Week 26 – photograph by Kevin Eagles
Just six poems submitted for the above photograph. Please read and vote for your favourite by Saturday 21st June at 10am please. Personally I think they are all fantastic. Thank you if you are amongst the poets submitting.
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Poem 1
Heartsease
I’ve heard of wearing
hearts on your sleeve
the heart of the matter
a heart-to-heart talk
but lying snug
beneath a satin heart
is something else.
I’ve heard of Heartsease
small broken hearts
spreading purple and yellow
among the stones
but who thought up
their nickname
Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me?
And of course I know
how two hearts can beat
in the jazzed-up rhythms
of love-making –
beneath an open window
heart-shaped flowers
reflect on their other name
Come-and-cuddle-me.
Moira Andrew
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Poem 2
Paper Smile
A paper smile,
but the heart crumples,
dark, the colour of your veins,
as you lay.
Days darken ever darker, until
There’s a blood red
centre of sadness.
A world stained to the core.
The paper, skin thin,
distorted and changed.
The eyes wide away tears
as the fingers of grief
point and spear,
jab and jibe.
A normal day tries to show its face
but the ribbons of family,
lie fallen,
torn and useless
in the warmth of the sunshine,
masking the
centre of sadness.
Angie Butler
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Poem 3
Dear Granny,
I made you a gift out of pink tissue paper – today.
The nursery nurse said, ‘Very good.’
I know you like pink,
because you told me
when you were knitting your long pink cardigan.
The nursery nurse helped me to cut out the hearts
and stick them on the pink tissue paper.
Yellow like an egg yolk,
green like a leaf,
red for love.
I told the nursery nurse I couldn’t see the red love,
she said that didn’t matter.
We stuck on the red heart.
I drew your smiley face
all by myself,
I hope you like it,
because I love you.
The nursery nurse said, that was a good thing to say.
From,
Gloria X X X X X
Maureen Weldon
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Poem 4
The size of love
They said to her, ‘draw what makes us wise.’
She drew what she saw in a thin smile
and spidery, staring eyes.
They said to her, ‘and make it art’;
And all she could draw, crumpled,
many-coloured, swelling from a small centre
to a great big surrounding rainbow
meaning everything
was a heart.
Michael Docker
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Poem 5
The Fairy of the Kitchen Sink
An ordinary fairy just snooping around,
Squashed by fortune, on the stacked plates
Someone laden the table ware and I got caught!
My wings compressed against a bone china dish
My delicate dress still with a smidgeon of charm
And my wand quietly, washes the plates.
Johanna Boal
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Poem 6
Design
Slouched abandoned hearts
ready for flight settle on
wrinkled blush pink paper
extending opened wings.
Undone, dissected by surgeons’
hands, reveal emotion’s arteries
the black stripes of confusion
fill fluent vessels overlaid
by a cadmium heart throbbing
with unmet desire, an emerald
cat’s eye births a wing
of blue sapphire at its heart
find the core of ruby
the first to fly.
Watched over by quizzing
eyes these painted butterflies
perch on a pink paper runway
ready for take-off
from paper grass, paper paths.
Carolyn O’Connell
