My MoJo

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My MoJo

Please let me have my mojo back,
My passion has abated;
Now faded into lustless life,
All rapture now vacated.

This fractious war’s collateral damage
Has snagged me in its thorns,
And leaving me dispirited,
Has taken other forms.

For all the hurt I now repress
The damage leaves its mark.
What will it take to bring it back
That vital vibrant spark?

 

The GREEN MAN

‘Green Man’ . . . Pen&Wash – WHB ©

The GREEN MAN

He is my history
Lusting after the hills of my youth
He strides the moorland paths
Amidst the bracken and the gorse
Drinking the sun’s warm ale
Savouring the wind’s heather-toned tang
Turning time to his advantage
Tuning in to its connecting wavelength

He is great Nature’s spirit
Rising and falling with its moods
Sad yet serene in Spring
Holding the hope of the future

Bright and bubbly in the summer rains
Rich and expansive in the sun’s bright gaze

Brought to magnificent autumn richness
Coloured by russet tints
Fruitful in his beneficence

He is the winter too
Drifting with the whiteness of its moods
His flocks penned for winter warmth neath the mountain crag
Shielding the gentle crocus
And the blanched snowdrop

He is the spirit of the trees
Lord of copse and wood
Guardian of Grove and greenwood
Verdant Monarch of the forest

Of the landscape’s lakes
Running with the cool waters of streams and rivers
The stillness of Its ponds and pools

Both past and future
Gone yet still to come again
his cyclic journey unfolds
From birth to death
From death to resurrection
To new life and resurgent hope
Maintaining existence
Midst promises and threats
To bring renewal in the name of life

MIND GAMES

MIND GAMES

Enigmatic
Covert
Whimsical and wild
Such are the games I play
Whilst mentally beguiled

Hidden within poetry
In discursive verse
My clandestine love affairs
Short
intense
And terse

Give to me a reason
Why thus I can’t express
My mind’s adventurous spirit
My need to seek excess

To open up
Revealing all
Whilst midst the subterfuge
My ego seeks adrenaline
A haven
A refuge

Its all a nonsense
Words at play
Fending off my fears
Seeking to screen my inner hurt
Reality kept at bay

 

Mini-Saga #3. They Were Worried

A HIGHLY COMMENDED entry in the Daily Telegraph’s 1999 Mini-Saga Competition.

The task set being to compose a story of 50 words exactly – no more!  no less!

 

 

“The Screaming Lady of the Haunted Gallery”.

My Photograph – taken in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace in 2002

At Hampton Court Palace
One grey Autumn day,
Whilst strolling alone
I wandered astray,
Discovered this phantom,
Too shy to display.

Shroud for a lady,
Hide her away.
No one must see her
Lest somebody say,
She’s only a failure,
She’s long had her day.

But now she is hidden
And no one can see,
Then no one will question
Just who she might be.
They’ll just go on thinking
Perhaps she’s a he.

The fact she is ghostly,
Clothed in a Shroud,
Might give them a hint
That she’s not been allowed
To be seen out in public,
Detached from the crowd.

For in summer when tickets
Are hard to come by,
That’s when they’ll release her
Sustaining the lie.
Produce her in costume
When darkness is nigh.

Then this ‘Screaming Lady’,
As a spirit will glide,
In her Haunted Gallery,
Make-up applied.
Bemoaning, bewailing –
A Queen mortified.

So that’s it for the winter,
Don’t leave her on show.
Come wind and come tempest,
Come rain or come snow,
This tourist attraction’s
The best that I know.

That rival in Scotland,
The fishy old coward,
In a straight contest,
Its legacy soured,
It cannot compare
With our Catherine Howard.

The Grey Lady of Hampton Court

NOTES . . .

 

Henry VIII’s home at Hampton Court Palace is said to house several distinguished ghosts.

 

Lady Catherine Howard, Henry’s 5th wife, was accused of adultery and is said to have been dragged to her death, at the age of only 20, through the corridors of the Palace. Her ghost has become known as “The Screaming Lady of the Haunted Gallery”.

 

Anne Boleyn, Henry’s 2nd wife, who, accused of adultery and incest, was, like Catherine after her, beheaded.   At Hampton Court she is seen wearing a blue dress. She has been described as walking slowly, with a sad countenance.

 

Dame Sybil Penn, a servant to 4 monarchs, died at the Palace in the 1500s of smallpox, but ever since her tomb was disturbed in 1829, she is said to haunt the Palace as “The Lady in Grey”.

 

An article containing the above photograph, can be read by clicking on this link to:  Hampton Court’s Lady In Grey