-FICTION IN A FLASH-
Helen Laycock
A few more pieces of Poetry...
If you have already enjoyed the page A Pause for Poetry, More of my poems can be read on Conjuring Marble into Cloud as well as on the blog on this website.
Below you can see a few pieces of poetry which have been published.
If I had a collection, I would call it 'Conjuring Marble into Cloud'.
Published for National Poetry Day's 'Messages' theme, 2016 and Popshot, April 2017
Daddy's Home
In a dark corner squat
she is folded,
by the bed,
an upturned, colourless Z,
hair caught on ripped anaglypta,
arms like a metal tie around bread,
black soles like ballet shoes,
and toes so cold they might snap
and clatter like dropped pebbles.
Nibbled nails like fairy plates
in bloody beds with ragged frames
on stubby fingers, sucked thumbs
and clutching fists,
twisting comfort out of fabric.
Shiny eyes, bright with fright,
boring blackness,
strings of hair, straw dolls,
tucked behind little ears –
like sheets, mattress-tight –
to listen.
Breath is silent, sparing, saved;
like disturbed silk,
shoulders rise,
shoulders fall.
A bullet-click.
A creak as discordant as a wail,
the sound of a python-squeeze,
insidious.
Too drawn.
He is coming.
He is coming.
A shape more solid than the dark
walls her in.
She feels the burning trickle;
her sodden shroud hugs, clings to her contours,
and the puddle softly creeps
around her cradle,
gently arcing her heels like a crawling tide,
tickling her crunched toes with its frill
and she fills her mind with wet feet and cotton cloth.
Published in Silver Lining by Poets Against Violence (Baer Books Press)
For better, for worse
Mummy’s sleeping on her side
in the corner of the kitchen,
all curled up like a cat.
She hasn’t done her make-up very well…
she’s got dabs of purple all round her eye,
like violet petals squeezed dry
and there’s red sponge-painting on her cheek.
I’m not allowed to sponge-paint.
Her lips look juicy;
I think she’s blowing me a kiss.
I’ve been brushing Mummy’s hair
to make it nice.
It feels like golden clouds in my hand.
I collect balls and balls of it
and lay it on the floor ready for the birds.
I do dot-to-dot on her leg – just pretend –
trailing my finger between the little red circles,
and I cover Mummy’s legs with her nightie
so she doesn’t get cold,
the way she covers me up and tucks me in.
I wash the dirt off her icy feet
with the dish-cloth
and jiggle on her slippers,
toes first, then, clunk, over the heel.
I think she is very tired.
She’s sleeping and sleeping and sleeping
and I am hungry, hungry, hungry.
Black streaks like little rivers
have run down Mummy’s face.
I think she’s been crying about
the terrible mess
and because she broke her favourite vase.
Published in Silver Lining by Poets Against Violence (Baer Books Press)
Unfit for purpose: the frustration of a soul
A trapped angel flares her white light,
magnesium-bright
- an illusion of a hole in the warm black enclosure;
blinding, if it could be seen.
Concealed in the heart or the head,
she hides in a pinprick dazzle,
flashes into a star
or throws her brightness from a towering pillar,
perpetual, intense.
It is a cold, clean light:
white champagne or arctic ice.
She is a caged spirit,
vibrant,
pulsating,
mourning and elbowing
the withering demise
of her rotting confines,
helplessly trapped in a vessel
which daily decays around her
as she blazes, blazes
in the dark,
a perfect clarity
watching organs blacken
and muscles slacken,
bones brittle like sapped twigs,
huddled in a bag
of dry elephant folds.
She sings a lament
as colour leaches into white paste.
As the ticking stops,
she shrugs off the useless debris
which raced ahead like the hare
and paid no heed.
She is boundless,
an unveiled spirit free to soar
and flee,
untethered by the fickle cradle.
Published in Songs of Angels (Thynks)
Attendance
​
No phoenix, her pile of twisted sticks reassembles on invisible cords.
The puppeteer, sheer, concentrated Will, pulls.
She rises and rattles into shape, teeters and lurches forward
on to two willow sticks, two of bone, knotted in purple.
Clicking sticks, sticking slippers, slipping steps
accompany a cacophony of coughing as she weaves her way
to a bag of crusts, brown and wholesome, carefully kept
for the avaricious magpie and the delicate sparrows, visitors each day.
Reliable as the rising sun, each to the other comes,
quelling the emptiness, padding out the hollow need
with satisfaction. She hooks the plastic over bending thumbs,
dips her head and adorns her folded neck with the pendulous feed.
Her face is small; her lips like string, her marbled eyes sit in sallow skin.
She shuffles along the well-trodden path, gravel embedding her soles,
her mountainous knuckles stretching white and thin
as she grips her lifeless supports, cooing softly, nearing her goal.
Lustrous and agile, petrol blue thuds at her felted feet,
jerking its head as jet stones fix on the expected gift,
and dainty brown dances to her heartbeat,
waiting as her curling hands unfurl and grasp the crusts. So stiff
are her joints, but with a surge of pleasure she raises her arms, and stretches her neck,
praising life, releasing the confetti in a showery tribute.
Then, with cracking knees, she embarks on the slow homeward trek
bathed in the balmy calm of the daily commute.
Published on Writers' Talkback as winning poem in monthly competition
The Dwelling
In that secret place, a sea lantern swings,
splashing shards of jade and teal
into the folded silk of the rock.
The bowed hag’s watery grief
seeps its magic into the splinters
as she waits with clamped wings.
She is frozen into a waterfall of stone,
onyx daggers pinning her into the strata
like a fingerprint.
Hooded and veiled, charmed hands
draped, she sucks the light as she dreams
of conjuring marble into cloud.
Published in Full Moon and Foxglove (Three Drops Press)
Nostalgia
The glints in our eyes were so diamond-sharp,
they shredded and tore her armour apart.
We cackled like witches and sneered like the rich,
hurled stones, spat saliva and called her a bitch.
We crowded the pavement, blew gum in her hair,
lined with her, dined with her, pulled out her chair.
We cast her adrift with no anchor to lift her;
like bloodhounds, we sniffed her – our alien sister.
Our conspiracy fuelled with foul, fetid fantasy,
we caught leprosy, lunacy in our supremacy.
Our spite-infused parodies elicited cheer
and our hearts were engorged by her cold, swelling fear.
When she cowered in corners, we formed a tight scrum
round the misshapen ball with nowhere to run.
Locked in a stall, her effluent shrine,
we invaded the gaps, an insidious vine.
Her voice was a ghost’s, white-whisper-thin,
trapped in her body, a mute mannequin,
and her Munchen face dripped like cold, setting wax
through the catalogue of our relentless attacks.
Though defenceless and frail, like a china doll,
we cracked her and dug ’til we’d scooped out her soul,
and she let her cobweb spirit be torn
by the grappling fingers of malice and scorn.
Now she sleeps in the ground crushed by dark, heavy clay,
content to be spared the bright, golden day
while we trudge through the seasons, silent, apart,
each with a shard of glass in our heart.
Published in Issue 14 of Jotters United - 'Hooligans'
On Your Marks...
The beginning
No plans, clenched hands, embalmed by sleep. Trickling sands.
Swathed in cotton, mattress-bound, intermittent hollow sounds.
Dependent, reliant, unconcerned, unreciprocal, nothing earned.
Reel forward
Mental pathways weave and wander, decisions to make, questions to ponder.
Letters to words to Shakespeare and Kant, numbers to ages to wages to scant.
Meeting and matching and splitting and parting; joyous, despondent, uplifted and smarting.
Gadgets, technology, sharpening skills, all tumbling into life’s barrel of thrills.
Cosmetic enhancement, fitness and six-packs, designers, one-liners and financia cutbacks,
Depression, debt, alcohol, eating disorders, OCD, gambling, extravagance, hoarders,
Marring the men and scarring the women regardless of age or social beginning,
On all, the same badge of honour displayed, the output of life: ecstatic, dismayed.
Contorted faces on bodies elastic, the result of misguided usage of plastic,
Elderly brains, still supple and clear, teens wading through with still no idea.
Confusing distinctions, compartments obscure, the ‘Who’s Who?’ of life an ambiguous blur.
The end
No plans, clenched hands, embalmed by sleep. Trickling sands.
Swathed in cotton, mattress-bound, intermittent hollow sounds.
Dependent, reliant, unconcerned, unreciprocal, nothing earned.
Published in Issue 19 of Jotters United - 'Old Age'
Grenfell, where Souls Billow
