Julie Whitby
The Colours That You Bring
Honey and gold you stand there in your tie: mauve
and I'm stunned once more
after all that bitterness and pain
finding there's still a live store
of sunny feelings, of love?
Like caressing a favourite cat,
or incandescent blossom shedding light
far and wide, the mere sight
of you leaves me (almost) replete.
When the months and years have flown
and we're apart. Alone.
Will the memory of him linger on?
Honey and gold you stand there in your tie: mauve.
I buy bra and pants to celebrate.
"The Big Issue"
[previously published in Ambit]
"Don't hurry by, sweetheart,
we're all in the same boat."
But that's just what I did;
and his words have harassed me
like a crossly dripping tap,
the beating of an ant-ridden drum,
intimating, presaging
worse things to come.
"We're all in the same boat.
Don't hurry by, sweetheart."
Julie Whitby © 2009
Mute Darkness
i.m. Derek Stanford (1918-2008)
Mute darkness, if you are not.
Nor can one quiver to be teased
out of pitiful, dead sparrow.
do not be deceived,
horror breathes, does not merely lie
in the imagination of pompous political prophets,
or hysterical cracked poets.
There is no desire now
for youth’s raucous laughter, what meaning
could it have? and were i to climax-after-
a bleak body-function is what that would be,
appealing as vomiting, or menstruation.
Fearful I can go nowhere alone
(and nowhere’s exactly where I’d go)
without your need for me lending a fine protection,
forbidding limping ghouls to approach
aware their coarse jeers must turn my stomach.
Why am I touching barks of sombre pine trees?
Surely I didn’t believe
such harshness could ever appease
this gaping, hollow yearning?
Your tenderness has gone from me, dropped
like a stone
into the shadowy waters...
Mute darkness, when you are not.
Julie Whitby © 2009