The other day as I was walking home through a housing estate I was watching a blacbird and his wife dancing and hopping about. Then suddenly something moved in my vision and I saw a woman standing outside a house smoking. I turned to go but for some reason I looked back, and she was gone. Hard to explain why, but this really freaked me out at the time and I decided she must have been a ghost (not sure I actually believe in ghosts but sometimes I let my imagination take me places). This poem was the result.
This is about 3rd draft. When I write a poem it usually starts off as verbal diarrhoeawhere I just get the initial spark down and then the other ideas that flow from it. Then I stick the bits of the verbal diarrhoea together to make draft 2, and then draft 3 refines it further. This all happens very quickly. Then I leave the poem for up to a period of several months and come back to it and tweak it, although by this point it is rare that I rewrite the whole thing (might start something new based on it though). So this one needs to be left for a while to incubate, but here it is as it is now.
Woman in a Blue Anorak
She snatches at the corners of eyes.
Courting blackbirds before her capoeira
their tails treacle and syrup fans.
Her face is blank flesh, melted like ice.
She flicks a cigarette, and as the ash falls like dice
she shifts her weight sideways and
the blackbirds switch to samba.
She could be made of sand,
disintegrating in a breath, leaving only
stiffened-water folds of navy PVC.
She snatches at the corners of eyes.
She flicks her cigarette, and ash falls like slo-mo dice.
Copyright (c) remains with me.
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