Exposing the Crux

The glass roof overhead
is the environment of all,
steamed or clear or painted
to hide what anyone might see,
green as dandelions
or murky plastic ocean floor.
Opaque childhood dips in,
pulls out a plum/blackbird/or crab.
Safe as houses/nappies,
explosive contents float away
until forgotten. Gone,
like fluffy lambs/chicken yellow,
grown-up and practical.
Not many look at flimsy roof,
heartbeat faster/deep breaths,
contemplating heaven and hell.

Like parents
seeing a child
in glass coffin.

Shattered,
no safety net
to existence, ever after.
Pained or clear, with eyes steamed,
anyone might see, yet most hide:
blue as dock leaves/nettles
or sea creature in life’s tangle.
Bright childhood laughs, or paints,
says Humpty got cracked and broken.
Rules safe as Britannia.
A pink elephant balloon flight,
like laughing gas (run out).
Snow-white earth dwarfed apple-yellow,
grown old, impractical.
Parents see through flimsy life’s roof,
heartbeats racing, fight or…
contemplation. Heaven and hell.

All Will be Revealed

She waits in the shadows at the end of the day,
her curvaceous shape means you want to play.
She’s left in the silence of slow dark thoughts, to mull
her own show lightastic, poolingly full.

There is nothing imagined, that hides in the dark,
she knows you so well like a walk in the park.
You have waited all day and now have to get home,
on tube train or railway imagine that roam,

when you slam the door, stay polite and don’t ask yet,
imagine disaster if you then forget
to pace yourself slowly through dinnertime duty,
when all you want is that loverly beauty.

You hope that dull Newsnight is too boring to switch,
after bright-swatch interiors spelled to bewitch.
Finally retiring (hope for no distractions),
no needful new-fangled bedside contraptions.

Slide into bed slowly, for eye contact is all,
then flick her switch suddenly (like cricket ball).
Lie back and relax now. Oh heaven, it’s this:
bright light, pair of glasses, for reading is bliss.

History by Zoom

One day,
I will Zoom into Open Mike
and read softly a poem that demands
to exist, to breathe, to live.
One day,
I will pick that clementine from my bowl
and those poets – you know, the NAMES,
will gulp, or gasp, or breathe raggedly,
trying not to cry in public.
One day
I won’t need a rhythmic list,
nor comic dismissal of gravitas.
Earning a place on their table,
until vivid peel drops on their plate,
dribbles down their chin,
catches the back of throat denial
that a poet demanded to be heard;
that words marched on Trafalgar Square;
that a PM bowed and vanished;
that even a Queen could lie vanquished and great.
Bohemian, I will grab the mike;
rattle the Halleluyahs into submission;
listen to the chorus of praise
that, One Day, happened to me.

Wendy Webb: Born in the Midlands, home and family life in Norfolk. Published in Indigo Dreams, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Envoi, Seventh Quarry) and online (Littoral Magazine, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Lothlorien, Radio: Poetry Place), First in Writing Magazine’s pantoum poetry competition. She devised new poetry forms; wrote her father’s biography, and her own autobiography. She has attempted many traditional forms and free verse. Favourite poets: Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Burnside, John Betjeman, the Romantic Poets (especially Wordsworth), George Herbert, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Mary Webb, Norman Bissett, William Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.