Coping poetry

K.S.Moore

K. S. Moore’s poetry has recently appeared in Arachne Press and Broken Sleep anthologies and in the journals: Skylight 47, The Honest Ulsterman and The Dawntreader. Commended in last year’s Single Poem Contest at Cheltenham Poetry Festival, K. S. Moore also placed third in The Waterford Poetry Prize (2020).

Website: ksmoore.com YouTube Channel: K. S. Moore Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: @ksmoorepoet

.

The Colour of Cancer

I imagine it yellow, not of the sun, of
underworld mustard seed, curious grime,

the kind that marks your insides,
swells to break your circling body:

home to so much blood and cells,
cells that will take your life.

And in their cowardly stronghold
breathes a spirit wanting to be,

so I talk to the you that is courage, count
down moments, we’ll make more memories –

stand in the waterfall, ride the train,
glide on a frozen lake, read books,

find those words of love we only
ever held in our eyes.

The Pandemic Landscape

Like the moon
everything has craters
spaces where the pox dug in.

The more I age
the more the frame
beneath my skin

hinges

on ballet-white bones.
They hold me up
a model of myself

learning

a trinket dance.
Allow me this trill
this sweet echo.

Woodland Sunbursts after Rain

Rubbing gold from my eyes
a net of shadows
catches boughs.

There is truth in sap
the way it oils
a bare soul.

When a tree reaches out
far enough
it finds another.

Fused, they grow together
whorls of their insides
turning for years.

Press a palm
to bark   to feel
heartwood.

Nina Lewis

Nina Lewis is a former Worcestershire Poet Laureate, her poems are published in a variety of magazines, anthologies and online including Abridged, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Under the Radar. Her pamphlets Fragile Houses (2016) and Patience (2019) are published by V. Press. Twitter: @Neens07

Chasm

I think of all the beautiful things I’ve seen
that wouldn’t be what they are without holes.
My mind instantly travels to California,
to a Red Wood forest, to trees with man-made
tunnels large enough for cars to pass through.
The trees grow strong around the hole.
They stopped the cars, not for the tree’s sake
but for pollution in National Parks. I discover
trees you can still drive through located
off Highway 101. The Grand Canyon, would be
neither a canyon nor grand if it weren’t for erosion.
The volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands would have
nowhere for lava flow if it weren’t for craters. I remember
blood from my chest, erupting through rock black skin.
Sink-holes destroy whole buildings, streets. Objects
spaghettify in black holes, there are woodpecker marks
and Monte Sierpe in Peru. Think crumpets; the ooze
of collected butter, Swiss cheese, corals, sponges, cakes,
bubbly chocolate, perforated raffle tickets, honeycomb,
or fall-streak holes in clouds. Skin has pores all over it.
I think of the skin beneath the scar, no longer close enough
to meet. New skin covers the mistake, pink at first
like the night sky in the Canyon, over time, silver,
like the Āhinahina plants that grow in the craters
of Haleakalā. Like the house of sun, light will come again,
curtains will be opened, days will be greeted, continued,
trekked. The silver will turn white, fade –
almost cease to exist.

The Shape of Birds

The bird has the whole sky
to claim as its own,
dreams exist beyond wingspan.
It carries the prayers of the unsung
between its feathers,
letting them fall where it rests.
Morning song tells us of this.
Birds feed truth back
into the earth,
lift those born without
wings, until we too,
can feel the air.

Inner Pickle

Combine lockdown with water, a family, house-mate or lover –
add fear and lost diary dates, stir-sleep-stir,
learn restlessness is natural and insomnia comes to us all.
Keep others from the same household close,
share the burden of their fear, dissolve it.
Remove yourself from heat.
Slice jalapeño peppers thinly, absorb their bite
through your fingertips, focus on the blade,
anything to settle your mind, nothing
seems quite as violent now. Find things to occupy your time
in fifteen minute intervals, a day will pass I guarantee it.
Transfer your jalapeños to a large, wide mouthed jar;
pour liquid over, bathe the fever out.
Cover with a tight fitting lid and refrigerate. Shelve it
like you should your worry of what-ifs. Turn yourself numb.

Clair Chilvers

Clair’s biography is here.

Love

She comes to the Island to get well
stays at the house next door to Patrick,
up the steep steps above Mongonisi
and falls in love with him.

She also loves my husband    
who sat beside her
when she was near to death,
not letting her go.
But he told her to go,
to convalesce,
somewhere warm and far away.

Most of all she loves the Island
brings us there at Eastertime
hopes that love is catching.

(From Island Impspired Press 2022)

Marilyn
Timms

Marilyn’s biog is here

Foot in mouth disease

The Royal Marsden has spoken, loud and clear.
Standing on numbed legs, my husband holds me
close against his chest, his brain jangling.
Coherent sentences are a foreign country.
His chest boils under the pressure
to find the fear-dispelling words
that will make me understand that nothing
will diminish his love for me.
He smothers my hair with kisses, desperate
to give a comfort he cannot yet feel
for himself. The world is off its axis.
Lungs expanding, voice savagely under control,
he murmurs against my ear,
Remember, my darling, a radical mastectomy
can only bring us closer together.
The dear man wonders why I am helpless
with laughter, centred again.

Howard Timms

Howard’s biog is here

Maggie’s Cancer Support Centre

I don’t exactly celebrate World Cancer Day.
I just nod in recognition, head for Maggie’s,
the home from home that helped me sing again –
something I’d thought I’d never do.

I was a wreck when I first came
soon re-floated by warming, welcoming smiles,
this lovely building, blending peace and hope
with listening expertise of staff and volunteers.

More buoyancy comes from empathetic friends
who also brave the breaking waves of cancer
with life-affirming songs, art, writing,
cheery conversation, yoga, Nordic walking,
tea and coffee, cakes and biscuits,
and always loads of smiles.

Christine Griffin

After a career in teaching, Christine returned to her first love – writing, particularly poetry and short stories. Christine is widely published including in Acumen,
Snakeskin, The Dawntreader, Graffiti Magazine, Poetry Super Highway, and Writing Magazine. She has performed her work at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and the
Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Regeneration

Somewhere between the roast lamb and the pear crumble
My follicles slacken, lose their grip, let go.

A fine mist of hair floats down
sprinkling my shoulders.
A shroud of traitorous strands festoons the cloth.

No-one reaches out to touch me
or brushes at the hairs
and I am grateful.
Someone tops up my wine,
we chink glasses, eat the crumble.

Beneath my scalp, ruined shafts lie
in sterile hibernation.
I have a fearful mountain to climb
but sometime in the future
at this same table
between the pudding and the coffee
Lazarus like, they will stir,
push towards the light.

Another wine.
We toast the future.

Julie Wiltshire

Julie has recently gained her BA (Hons) Hum (Open) specializing in English Literature whilst caring for her husband who sadly passed away with Cancer. She has read her poetry at many events, including the Cheltenham Literary Festival. Her passion is writing poetry.

Life in the shadow of death

In loneliness, can I cope, left only with the frayed constituency of my thoughts?
Death clawed at our door, and with a trembling of fear, my husband summoned it in.
Only time with its tears tried to tell, what I couldn’t face, but my heart knew well.
I stared grief in the eye, and with its bleak stain of winter it stared back.

Death clawed at our door, and with a trembling of fear, my husband summoned it in.
Anger kept me connected to life as I spun on my axis of pain.
I stared grief in the eye, and with its bleak stain of winter it stared back.
My soul was splintered with sorrow, eyeing the hunger of his Cancer.

Anger kept me connected to life as I spun on my axis of pain.
My husband’s longanimity showed great strength, but alas he weakened.
My soul was splintered with sorrow, eyeing the hunger of his Cancer.
Life’s directions disappeared along the predetermined tracks of my fate.

My husband’s longanimity showed great strength, but alas he weakened.
In loneliness, can I cope, left only with the frayed constituency of my thoughts?
Life’s directions disappeared along the predetermined tracks of my fate.
Only time with its tears tried to tell, what I couldn’t face, but my heart knew well.


The creeping of your Cancer

I wander lonely with my thoughts through pillars of the night.
Words of love, I must strew, in early morning’s light.
And in vast halls of darkness, I kiss your pallid face.
As time together ebbs away, sobs fill my empty space.

Words of love, I must strew, in early morning’s light.
Sometimes the creeping cancer, blinds my very sight.
As time together ebbs away, sobs fill my empty space?
Whilst deathly figures mock my doubt, keeping up their pace.

Sometimes the creeping Cancer, blinds my very sight.
A frost of woes, hang heavy, and fills my heart with fright.
Whilst deathly figures mock my doubt, keeping up their pace,
I gently search new tumours, and with my fingers trace.

A frost of woes, hang heavy, and fills my heart with fright,
I wander lonely with my thoughts, through pillars of the night.
I gently search new tumours, and with my fingers trace.
And in vast halls of darkness, I kiss your pallid face.

The loneliness of Covid-19

A lonely emptiness yawns and glues itself to my troubled walls,
In the silence of the stretched-out vacancy of the day.
Again, the brass clock strikes one, and smashes itself against the fortifications of my mind,
And echoes trample with weighted feet upon the weathered lanes of my woes.

In the silence of the stretched-out vacancy of the day,
The brittle force of another amplified hour snaps within my empty room,   
And echoes trample with weighted feet upon the weathered lanes of my woes.
In the bleakness of my solitude, I grow weary of my own company.

The brittle force of another amplified hour snaps within my empty room,
Whilst sour shadows keep time with this tortured soul’s imperfections.
In the bleakness of my solitude, I grow weary of my own company.
The ticking hours arrive late and brutal, marching their way towards death.

Whilst sour shadows keep time with this tortured soul’s imperfections,
A lonely emptiness yawns and glues itself to my troubled walls.
The ticking hours arrive late and brutal, marching their way towards death.
Again, the brass clock strikes one, and smashes itself against the fortifications of my mind.

William Wood

William is a Cumbrian recluse, published author of poetry, prose and fiction.
more at williamwoodswords

Thinking Ahead

Think six months ahead
The oncologist said
Then six months again.
And so on.

                 To avoid
Six months of dread
We shall try instead
To fill each precious second,
Each minute, each day,
Each week and month
By day with hunger fed
By night with tears and hugs
In our marriage bed.
Clinging sometimes in despair
Often in comfort mutual
Our love remains undead.

Valentine for a dead wife

For over forty years
You’ve been my Valentine
Each year another poem
Profession of our love
But the one this year
You’ll never hear me read.

Should I pen it in my blood
Untie the ribbon, tuck it in
Among the bundle saved?
For I love you as much in death
As when you lived and laughed.
There will be no other Valentine.

Cancer

In bed, my arm across your belly
I turn aside my head
So that my fat and silent tears
Fall only on the pillow
Don’t soak your sleeping face.

Your naked body looks unblemished
Cries to me as temptingly as before
But within the tumour chokes desire
And sullies mine, impervious to love.

Iris Anne Lewis

Iris is published on-line and in print. As a competition winner, she has been invited on several occasions to read her work at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. In 2020 she was the Silver Branch featured poet on Black Bough Poetry https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/iris-anne-lewis
Twitter: @IrisAnneLewis

Through the sickroom window

a pink cloud of blossom
the cherry tree’s in bloom

a shiver of wind, a shower of petals –
a snowfall of scent on a spring day

the fallen flowers fade to brown
shrivel and are gone

new leaves unfurl on branches
I look out of the window, take heart

Old Friend

I turn to it when ill in bed
or feeling down – a book
that dates from childhood days.

Quarto-sized, hard-backed
with only thirty pages,
its dustjacket still intact
though tattered round the edges.
A manual of wild flowers,
its cover brightened by a buttercup.

Thick paper, yellow with age.
On each page a single flower, hand drawn,
a wash of colour for leaves and petals –
purple vetch, Queen Anne’s Lace,
a scarlet poppy.

I linger on each one,
enjoy their different forms and hues,
savour half-remembered scents
of woodland paths, riverbanks
and hay-filled country fields.

I reach a page
disfigured by a dark brown stain –
an accidental spill of tea when
one afternoon, sitting by my mother
she told me how, in wartime
when bombs reduced
whole streets to rubble,
rosebay willowherb took root.
And soon the site was aflame
with spires of magenta flowers.

She called it blitzweed –
nature’s way of beautifying
barren waste.

Comforted, I sink back into pillows,
turn the page.

Annie Ellis

Annie’s biography is here

That Was All Yesterday

Touch is so precious.
A light finger curling around
mine, setting pulses racing.
Now it’s hard to remember.
 
My dreams tell me
that was all yesterday
before we were chained
to our houses. Alone.
 
Living in a single skin,
wanting to collect
feelings before they’re lost.
They hide behind the window.
 
Yearning grows more pain.
My lips are dry,
hard as wood,
waiting.
 
Tomorrow
 
Dark embraces the air with razors.
Shadow edges cut and slice.
I lie alone waiting
for you to fill the void.
 
I reach out to marble black,
rattle of bones, pain of yesterday.
My fingers retract.
Did I see a shine fall off your scythe?
 
Crisp, snow-like sheets –
my face burrows, catching sensations.
I breathe in the soapy aroma
brightened by the moon’s appearance.
 
Opening eyes, I touch forgiveness,
another day is mine.
I cherish each passing minute
knowing you are always there.