Three Candles
Three times now I have lit a
candle
to stand sentinel to the dark
outside my window.
Father, son and holy one have
mercy.
Three golden flames dance before
me
three more flutter in the
blackness of the glass,
pulling from their wicks,
tugging always away
like souls in purgatory seeking
absolution,
but stuck fast in the guilt of
their making.
Father, son and holy one have
pity.
Three bright flames for three
bright loves,
tugging and pulling my heart
like fire about a match.
Venger, teacher and judge have
mercy.
I was brought up to believe in
one alone,
one pure, one true, one eternal,
but one alone is a lonely
number,
one alone is the limiting factor
denying me as I really am,
rejecting others shining in me.
Three bright candles burn their flickering
truth;
one and one and one make three.
Father, son and Holy Ghost,
three in one.
It is one that denies, one that
will not be.
It takes a man to fixate on just
one.
Holy man, son, father, do you
hear me?
If man's obsession is singular
the mother's arms embrace all of
this world's making.
Mother, lover, wise woman, one
as many.
Three bright flames reflected
against the darkness of the night.
For the son I am mother,
caring and loving, holding the
pain of the world at bay.
For the father I am wise
with knowledge beyond years, the
death crone
speaking the world's only truth
and I am lover to the third,
melting body and spirit together
in the heat of a thousand
flames.
In love there is life for we
become more than one
and anything more than one is a
blessed, living multitude.
Death limits us to singular.
Three died as one on the holy
man's hill.
When one is gone there is no
more.
In the time left us before the
light goes out,
before we are reduced, we should
celebrate the many,
burning as brightly as we can,
highlighted by night.
Those who light just one candle
invite the coming of the dark
earlier than welcome.
I shall live in a house of fire.
Dancing and dancing with my
sister selves
and our bright loves shall dance
with us
anchored in life not guilt.
We shall celebrate until
I descend the stairs at dusk to
find
three candles guttering on my
window-sill,
three more brighter in the
darkness of the night,
dancing to the same dirge, song
of the death crone.
Mother, lover, wise woman, hear
me.
The candle is not everlasting
and the light will go out
whatever the wise men say.
Mother, lover, crone, I am yours
until then.
A Plague on All Their
Flower Palaces
You’re a flim flam
fancy man
Catch you up a
corner
with your sausage leg spam
Catch you up a
corner
with your message in the
pot
feeling,
squeezing
all
the things you’ve got
Butcher’s Broom Love Lies Bleeding
In case you can’t
see it
I’m working a spell
I’ve seen it done
with a wooden spoon
more squeezing, teasing
a spell against
diseases
crabs, fleas, things
that wheeze
whatever
won’t float away
Fleabane Piss-the–bed
It’s ground
breaking
earth shaking
candy just
there for the taking
Hit that rhyme
with a hammer, Jack
So many
possibilities so little time
A long stone’s
throw
plate glass tinkles with
a different chime
Crack Willow
Night-time
disturbing her daylight slumbers
the soft kiss of flowers
on a midnight lawn
Awake at the back
there !
pale brown frog baby
awash in its bath
drowning in
laughter
Have you woken
yet?
Mornin’ Glory Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon
I wanted to get
going
but the going got good
got
got instead
Bloody Cranesbill
A plague on you
before you plague me
eventually
Mother of thousands becomes Stinking Iris became Dead
Nettle turned into
Corpse Flower Forget-me-not
The End of the Rainbow
I am dancing away
with the music of
the spheres,
song bubbles
rising
like the kiss of
champagne,
all the way
onwards
to the end of the
rainbow.
Why shouldn’t I?
Couldn’t I?
I am my own
dreams’ child.
Life evaporates
quickly
with every ragged
breath.
I choose to
breathe harmonies
into unheard
promises
and sweetly aching
hearts,
and if that’s just
fantasy
then blue birds
back at you.
I’m dancing all
the way
to the end of the
rainbow.
Becoming Bones
A skeleton hiding
deep within its bloody meat sack -
I am reclaiming
old bones.
For too long
life’s lean white core
has been owned by
the miserly dead.
The hardened Grim
Reaper leading
his
ever-lengthening osseous dance of death.
Mud-caked relics
of lost brittle lives
exhumed from the
softly sleeping soil
to reshape our
pasts.
But I am
breathing. These bones are now.
I am liquids and
solids,
soft flesh and
calcified tissue,
the sum of all my
parts and more.
Inside I am purity
and strength,
all that remains
when the rest of me is gone, sure.
Yet now my bones
stand firm within me.
Are me.
This is me beneath
flesh and skin,
constant,
unbending, dancing alive.
Hard resolve cups
the vitreous jelly
staring out from
this brave citadel.
These my hands, my
fingers, nails.
If I could look
inwards
I would still be
me.
Waiting to Have Tea With a
Friend While You’re in the Boot of My Car
She’s late. It
happens. It’s no big deal.
A fresh pot of
Lapsang, pen and notebook
plus time to kill.
Life is refreshed after tea.
I can rest
peacefully, wait things out, seated
at this dark,
heavily grained table.
Old oak, I think,
tracing
the black veins
that once indicated living growth
while you,
untraceable, are out there,
collected and yet
not, like Schrodinger’s infamous feline
a modern day
pending Bastet,
in my locked,
unwarmed, immobile car.
I take the measure
of things.
They feel
appropriately balanced, like the heart’s breath,
the weight of a
feather.
I said goodbye to
you here less than a month ago,
toasting your
unaugured departure
with chilled
Prosecco and madeira cake.
Now I’m back here
and you’re out there
without words, in
my chill car boot,
waiting? Not sure
about that.
What would you be
waiting for?
The innocent
teatime ritual is clear.
I’m waiting to
drink tea with her,
mouth the expected
sympathetic words
maybe eat some
honey cake,
its sweetness
sliding between barely opened lips.
Is that what
you’re waiting for?
You’d like the
cake, you always did,
the dark wood
table, not so much.
The last wood
before your eyes
was lightly
grained pine.
You’re now mixed
up over wood,
can’t see the tree
for ash, so to speak.
I spoke the words
that sent you on your way
shall now speak
more with afternoon tea
the handed-down,
unassuming ritual of food and drink.
Until then I’m
waiting
and you...?
You remain obstinately late.
J.S. Watts is a UK poet and novelist. She has published eight books: two full poetry collections, "Cats and Other Myths" and “ Years Ago You Coloured Me”, two poetry pamphlets, "Songs of Steelyard Sue” and "The Submerged Sea” and four novels, "A Darker Moon” - dark literary fantasy, “Witchlight”, “Old Light” and “Elderlight" - paranormal, published in the US and UK. See www.jswatts.co.uk
Books by J.S.Watts: Elderlight (novel) – coming on 7th
December 2021. Other novels: Old Light ISBN
978-1946050205; Witchlight ISBN 9780692406908; A
Darker Moon ISBN 9780615706528. Poetry: Cats and Other
Myths ISBN 9781907276644; Songs of
Steelyard Sue ISBN 9781909252028 -
Nominated for BOTH SFPA and Saboteur Awards Best Poetry Pamphlet
2013; Years Ago You Coloured Me ISBN 9781910855157; The
Submerged Sea ISBN 9781907435591.
Website: http://www.jswatts.co.uk/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/J.S.Watts.page
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