Removal Day

We take up the pen
to deconstruct our psychic comfort
and use it like a broom
to sweep the dust
from forgotten corners
into the centre of the room.

So much is stored in boxes,
taped shut and packed away
on out of reach shelves
until removal day comes round
and words break the seal
of abandonment.

And ink will get under our nails
as we fill the page with memories
we take with us, and fingers ache
to let go of the old wounds
that possess us, until we learn
to leave them behind.



Izy Gruye invites us to Chew Through Your Own Chains, my first choice for Play It Again! with Real Toads. I have been a teacher since the age of 21, and I love my job but a task I do not enjoy is moving house, but I guess we poets are in the removal business.

Izy, we met in 2010 - a different online space and time - and we have weathered change, distance and the ebb and flow of the online world of poetry blogging. I do hope we will continue to remain in touch in the years to come.

Dysmorphia

It’s been a long slow swing
in retrograde through the garden
of my soul’s imaginary dysmorphia

There is a callous comfort
in my latent childhood dreams
which lull me through recurrence

Each is neatly parcelled
to tuck away the vicious claws
and hairy eyes of my familiar demons

A path of no return is visible
but I suspect it will lead back
to the root of the poisonous tree

and the pendulum motion
of the swinger because the truth,
the snake in the garden was always me.



A poem suggested, in part, by Margaret's final challenge in the Imaginary Garden: Artistic Interpretations, in which she asks us to contemplate the theme of comfort in the context of childhood.

Ever-Rising Star

Collage created by Kerry O'Connor

Let your face be a canvas

An ever-rising star

Radiant!

Make a bold statement

In black & white

You are unique

Born to express yourself

Trust in every new tomorrow

Discover the secret of Love

It’s your time to smile

Say goodbye & live well

A dream come true



I had to create something special for the final Music with Marian challenge in the Imaginary Garden. Thus I set upon an old magazine to find a poem amid the words.
Marian and I go back to before the inception of Real Toads. We met by total accident, or fate.. bumped into one another on the blogs and stuck together through thick and thin. Her blog runaway sentence is one of the first I discovered, when I was entirely new to the forum of online poetry publishing. It has remained true to Marian's vision and her writing is a constant source of  inspiration to me personally, as well as to countless poets and fellow toads.

Thank you so much, sister-poet, for all and everything you are.