees too,

yeah, love, staying, not going anywhere, eh?

.

.

__________

©Marie Marshall

bee

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solitary bee

motoring towards his own

equilibrium

.

let’s give him purpose

– he stops for nectar or rest –

sun waking colour!

.

one early walker

hears something like a kazoo

and can’t help smiling

.

.

.

__________

©Marie Marshall

When Siouxsie played Brighton

“… what thou gorgeous wearest, which scarcely keeps thee warm.”

Wm. Shakespeare, King Lear, 2.iv.

.

‘Jennifer’ by Andrew Ratcliffe

When Siouxsie played Brighton we
cottaged by the sea, you, me, a bunch
in a transit the colour of dubious day
an hour before light; with one broken

drumstick you played a kind of Roma
music on the guard of an old lecky fire
and I kissed every line of your scowl
and you let me, you let me; we slept

side by side, our shoulders cold out
of our sleeping bags, so we could
wake with our fingers knitted, right
hand to left; you stayed, as guard to

a derry, keeping it for homeless folk;
it rained before I left, I wore nothing to
be dry, shivered in the train, de-Edened,
but believing that two moons, you, me,

could only collide again, and soon, by
the demands of gravity, by its laws;
never; that’s a hard word, but I guess
I’ve grown up, and grown up with it.

.

__________

©Marie Marshall

Answering Emily Dickinson’s ‘Wild Nights’

Answering poems by Emily Dickinson, often with a love song to her, really belongs to an earlier stage of my poetry. If you want to know why I have written one out of the blue, read this blog post, including the comments.

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©Marie Marshall

commital

.

.

Here is a silent kind of night court, its silence

that of the moment after words are uttered; we

sit under two or three globes of yellow, we are

hard on the chairs, the chairs rasp against the

floor if we move suddenly; we are all patient,

we wait our turn though the committal is never

said, only we know when our number has been

pronounced, we stand, bow to the process, and

go, then another – bow and go, bow and go, we

always bow and go; sometimes we sleep until

our number is pronounced, then we join onto

the train of bowing, going, we try to make our

inclination unique, a salaam, a nod, but no, no,

we only do that same sad, silent bow and go.

.

.

.

__________

©Marie Marshall

sail 2

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.

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the boat

stayed obeisant to

a wave

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.

.

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The Spring 2019 Showcase at the zen space is now published. Go. Read. Like.

©Marie Marshall

sail

.

.

.

.

.

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to set a sail

as the shore trees bend

the moon rises

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.

.

.

.

__________

©Marie Marshall

Two hundred and seven words. 23

eep in the Murder Wood is a bank of quietness, and out of it there’s a tree growing (in the only way it knows – straight out and straight up) that she calls the Love Tree, positioning Murder/Love Love/Murder; this tree she salutes on her run, or stops by, touches two fingertips to her mouth and then to the tree, or two hands on her bust and then to the tree, and sometimes braces her back against it, looks out, and thinks about you, whilst gazing ahead at where three unrelated branches make a rough triangle; within that triangle, other limbs born of trees make other shapes, and it’s her business to look further and further into them to see how far it is to the furthest visible point; she waits there to grow cold, or to catch the quartered, quartered, quartered sunlight, wondering who holds the world record in woman/woman kissing and who held the stopwatch, but in all this gathering of dross wool again she thinks about you, can’t help it because of the pressure of the tree on her back, her breath slows, she can hear every sound in the Murder Wood above the blood in her ears, it is all a way of happiness

__________

©Marie Marshall

cursive

When we practiced our cursive, the sea

was white and the wave-caps were blue,

the ocean effectively in negative; Ws

were shore-break ripples, while the run

of lower case Rs were Triton’s anger.

I refused common Es and Ss, became

alone a celebrant of rollers, breakers,

priestess of the breath of endless brine,

I knew only the hiss and heart, the salt.

Teacher told me in fact I wrote nothing;

page by page, I wrote till I drowned her.

.

__________

©Marie Marshall