Somewhere there is a world of poetry, music and stories, a concert of words playing together. This world has turned: the coconut scent of gorse that burned in the haze of a summer morning has become frosty mist that creeps across fields and dims the glow of crimson berries. I am learning to live in […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Losing Your Head
You lost your tiny mind and the hot blood of night was a painful cure. The dark satellite of a world that’s dead to you offers only a corpse and the cold ashes of a burnt out heart. Salome’s breakfast platter offers a selection of fresh fruit, eggs over easy and a prophet’s severed head. […]
Angels and Stars
Stone angels form a guard of honour outside a mausoleum door visible from the open gate where the mourners assemble and wait. Whether it’s a simple grave or tomb, when hair, nails and flesh are gone all that’s left is stardust and bone. Kim M. Russell, 1st November 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with […]
Once
Once upon a North Sea cliff, fragile skeletons chalky white and ghosts of spiralling ammonites exploded by the waterside. Teased by waves and torn by tides, the behemoth spilled its insides: with salty gush and rocky rumble, the towering cliffs began to tumble. Strewn among the shells and pebbles, bleached by sun and washed by […]
Wide Windows
Writing by wide windows, I can see the earth and sky, birds and deer catch my eye. In spring, blossom flutters in the trees and the scent of honeysuckle drifts on the breeze. The cat and I watch autumn leaves and winter snowflakes fall, a spider build a cobweb and a snail leave a silvery […]
Back from the Deep
A word wrestles between twisted lips, eyes are sunken like two wrecked ships and her nose erupts from a festering face. Dragging behind her a fisherman’s net, hauntingly humming the Flower Duet, she staggers along the pitch-black shore. Studded with limpets and barnacles, lashed with seaweed and pinned with corals, she’s draped in a lacy […]
Necklace of Lights
An old-fashioned red London bus takes me back to childhood’s sleepy night-ride home from my grandparents house: sitting between Mum and Dad, bare legs on fuzzy seats, folding concertinas of paper tickets, hypnotised by the perfume of exhaust, rumble of engine, and the window’s black and empty gaze. I believed the stars – obscured by […]
10th October 1992 (unplugged)
(a traced poem inspired by ‘Moment’ by Carol L. Gloor) At the moment of our reunion, I am cooking vegetarian lasagne. No meat, no male scent in this house of females, only the exhaust of distance. I hadn’t seen you in twenty years. I recognised you, the younger you I left behind. I am back from […]
Coming home…
late in the afternoon, I walk down an empty street when, at my feet, a russet leaf drops – and so does the wind. Like me, it settles into its October stillness, tired and sober, fading into twilight, slipping on the night. Kim M. Russell, 19th October 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real […]
Reflections on Rotten
Lemon brashness softens and blooms into the livid greens and blues of a mouldy citrus bruise. Once it was firm and glossy, oiled with fruity essence; it has become its own reflection, silently exhaling spores that dance a tango with a fading summer scent. Kim M. Russell, 16th October 2018 My response to dVerse Poets […]
writing in north norfolk 