Poetry for Grown-Ups
Elin won the adult category of the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival Poetry Competition, and was consequently published in the competition’s anthology, Words Paint Pictures. Her work was chosen as one of the ‘Highly Commended’ poems in the Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition, and was published in their newsletter and the Excel for Charity News Blog. She has had numerous poems published at the online poetry magazine, The Pygmy Giant, and been published in the Forward Poetry anthologies: A Clock Strikes Thirteen; Fear Itself; and The Colour of War. She has also been published in the poetry magazine, Ariadne’s Thread.
Winner of the Stratford Literary Festival
Poetry Competition
Ondine
Silver-clash cymbal of breakers
Beating perilous on rocking gongs,
Through caverns, echoing thunders,
I hear the blistering silver prongs;
Over a thousand rippling acres
A dark and captivating song
Tells of unearthly waters’ wonders
For which my silvering soul will long.
Glory-glisten under moonsetting,
The licking tongues of myrrh,
Leave a cold and silver sweating,
On the golden grains of earth,
Seeping shadows, silhouetting,
A whispered lover’s purr,
Unforsaking, unforgetting
The favoured daughter of the Mer.
The waves breathe heavy and longing,
Salted chants from iron lung,
With silvered fingers, heartstrings clutching,
The haunting serenade is flung
With searing memories of belonging
In my angel-lilting mother tongue
No silvered pitch untouching,
No sapphire note unsung.
A desolate, star-silent coast
Casts the ever-changing frame
And the moon, an ever-greying ghost,
A silent silver stain
On the magic mirror of high heaven’s host.
Bright reflection: true, untamed,
God-belonging, oh! but mine, the most,
Be my looking glass again!
My throat incants Siren-songs,
Eyes see silver surf ascend
And smiling in the mirror, rushing along,
The twin of the moon transcends.
My hand in hers, silver and strong,
Through looking glass I descend,
Ever to the sea, my hearts belongs,
Bewitching, ’til eternity’s silvered end.
Ondine was published in the Stratford Literary Festival anthology:
Words Paint Pictures.
Poems published at the online poetry magazine
The Pygmy Giant
Song of the Bitter Angels
Hear the bitter angels singing
Some mournful, moonlit cries
The melody, black-feathered, winging
Across the black hole of the skies,
Leaves to the dark canvass, clinging,
A thousand silver eyes,
And a haunting echo ringing,
Like a thousand breath-dead sighs.
The blackened sky lies bleeding,
The silvered fissures run,
But bitter angels, unheeding
Cry out chanting hymns begun.
The stars, their doom impeding,
Now their silver rings undone,
Storm through heaven a dark stampeding,
To the throat of a blackened sun.
Bitter angels, now lamenting
The sky’s empty, barren dearth,
From their darkened eyes, resenting,
Roll reams of diamonds, newly-birthed,
Then flood the heavens, now cementing
Their endless kindling worth:
Unremitting, Unrelenting,
On the starlit world of Earth.
Indifference
If I can cast away the curtains
And fling the windows wide,
Let wind waft weary cobwebs
’Til they impact and collide,
If I can disrupt dullness
And trouble up the trite,
Begin to bother blandness
And give the boring bite,
If I can agitate apathy
And arouse the un-alert,
Intrude on the insipid
And invigorate inert,
If I can inflame the flavourless
And stir up incessant same,
Create character in the colourless
And interrupt the tame,
If I can dance away the dreary,
Rewrite the relentless refrain,
Harmonize in the humdrum
And music the mundane,
If I can scribble on dusty pages
A story worth being told,
And colour a greying canvas
A thousand shades of gold,
If I can dare to be distinctive
And that daring makes you smile,
Then I’ve disturbed dull indifference,
And I can deem my day worthwhile.
Statue
She appears asleep,
lost to us all in stony silence;
hard on the eyes,
bronze-blind and unblinking;
her reflection cast motionless in the water,
silver-faced up to the stars.
In the rain,
the grey angel-face enchants,
salted wounds drip down like silver:
surrendered stars pooling tombstone-grey at her feet.
And you are stuck-still,
frozen in your own soundlessness,
semitone-strange and half-eclipsed
caught in the chord of moonlight,
in the uncoloured cadence of her gaze;
until an owl’s warning releases you...
Her lack of eyes latch onto your step,
haunting each hurried tread that
takes you, trembling to the shadows,
all a-shiver, thankful that
the only eyes on you now are silver
and they will be gone by morning.
Lies
Like a stone in the mouth, you can feel the dirt
That circles it like a hardened earth,
The tart throb of salt on the tongue,
A breath dragged ragged to salted lung.
Too hard to hide behind my teeth,
Too big to bury deep beneath,
Too sharp to keep in its gagging sheath
It retches out, the wretched thing,
Bringing with it an acid ring
That reeks the room in which we stand,
That scars this throat; a blistered brand.
And as I reel once more from pain
This lying tongue swears the old refrain:
‘Never again. Never again.’
Cadaver
I lost my eyes
the day I saw him,
greying on a bright metal table.
The image burnt through my corneas
until they were useful for nothing else
but maintaining the last, longest impression,
clung to my cells like a greasy cancer.
The first casualty.
I lost my feet
(they were the next to go)
unsteady in the stumbling darkness.
The last dance done.
The diaphanous way fogged up.
Which way now?
I lost my hands
clawing endlessly until they just
fell off. I almost expected them to keep going.
But no: tired, inhuman, unmoving.
No more reaching for me.
I lost my skin;
forgetting how it was to feel.
My insides poured out around me,
leaving trails that stank of emptiness.
I lost my head
(the last to go)
It swirled off into somewhere else:
the bottom of the black spiral stair.
If you walk down it far enough
there’s a room at the bottom,
cold and clinic-white;
the silent sleep.
My heart?
I lost it long ago.
It’s on that table now.
Dull The Day
Dull, the day, frozen, how
The dimming light is languishing.
Dull, the body, frozen, now
My fettered heart is anguishing.
Dull, the shadow of my room
Like a sorrowing silhouette,
Dull, the ever greying gloom
Of every single bright regret.
Dull, the fire, and the grate
Like the heaven’s rosy glow,
Dull, the flame we fornicate
And the hell that waits below.
Dull, the actors, and the stage,
Dull, each light-caught feathered mote,
Dull, each orchestrated page,
Dull, the opera singer’s throat.
Dull, the dusk and dull, the dawn,
Dull, December and July,
Dull, the eve and dull, the morn,
Dull, each tick that tocks on by.
Dulled, the wish and dulled, the dream
Now she screams a banshee’s curse
Dulled, the soul, once agleam
Now light falls on the blackened hearse.
Winner of the ‘Highly Commended’ award in the
Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition
Illusion
Frozen, you finger the pills
like a rosary.
Clutched close,
chucked up to your chin.
Shivering like a star-string.
A silver drop bombs towards you;
bloated with royalty,
exploding on a whitened cheek.
You lift your hands in worship.
Hysterical hands,
clawing at the richness of feeling,
feet dancing on the fanatical flood.
Your head tilts back,
guzzling glittering elixir
down that ruby throat.
But the silver rain cuts quick,
And stars explode in ebony.
The Kingdom is breached!
The vision of sky
fractures, fractures...
And the immortal brights dissolve into
Nothingness.
And the illusion is eclipsed like a sun.
In the dark,
the broken rosary falls from forlorn fingers,
now nothing but dull beads,
scattered on a hard floor.
And day,
day comes with swift severity,
screaming like a maniac.
Illusion was published in the Psychiatry Research Trust newsletter and the Excel for Charity News Blog.
Poems published by Forward Poetry
Call Back
Sent back (cut backs).
Come back, bring him back.
Can’t look back.
Luggage rack,
Dirt track,
Shack,
Unpack.
Plan of attack:
Break your back.
Fight back,
Take back,
Pay back.
Post-attack.
Look back, think back, flash back:
Roof rack, tie rack,
dish rack, magazine rack, from way back,
yak yak, face pack,
bicycle rack, jumping jack.
Taken aback: surprise attack.
Under attack, pull back, turn back, running back…
Crack.
Throw back.
Die back.
Black.
Plaque.
Choke back.
Union Jack.
Published at the height of the Iraq War, Call Back was published in the
Forward Poetry anthology, The Colour of War.
Ouija
A board:
a firm foundation for all ahead;
ready to rip the rug out
right when you need it.
Each letter:
a rune replete with history,
an alien experience always
talked in your own tongue;
devilishly good fun.
A pointer:
like time’s hand ticking down into Revelation,
covering the chasm yawning twixt Yes and No;
those two immovable utterances, fixed
expectant and empty,
like Life and Death.
Ouija was published in the Forward Poetry anthology, A Clock Strikes Thirteen.
The Spider
Softly silent, spins the Spider,
Speed and skill spring by starlight,
Spiral out, yet wider! Wider!
Into the blindness of the night.
Entrancing in dawn’s icy splendour,
The Artist’s talent betrays not haste,
Nor the deception which will send her
Prey towards Death’s fatal taste.
Out on morning, She is peering,
The huddling eight-legged Hell.
Hark! The human ear is hearing,
The buzzing of the funeral bell.
Through blithe-blue sky it is approaching,
Then the work of art enthrals;
Now look upon your end, encroaching
In method human eye appals:
Silver threads morph into chain-links;
The victim taken unawares!
Hopeless now, the human heart sinks,
As prisoner, the trap ensnares...
Held immovable in its binding,
Helpless, it can only wait;
Hungry now, the Grave is winding
Feast towards its certain fate.
Nature’s way is like the Spider’s:
Ungodly methods, inhuman goals,
Weird and wonderful in tandem;
Alien, akin, to human soul.
The Spider was published in the Forward Poetry anthology, Fear Itself.
Some poems can be found published under Elin's maiden name: Elin Lewis.