She’s not an easy person to live with.
At home she follows me from room to room.
When I go out she tags along:
to the college where I work as a library assistant,
to the supermarket where I buy my single serve ready meals,
to the cemetery where I put flowers on my mother’s grave.
However fast I walk she’s always right beside me
and she never
ever
stops talking.
At night I lie awake,
her voice droning on through the wall
that separates my room from hers.
Lately I’ve stopped going out.
I sit on the sofa with the curtains drawn.
The sound of the TV muffles her voice.
She arrived three years ago, not long after my mother died.
I never even put an ad in the paper;
she just turned up on the doorstep one day.
‘Hi,’ she said, holding out her hand for me to shake.
‘I’ve come to live with you. My name’s Phobia.’
© Helen Whittaker http://theduckside.com
Posted in: Free verse, Non-rhyming, Poetry.
Tagged: mental illness
One August afternoon two children play a game
Of knuckle bones against a shady garden wall.
The older, Claudia, berates her little brother
For cheating all the time. ‘Now Max, you must play fair!’
Young Max’s eyes well up, his bottom lip sticks out.
Beneath his breath he calls his sister by a name.
A couple of millennia have passed since then,
And on another August afternoon I stare
At casts of two small bodies lying in a frame
Of stones. They hold each other tight and at their feet,
Some knuckle bones lie waiting to resume the game.
Nearby a teenage boy pulls closer to his mother.
Our instinct in the face of death’s always the same:
We cling to what we value most in life – each other.
© Helen Whittaker http://theduckside.com
Posted in: Bref double, Poetry, Rhyming.
Tagged: death · history · love
Professor Dagmar Itty mopped his brow
And squinted at his notes – a cryptic scrawl.
He cleared his throat and in a nervous voice
Addressed the overflowing lecture hall.
‘This morning’s talk should really be about
Cycloidal drives and epicyclic gears,
But since I’ll be retiring Friday week
I thought I’d stray off topic.’ (Raucous cheers)
‘I’ve been a fellow here since eighty-nine.
The day that I arrived I made a vow
To spend my leisure time indulging in
A project I’ve kept secret – until now.’
The students all leant forward in their seats.
Professor Itty’s hobby was the buzz,
A subject of debate; a hundred bets
Were placed this week alone on what it was.
‘So let me share with you,’ proclaimed the Prof,
‘This formula I’ve found; it’s very neat,
Although you’d be advised to stand well back,
Because it does produce a bit of heat.’
I tried to follow everything he did
But it was so involved I soon lost track.
I looked around at everybody else;
Like me, their eyes were glazed, their jaws were slack.
Then suddenly a blinding flash of light,
A sonic boom, a muffled cry of ‘Duck!’
And when I stood back up the sight I saw
Punched out my breath and left me thunderstruck.
A hundred thousand glowing points of light
Hung silently about us in the hall
Each one a slightly different shape and size –
Some spiral, some elliptical, but all
Rotated slowly as they moved apart.
‘Each one’s a galaxy,’ explained the Prof.
‘I’ve just designed a whole new universe,
And now I need some serious time off.’
© Helen Whittaker http://theduckside.com
Posted in: Other rhyming, Poetry, Rhyming.
Tagged: humour · sci-fi
