The artist by Sheila Ash

Ferenczy, Károly - The Woman Painter (1903)

The artist holds her palette in her hands
Standing statuesque
Lost in inward gaze
Waiting

The artist holds her palette in her hands
Squeezing tubes and stirring
With spatulas, with sable brushes
Blending

Colours lustrous, radiant and blazing
Partnering her frenetic dance
Her inner vision
Birthing

A metamorphosis
Arising from canvass and toil
From oil and paint, brushstrokes
Nurturing

The artist holds her palette in her hands
Standing still as a statue
Lost in her inward gaze
Waiting

© Sheila Ash, 2018

The inspiration for this poem came from reading Langston Hughes' poem "Trumpet Player"

Inspired by “Autumnal Path” a painting by Kirsty Asher - by Sheila Ash

The fire that burns within
dances its chromatics (*)
amidst life’s autumnal diatonics.

++++++

Echoes of Scandinavian grey
birch the trunks
of English beech wood.

++++++

The sticky plasters of analysis
tape past doubts to future hopes
to present a resurrection.

© Sheila Ash, 2018

(* ) Chromatics   has two meanings

1. Music - relating to or using notes not belonging to the diatonic scale of the key in which a passage is written.
2. relating to or produced by colour.

Irish Solitaire by Sheila Ash

Green velvet
draped like northern lights
swings soulfully above towering spires of red stilettos

Alone, she ascends the staircase
in a silent sweeping caress
with no backward regard.

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Match Dot Com by Sheila Ash

Ad: Reasonably good looking ex professional sportsman, 6’, slim-average built, eats healthy, likes the outdoors, sports, seeking a slender, attractive lady, size 10-12, who lives within E Mids.

This cardigan charlatan
Bills himself as a sporty man
Camouflaging truth and face
in Faustian pact. He pays his dues
for unlimited access to schmooz
for unsuspecting dates.

He prowls the social media streets
A tom cat on heat
Looking for the unsuspecting
A 10 or 12 in size, a slender
beauty to greet his eyes
each morning and each evening.

Several pseudonyms disguise
his twisted whims. His roving eyes
implore from ladies’ gracious favours
Pursues his pleasures hedonistic
Seeking diversions sybaritic
to his own goal he never waivers

On Eharmany and Match Dot com
On Tinder and Badoo - A marathon
of choice dating
Each one made enticing
sounding fun and most exciting
his ad lies baiting

With eloquent abbreviation
bagged in easy flirtation
His conquests are a formality
With each passing of his role as cupid
his bank balance lushly boosted
a change of personality

another email another ipad
another site another ad
another soul lost and sad
another fool to be had

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Erotica - Three Poems by Sheila Ash

The challenge for my Creative Writing Group was to write something erotic!

Congress
My hand has five fingers
Every one of them is for you:
The thumb to brush tears from your cheek
The index to trace the curve of your back
The second to enter your sanctum
The third to play falsetto to the melody of the second
The pinky to promise my eternal faithfulness
My hand conducts our concert.

Inamorato
Approaching dawn
Sleep lingering like the blanket of the night
You slumber on
White linens drape your back
My finger traces initials in an imaginary heart
carved for eternity in English oak
Forgetting our infidelity lies in pieces on the hotel floor.

Jay’s Euphoria

Thanks to Paula Yates for permission to photograph the frame model in her pop-up shop

Forlorn I found it in the corner of Jay’s Antiques Emporia
Surrounded by military memorabilia, garden tools, and 60s psychedelia.
A departed dressmaker’s wire frame, set to fit a 50s starlet without a name.
This potential pre-Raphaelite Ophelia lay hidden in rust and dust
The buried paraphernalia of my imagined lust.
I vinegar away the ancient grime from joints oxidised by time
I lubricate and adjust the points that size the waist and bust
With Master’s hands I work away to mould a face from potter’s clay
with true artistic guile, I Max Factor in your favourite ‘Marilyn Sunset Red’ smile.
I nourish life into my design
I clothe her in the Calvin Klein dress I bought for you
Her tiny feet inside your bridal Jimmy Choo’s
I chose the wig with great affection – brunette of course
Combed and styled in consummate perfection.
I raise her up, the music’s on. The band is playing our song.
We swing and sway and in its passion perish
Transmuted into cherished fetish
I disappear among your breasts
Your body yields to my request
”You’re here! You’re here! My wanton sweet desire.
Come, come, and come again my shameless fire.”

The Wreckage of the Earth by Sheila Ash

From cuttlefish to Cutty Sark
From shopping bags to plastic parts
The waste that fills the land piles high
The sea distressed gives out a sigh
Its waves cry out in constant pain
Shoring our debris as solid rain
Upon the beach where once we tread
The remnants of life on Earth now dead

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Did you see #BluePlanet2 exposé on plastics in the environment? Then support  research to #plasticfree world. Support @CuanTec #crowdfunder for ecofriendly sustainable alternatives #noplastic #plasticpollution lnkd.in/gGGVXE9

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/pollution-kills-cuantec-saves 

Photo Credit: Nigel Mykura [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Vampire Crossing by Sheila Ash

I gorge on their succulent and juicy flesh
To satisfy my thirst
And live another night

To fly free with the wind
Across the campos and barrios
Till daybreak’s repose.

I hunt alone
Stalking the mean streets of Tijuana
Waiting for them to slip

Down the desolate desperate alley cuts
To a home which never comes.
Instead my gift -

a bloodied oblivion
Or deliverance to the Lord of the Eternal Night.

5^th February, 2018

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Not, start a fire–a scene from a restaurant by Sheila Ash

Libra, libretto, liberty,
cuba libre, labour day,
Impatient as Billy Joel is played
I drink my coffee ponderously
Looking towards the doorway
Deciding whether or not
on balance to wait or to stay.

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Referenced song lyrics
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/billyjoel/wedidntstartthefire.html 
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/billyjoel/scenesfromanitalianrestaurant.html

Renascence by Sheila Ash

The doleful old soul sat slumped in his chair
Until transformed by the skirling of the pipes and drums
Reeling and rising
Erasing the rheumy fog of the old man’s eyes
His stick began to tap the familiar beat of a long ago strathspey
The naissance of his lifelong love.

© Sheila Ash, 21 January 2018

The Toucan and the Slug by Sheila Ash

At the sign of The Toucan and the Slug,
The Frog and Parrot,
Tanya’s Twisted Toucan,
The Lazy Lizard, and
The Garden at Dreams
there’s the give and take of commerce,
of music and dance
lovers kisses linger in darkened corners
luminous trails linking past lives’
passing places on the road to eternity.

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Christmases with Uncle John by Sheila Ash

John Keer
29 Dec 1900 Aberdour, Fife Scotland
8 March 1957 Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

 

As soft as powdered snow
His white hair lay under his post man’s hat
In days before push trolleys eased their load
And high vis jackets proclaimed their presence
on dark winter mornings he walked the unlit streets
in silent solitude before dawn.

His life was spent in two uniforms
Of Institutions that defined him,
That shaped his life.
The first initially worn with pride;
The second finally worn to shield.

The first took away any semblance of the young farm lad
Who, in courage or foolhardiness, signed up to fight at fifteen
Then bravely ran to face the enemy at Ypres
His Black Watch turned to black shadow
Constantly shrieking
Hauntingly shrinking his capacity to cope
He ran from a world no longer understood
To the safety of home and family
Who never asked
Who always accepted
Their changed brother.

I never knew the innocent youth left lost somewhere in the muds of France
I only knew the older, odder, man next door, my uncle John
Who never married; who never had children.
But as we played
his potting shed my second home,
his garden pots my mud pie castle makers
I saw my joy reflected in his eyes
and on his face a momentary smile of carefree happiness.

Only later did I understand the cause of his quietness,
His shell shocked search for stillness and seclusion
And how it must have been so very hard for him each year
at the noisy crowded Post Office Christmas party
as we walked hand in hand to see Santa Claus.
As a child I simply saw his love
the fun we had unwrapping presents
I did not see the chaos clanking in his mind
his rising anxiety amidst those festive hordes
and the struggles he endured to balance his daemons for my sake
Each Season of Peace and Love.

© Sheila Ash 16^th December 2017

The Hat Girl by Sheila Ash

Shaking with shyness
she strolls silently along The Strand.
Her hands hold hats
folded from felt for daylong hours
into the night when
mercurial madness moves memories
from her maiden mind
as an earie erethism (*) enters in.

(*)   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism -Erethism is a neurological disorder affecting the whole central nervous system derived from mercury poisoning. Known as the mad hatter disease, it was common among old England felt-hatmakers who used mercury to stabilize the wool in a process called felting. This occupational exposure to mercury vapours gave rise to the expression “mad as a hatter”. Its effects include characteristic behavioural changes such as irritability, low self-confidence, depression, apathy, shyness and timidity, and with prolonged exposure to mercury vapours, delirium, personality changes and memory loss occur. People with erethism find it difficult to interact socially with others, with behaviours similar to that of a social phobia and they experience physical problems such as a decrease in physical strength, headaches, general pain, tremors and irregular heartbeat.

© Sheila Ash, 4th December 2017

Grant Me Atonement for Mesostics by Sheila Ash

A mesostic is a poem arranged so that a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text. It is similar to an acrostic, but with the vertical phrase intersecting the middle of the line, as opposed to the beginning of each line. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesostic)

Jackson Mac Low developed a type of non-intentional composition using index words to select pieces from an already existing text. This he called “diastics” or “reading through” the source. This was further developed and used extensively by the experimental composer John Cage

When Cage began to write mesostics, he adopted Mac Low's acrostic procedures, but with an important difference. Whereas Mac Low lets chance operations generate the entire text, Cage uses these operations to generate the word pool to be used and the rules to be followed, but he then fills in lines with "wing words," generated, as he repeatedly put it, "according to taste." (see http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/cage.html)

There are two types of mesostic:

· In a 50% mesostic, the given letter capitalized can occur between it and the following capitalized letter

• In a 100% mesostic it cannot

Luckily, there is a mesostic generator to help in this process http://mesostics.sas.upenn.edu which takes as its input the source text to be “read” and the word or phrase to be used as the “spine” of the resultant mesostic.

The theme of this week’s Writing Class homework was “penance” so I took as my source text the text of the “Song of Penance” http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=6040 , using as my spine phrase “Grant me atonement” and applying the 50% mesostic rule.

Song of Penance

Against You alone have I sinned,
and have often done evil before You.
You see the guilt that deserves Your curse;
see also, God, my suffering.

From You I do not hide my prayers and sighs,
and my tears are before You.
Ah, God, my God, how long should I suffer?
How long will You leave me?

Lord, treat me not according to my sins,
Treat me not according to my guilt.
I seek for You; let me find Your face,
God of forbearance and patience.

May you fill me early with Your grace,
God, Father of Mercy.
Help me for Your name's sake,
You are my God, who gladly helps.

Let me once again happily walk your path
and teach me Your sacred law
so that I can mold myself daily to Your will;
You are my God, I am Your servant.

Lord, hurry to my aid, my Protector,
and lead me on the right path.
He hears my cries, the Lord hears my prayer
and takes my soul in charge.

With minimal changes this reads -

© Sheila Ash, 26^th November 2017

Forgetfulness by Sheila Ash

A missing button left undone
My half drunk cup of coffee
now cold. Where is my scarf?

Buster paces round unsettled
“Mum, I still need my dinner money”
Where is my purse? I must be daft

to leave it in the bathroom sink
Now why’s the snake atop the cooker
when its meant to stop the front door draft?

© Sheila Ash, 20th November 2017

List poem – messages in a bottle by Sheila Ash

A bottles of bargains bought and sold
A vial of vintage vitriolic venom
A flask of famous faces frozen
A keg of kept ‘kerchiefs scorned
A jar of Jessie’s Jams and Jellies
A can of couldn’t careless confessions
A pan of pleasant people’s pooches
A bag of breakups from bastard lovers
A cup of curious cameos carried
A tube of turbulent arguments traded
A sack of sacrilegious sacraments
A dungeon of dangerous daggers drawn
A pot of portents passed over
A cylinder of silly songs and sayings
A glass of glories past and present
A drain of dying dreams

© Sheila Ash 13^th November 2017

Variations on a theme by A.L. Kennedy

A.L. Kennedy wrote an extremely short story “He didn’t. She did. Big Mistake” (1)

Here are my “Variations on a theme by A.L. Kennedy”

He didn’t. She didn’t. Big mistake.
He didn’t. She didn’t. Another baby.
He didn’t. She didn’t. Conception imminent.
He didn’t. She did. Never knew
He did. She didn’t . Conception foiled.
He did. She did. Belt ‘n’ Braces.

© Sheila Ash, 30th October 2017

(1 ) Microfiction at The University of Essex, see No. 28 https://www1.essex.ac.uk/ldev/documents/microfiction/examples.pdf

How I sound how I sound by Sheila Ash

Nursery rhymes and ballads
Humpty Dumpty and Sir Patrick Spens
remembered unmemorised
their music lost to youthful years when
70s glam rock glazed over
pop Sounds of the 60s
breaking form irreverently
riffing irregularly
improvising Weather Report’s
unconventional ground with Latin fusion
breaking bounds
living out sounds
questioning round the frame of form
releasing words to fly their own way to the page
permission granted
finally accepted
voice found

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Inspired by reading Amiri Barak’s “How You Sound??”

Football focus by Sheila Ash

He spends his Sunday mornings
rummaging car boot sales,
His Saturday nights
trawling ebay
to re-collect the programs
left in the attic of some long ago house move,
to recollect childhood Saturdays at the match
with his father.

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Inheritance by Sheila Ash

For you -
I would wield the surgeon’s knife
to cut away society’s cancer at its root,
And banish the bankers
prohibit the priests
mangle the media
polish off the politicians
cast out the corporations
and leave you an eternal Earth.

© Sheila Ash, 2017

The hands of time by Sheila Ash

Clouds breeze across the fields
Corn ripens in the sun
wrinkles crease your tissued skin
your touch tells all our memories

© Sheila Ash, 2017