A little something from Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System....
Venus, the Goddess
Love's Goddess, bathed in sun-drenched hues -
smooth-faced, fecund, a paradise -
will tempt, beguile, entice, effuse
with haze-kissed dreams of velvet skies.
Her outer visage gives no clues,
her marbled ochre shell belies
her foul, miasmic surface brews -
a deadly killer in disguise.
The star-crossed, love-struck fools who choose
to stray too close, soon recognise -
her comely camouflage a ruse -
that charms they once did eulogise
are scorching, toxic, acid stews:
a trap for unsuspecting flies.
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A seasonal poem! This appears in Kites 2010…
Today We Built A Dalek
Today we built a Dalek made of snow –
a swan-white triumph, fully four feet high.
The winter blues were banished in one go.
We worked for half a day and watched him grow;
an apple on a stick became his eye.
Today we built a Dalek made of snow.
We armoured him with stones, row after row –
bamboo cane weapons trained on leaden sky.
The winter blues were banished in one go.
On days off work, you need something to show
you didn’t just sit in the warm and dry –
today we built a Dalek made of snow.
You ducked, and said I must improve my throw,
as yet more of my snowballs went awry –
the winter blues were banished in one go.
The thaw will soon restore the status quo;
exterminate our Dalek, by and by.
But today we built a Dalek made of snow
and winter blues were banished in one go.
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Another offering from Kites 2010...
Water
Though I’m immersed in water, I don’t drown.
Miraculous sub-mariner, that’s me -
toes turning to the sky, head pointing down.
I’m not yet everything that I will be.
I’m still a big fish in a tiny pond,
evolving, changing, growing by degree.
The line connecting each of us, our bond
that keeps me safe and anchors me to you,
protecting me from all that lies beyond.
I’m your cocooned inverted comma who,
defying gravity without a care,
will punctuate your days with kicks anew.
Until my water world, beyond repair,
implodes; and lungs choke bitterly with air.
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The following poem, inspired by J W Waterhouse's painting of the same name, was published in Dark Horizons #57....
Circe Poisoning the Sea
You ask me why I pour this brew,
so foul, into the depths of blue,
polluting every distant shore
from surface foam to ocean floor,
each drop of water rendered pure no more.
Fair Scylla bathes within this stream,
where underwater sapphires gleam
and beads of azure cleanse her skin
of flawless, cloud-white porcelain;
and where my noxious potion’s deeds begin.
For with her beauty she has caught
the eye of Glaucus; every thought
of his is of his nymph, as night,
so starved of warmth, deprived of light,
will love the sun with each new morning’s flight.
But Scylla’s cold and frosty heart,
recoiling, will admit no part
of his. And so, half-mad with grief,
as much in hope as in belief,
he came to me that I might bring relief.
He begged of me that I concoct
a potion that, her heart, unlocked,
would cleave to his as he to her
so he, no longer mere voyeur,
may woo his water nymph, and she concur.
This fisher-god, with piscine pleas,
then promised me the seven seas
and all the treasures they afford
would be his gift and my reward,
if only I would bid his love’s heart thawed.
And so, before me, he unfurled
the magic of his cobalt world.
Strange contours of his submerged lands,
the emeralds, the tides, the sands,
all trickled, wondrous, through my outstretched hands.
Yet I would gladly have foregone
these riches, just to gaze upon
the face of Glaucus, close to mine,
to taste his fisher’s lips of brine;
my own heart pierced, as with a trident’s tine.
So I wove pearls of flattery
around him like a silken sea.
With samphire, mermaids’ purses, shells,
intoxicating turquoise spells
I conjured from the plunging, crashing swells.
Like water turned to liquid gold,
cerulean enchantments rolled,
erupting, from my finger tips,
encircling Glaucus in their grips,
while incantations whispered on my lips.
But Glaucus, stoic, stayed unmoved,
his faith to Scylla fully proved.
He vowed that she would be his queen,
such beauty he had never seen
in oceans, heavens, or the realms between.
Thus he, his business now resolved,
like wisps of smoke, was soon dissolved,
whilst I, alone, abandoned, learned
that agonies of love had turned
my heart to ice. My righteous anger burned.
I churned with venom, fit to burst,
yet not for nothing am I versed
in sorceresses’ secret art.
I swore I’d rend for each their heart,
such vitriolic force would I impart.
I’ll make a ghastly, ghost-green grave
of every torrent, current, wave;
reduce the seas to toxic mass
of boiling, hissing, seething gas,
that no-one may survive this clogged morass.
When Scylla’s alabaster skin,
so flawless, is immersed within
my livid, vile, soupy feast
of filth, all beauty shall be ceased
as she becomes a loathsome, monstrous beast.
I’ll stay unmoved as Scylla begs,
a flailing mess of heads and legs,
that I have pity and relent,
reverse my potion’s ill intent,
but Scylla’s frantic pleas will be misspent.
So hideous will Scylla be,
she’ll throw herself upon the sea.
The bitter tears her blue eyes weep
as, rock-like, she descends the deep,
the only relics I’ll let Glaucus keep.
© Sarah Doyle November 2009
