She's the reason I wear pink shoes

This poem is for a friend of mine from way back, who I have lost touch with. Always remember her when I wear these.

She’s the reason I wear pink shoes

You should have seen the shop –

deep marine blue all over the front.

If her tan was good

she’d wear bright yellow

to make the contrast with the blue.

And she’d make sure her hair colour

was the correct shade of red,

real red, not auburn.

She sold teapots,

all white, with coloured dots –

blue, red, yellow, green.

And jugs for milk, butter dishes to match.

Cups, saucers and mugs in primary colours,

with spots and stripes.

Even her scrubbing brushes had colours –

red and green bristles shone out of willow baskets.

There were throws in autumn garb –

rust, Virginia creeper scarlet, acer and beech brown

and cushions to scatter like falling leaves.

Candles in all colours

some even rainbows,

with holders to match or contrast.

Customers touched things,

they couldn’t resist

picked them up

put them back askew.

A tight smile

a taut thank you as they left.

She’d wait until they had gone,

the door closed behind them

and she’d put everything back

where it should be

perfect

it was her favourite word.

*First published in The Writers’ Café Magazine, April 2018:

 https://thewriterscafemagazine.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/the-writers-cafe-magazine-issue-7-shoes/

Rest in the arms

Here's one from my second collection, Breakfast in Bed.... love poems and poems about love. This one was first published by WritersCafe. Links below.

Rest in the arms

the weight we carry

 is love

(from Song, by Allen Ginsberg)

I remember the hard muscles

of your thighs

across mine,

your arm heavy on my breasts.

I am pinned

by you,

a little afraid

of your bulk on me

but as I lie here

hardly able to breathe

I don’t want

you to move.

I am comforted by this load

this holding

that I thought would never be again.

While our warm bodies cool,

                exposed    

                by a dragging duvet

I watch moon patterns

on the wall

                striped shadows of blinds

and I think of Ginsberg –

                the weight of the world

                                is love

and as I know I won’t sleep yet

                I try

to recall more words

                the burden of life

                                is love

I hear the steadiness of your breath

as you sleep on me

                rest in the arms

                                of love

First published here: https://thewriterscafemagazine.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/the-writers-cafe-magazine-issue-5-love-music/

Breakfast in Bed, published by Indigo Dreams, Autumn 2019. https://www.indigodreams.co.uk/jackie-biggs/4594692749

'Fiona'

Listening to one of the black cab rapist's first victims talk on radio about her ordeal and then reading about the latest court case, when the woman we call 'Fiona' came face to face with her attacker at a Judicial Review hearing, prompted this poem.


‘Fiona’

I saw you in court

tried to imagine how you may be feeling

putting yourself out there

a victim

and then he turned up

a few yards away

you weren’t expecting that

how would that feel?

‘He’s been in my head for 15 years,’  you said

and there he is again

in front of you

he’s behind glass

but there was glass between you before

in that cab

they said you were not

a credible witness

‘A black cab driver

just wouldn’t do that.’

But he did

and you have lived with him in your head

for 15 years

believing that you let all the others down

those hundreds

who went through that

after you

because someone decided

you were not believable

This poem was first published here: http://www.poetry24.co.uk/

 

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/challenge-worboys-release/

BBC Radio 4 Today programme clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05xcm63

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/john-worboys-pictured-arriving-high-court-judge-orders-attend/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/21/john-worboyspolice-failed-victims-black-cab-rapist-supreme-court/

Sevilla

I was pleased to have this poem published along with two others in the 'Love & Music' edition of The Writers' Cafe website on February 14th this year. I started writing it when were by the Rio Guadalquivir in Sevilla in October 2015. On the day it was published by The Writers' Cafe we were back there!


Sevilla

(The labyrinths

formed by time

dissolve

from ‘And After’, Federico García Lorca)

Sun on the river

lovers sit on the wall

                (boats row by, turn

                and go back again)

waves slap on the wall

lovers laugh together

                (across the river the cafes

                are opening)

 

songs in the air

lovers kiss on the strand

moon on the river

lovers embrace under the bridge

                (across the river the cafes

                are closing)

boys play guitars under trees

lovers dance beneath stars

 

First published:  https://thewriterscafemagazine.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/the-writers-cafe-magazine-issue-5-love-music/

Statistics of hope

Photo: UNHCR

Sixty-five million people are displaced in the world today. Many of them are in camps, unable to move on.

Every three seconds some one else has to leave their home to flee war, climate change, famine, violence.

This poem was first published on the poetry24 website (link below).  I was prompted to re-post the poem here after seeing Ai WeiWei's stunning film Human Flow, which draws on the same statistics I use, as calculated by UNHCR - http://www.unhcr.org/uk/

Statistics of hope

Count to three: one   two   three, there’s another

one   two   three, and another    displaced person,

one every three seconds, somewhere in the world.

One   two   three. In Chad a woman travels in a cart

30km to a mobile clinic, collapses 300m short.

A doctor checks Bless, a seven month old girl,

suspected malaria.  One   two   three.

In Tripoli: women are detained, 30 in a small room,

one blanket each, they’ve been there months,

it may become years; no access to law, no medical care.

Fifty-eight refugees adrift in the Med in one small boat.

412 rescued from the water, escaping

Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh.

One  two   three: one little boy sits alone

on a floor in a corridor in a former resort in Greece,

now used for refugees needing mental health care.

In Nairobi 400 people each month arrive at one clinic.

In Nigeria 45,000 refugees pack one camp

for displaced people from Cameroon.

One  two  three. Gloria, aged 11 years,

displaced in Malawi, HIV and TB positive.

8,000 in a camp near Raqqa, Syria,

there for months, years.

Hundreds of thousands from Myanmar

seek shelter from the monsoon  in rice fields in Bangladesh.

They wait for permission to move, drowning in hope.

One in every 113 people on the planet is a refugee.

Someone is displaced every three seconds.

One  two  three. 65million displaced people

in the world, now,

one   two  three

Debora Njala, 18, HIV and TB positive, in Malawi, says:

“I will achieve my dreams and the future is bright.”

One  two  three. A man, a woman, two children

in a camp in Lesvos, not allowed

to leave for mainland Europe.

The father, Karon says:

“It is my true dream that my children will live

in a country without war, without bloodshed.

This is the only thing I wish for.”

All it takes is the will of the developed world …

one  two  three …

*

In the time it takes to read this poem 100 people in the world will have become displaced.

Here's a recording of me reading this poem:
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1r22jQsGbMK

If you want to read more poetry that is inspired by current news events poetry24 is one of the places to go. Read more here: http://www.poetry24.co.uk/