Bronte

Ok, so not a recent poem but I realised nothing much has gone on to the blog recently and it was about time Caroline (my one and only serious fan/editor/advisor/'sister-like friend' had something else to read (although as she was there at the theatre I think I've probably shown it to her already). Inactivity slightly less now but still occasionally loathsome.

Bronte, Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, November 5th 2005

Tempests rage internal.
Three sisters sit at table.
The storm in their teacup stews.
Bitter, brown liquid.

Each breaks bread;
A slice of contempt,
Bite of inactivity
Crumb of misread intention.

All three are all three
In me.

They scrape on thinner layers of jammed thoughts.

Tempests rage internal.
There is a fourth -
He is my Branwell.
The clouds gather, portentous offerings,
Crowding for release,
Their dark core of words engulfs whole blankets of sky,
Spreading curved letters over the heath.
This fourth could be the purging rain.

Instead, because of him, I starve,
Handing up morsel after morsel
From my table of creativity.
But not, like the sisters, for the greater good of passion, ambition, voice.

Whose inactivity is more loathsome?
Whose contempt more cutting?
Familiarity creeps through brittle, broken manuscript,
Breeding the emptiness that fills each leaf.

Shared experience, a written sensation, could fill the corners of pages,
Dog-eared, well-thumbed, stroked into being,
Stained with the ink of curiosity.

My tempests rage internal.