One Poem by Tricia Lloyd Waller

 

Inside an out of date philandering jar 

 

But they are not your words to share! 

Squeals the girl with rainbow ribbons in her hair; 

who chooses to dwell within her head instead of 

here beneath the stair in Matty Blue's motel. 

 

Expectations and limitations outweigh her 

opaque opal eyes, living within the vibrating   

lexicon star and tucked safely away inside  

an out of date philandering jar. 

 

So retract your wrongs, return where you belong  

if you do not wish for the clay dark days to stray? 

Or you will see me and how I'll be all wrapped up 

twisted tightly in a windswept winceyette nightie. 

 

I am the horned turtle recited the blighted man  

proudly wearing his gutter green wheelbarrow  

upon his newly shaven head and the sparrow hawk 

looks on, his time is near and soon he will be gone 

 

Inside the soldered lift the air is acrid green and fizzy 

around the ledges. He tries not to stare at Lizzie –

the synthetic being but she is all seeing and so 

prettily perfect that it would never be worth it! 

 

Her hackneyed blackened boots have taken root. 

So your sorrow is hollow, don’t pretend you bend 

with thyme. Your internal rhyme will never be mine. 

So Lets just finish here my fallow faced erstwhile deer.

Tricia Lloyd Waller has always loved story since she first learnt to speak. She has recently had work accepted by Poetry for mental health and The Amphibian. She was 2022 winner of The Pen to Print poetry competition.