Insert Yourself

Writing is predictable, or unexpected
risky or safe. But super risky writing
is the original, vulnerable work of the edges;
That’s the interaction that makes it valuable.
It says something we didn't already know;
new truth is not something we’d have
guessed, you were about to say. It surprises us.

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

Factory Ship

Ghostly silhouettes
stand, wait at first light,

for a smouldering apparition
for a wraith on the tide,
for a chimney to rise;

for a breath of smoke
to smudge at,

to erase, to displace
the remains of this night.

© Emma Rich
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Misremembering a life

Rumpled dark blue sheets,

a perfect cup of tea.

A bouquet of Tiger lilies on his desk;

her hands knitting whilst she listened to the BBC.

A pair of dark glasses,

Rachel’s slow smile.

A series of photographs;

disconnected short films,

The failure of false maps;

their loss in transmission;

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

Her first kiss

After forty days voyaging into the light

I knew the touch of a mother’s wing, brushing my face.

She opened her heart, offered a breast.

Eighty years pass; she begins her journey into darkness.

My parted lips, soft with sorrow’s breath, linger on her cooling flesh -

my last kiss

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

When I needed you most

Abandoned, marooned,
pacing dusty footprints by moonlight,
listening to that song, on continuous loop,
all summer;

that summer
spent watching, as a world stopped turning,
the light dimming, daylight
slipping from my window.

What did you
see?

Who were you
with?

Did they remind you
of me?

Where were you?

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

23rd December, 2010

In Tesco’s, from the tanks of gasping fish, with barely room to swim, he chooses three.

Our shopping is on the back seat.

“Don’t worry; must be very fresh; Polish tradition. We eat when the little star comes on Christmas Eve.”

Until then the condemned carp are in the bath.

© Sophia Roberts
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A complex traveller

We found a rampant garden of delights in the conservatory, pressed against the panes: photographs of houses and people we didn’t recognise, air mail letters from Indian lovers, antique lace collars, babies shoes, an engraved Dunhill lighter, sixteen five-year diaries… 

And we’d assumed her effects wouldn't fit inside one suitcase.

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

When our lips accidentally stuck together

I should have applied extreme moistening,

used generous quantities of warm water

and pressure from inside the mouth,

systematically peeled and rolled

then avoided swallowing the glue;

I learnt the hard way:

pulling away too quickly

it adhered to the inside of my cheek.

There’s an art to coming apart.

  

© Sophia Roberts

All rights reserved

16, Lighthouse Road

Leaving, I consider how

the name of a destination sometimes describes a road
irrespective of the direction you move along it

and how

travelling away, towards the rest of the world
I can pull a beacon, with its quick, silent glances of radiance
further and further away into the unfamiliar. 

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

As I take a moment

to look deeper

to see what’s really happening

- at shape,

line, texture,

balance, proportion,

the shadow and the substance -

I pause, looking away

- taking stock

paying relaxed attention -

when a metaphor ignites understanding:

I connect with it; it connects with me.

I am blessed:

an unearned, unmerited

moment of grace.

© Sophia Roberts

All rights reserved

The Cleaver Cobham Players present the mad, comic opera, ‘Pusher’ (not recommended for minors)

I know Thursday night is traditionally billed as 'Mistakes Night',

with most of the cast coming on late, drunk, half-dressed, or a combination of all three;

but Bill Weston, come the first performance, entered stage left - not right -

bearing a syringe, whispering, with some menace,

“Trust me, I’m a butcher!” 

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

A Cautionary Tale for Writers of Children’s Stories

Tickle a nascent rebellious streak with magic or confusion,

with stories about running away, joining the circus,

flying an airplane, stealing a car…

But remember to caution;

all choices have consequences.

Fail to ensure your characters always

come back home, before bedtime,

and you may live to write another tale.

© Sophia Roberts

All rights reserved

It is all over, between us?

Will I/won’t I give you one more chance?

Strictly speaking I’m much too old for this.

No; I’m no longer much inclined to dance.

Come on, this is hardly a fine romance.

But I start to remember, reminisce…

Will I/Won’t I give you one more chance?

Moonlight and roses, Rome, Venice, France

- for a time.  When did we last kiss?

No; I’m no longer much inclined to dance.

Maybe goodbye - not another glance.

Dare I fall down into the abyss?

Will I/won’t I give you one more chance?

You are a boil that I should lance

full of poison I mistook for bliss.

No; I’m no longer much inclined to dance.

Oh, yes my lovely I’m taking a stance:

no more questioning. It won’t be amiss.

Will I/won’t I give you one more chance?

No; I’m no longer much inclined to dance.

© Sophia Roberts

All rights reserved

A deafening boom over Colorado

After Hunter’s passing
his ashes were fired out of a cannon
accompanied by fireworks and ‘Spirit in the Sky’.

We sent him soaring heavenward, fuelled by hope. 

What he wanted.

Hadn’t he said, “I hate to advocate drugs,
alcohol, violence
or insanity …
but [nonetheless] they've always worked for me.”

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

The ashes of gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson were blown into the sky from a cannon in Aspen, Colorado

Mae West’s Audience with Pope John Paul II

God does not look at external things but at the soul.

     Sure, it's the life in your men that matters.

Treat men as objects of love, not as objects for use.

     You know when I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad…

     Is that a gun in your pocket?

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

Unlucky for some

Located between yellow and blue, it’s the east and sunrise,

Ireland and Islam; it’s Venus, emeralds and jade; hope,

spring and growing grass, leaves, vitality, regeneration;

youth, immaturity, inexperience; envy, monstrous jealousy -

not forgetting my neighbour’s potential:

his brows that meet in the middle over his evil green eyes.

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

We’re Loving it!

A stick of rock in her gob?   But, I don’t wanna promote a raunchy suck.  She’s not about a Flake experience.  That only leaves Jo Public with a bad taste, see?

I’m after subtle sex.

I don’t want fifty shades darker.  This ain’t a new Graham Greene story.

New Brighton.

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

A streak of Light

Sometimes what we see is just surplus to the gods’ requirements - waste;

mere cosmic rubbish.   But this debris – hurled hard - reflects Mars’ 

     profound distaste

for Venus’s tasteless new underwear (her neon stockings, suspenders and 

     bra).

Over the heavens it goes; momentarily recycled and become a new 

     shooting star.

© Sophia Roberts

All rights reserved

Harvest Moon

diminishing daylight
farmers gather last crops -
the sky thickens with dust

above the horizon
a low-slung sphere looms -
the colour of slow burning fire

light of the sinking sun reflected -
a huge mirror suspended

pulsing silhouettes wng it home south -

backlit migrating birds
emitted equinox moonlight -
a blood-red Japanese lantern

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

Well Met by Moonlight

His (he dares to) dark eyes have etched themselves
and sent quite, yes,
blatant messages.

I’m overcome by a flood of emotions.
I’m fox-trotting, doing a quick-slow tango,
dancing barefoot with sequinned toes.

I think this – may be it
in the middle of the Quiet years
– half drowned in dreams.

© Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved