Apocalyptically Yours

Apocalyptically Yours

When long necked cranes puncture the sky
feathers flutter and fall from its’ bladed arm
and below an overworked washing machine whirls
growling gravel in a bucket; belching.

The monsters are busy today.

In response to the carnage trees uproot and walk away
and desolate rainforests weep in despair
for their embryonic brothers
encapsulated in concrete; suffocating.

The monsters are busy again today.

Hidden in an earth layered bunker
a lava heart lies waiting for the moment
that the cockroaches set fire to my flesh.
And after acid rain baptises my grey remains,
their steel shelled cousins will return; creeping
like armoured tanks to predate on putrid flesh.

The monsters will be busy that day; retreating.

Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012 

Photography: Talia Hardy 2011.

Paying for It

Paying for It

 Anne Sommers works all day giving demonstrations
and returns home too tired to tend to him or
listen to his heated remonstrations.
Harold is hungry and cold and food is in the fridge
but risks the short trip to the convenience store
where chemically enhanced candy entices him
in and strips him of fifty dollars and more.

 And once home with his pleasured stomach sated
with guilty contraband he’ll softly say
‘had a nice day, dear’ whilst dishing up
her frozen microwaved supper he’s slaved
over all day, oblivious to the sore
developing under the skin of his penis.

 Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012

Photography: ADFFTS

Throughout her Ages

Throughout her Ages

Wedding day, a bouquet tied with silk
faces in the crowd she crushes it
a bright beginning, bells tolling.

Twenty-first birthday, another bouquet
tied with green twine from the garden
too many spaces and ethereal faces.

Their silver day, a lavish bouquet
tied with bloody barbed wire
coupled with a card, the name not her own.

Too many spaces and ethereal faces
a cloying bouquet tied with clarity
and dirty petals long blown underfoot.

Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012

Photography: Tomasz KuranWikimedia Commons

The Poet’s Bubble

Amorphous reflections encapsulated in the ephemeral and poetic words drift diaphanous like bubbles in the brain.

Talia Hardy 2012

The object of reflection is invariably the discovery of something satisfying to the mind which was not there at the beginning of the search.

Ernest Dimnet -(1866-1954)

Peyote Pete

Peyote Pete

Shuttered up from smoke from the chimney   
this pallid youth chews buttons for breakfast
and shrinks back from the guy on the porch.

In sunlight his amorphous softness
is less menacing; the grimacing
and insidious sniggering subsides

 ‘He is a living gin’ Pete tells me
‘you can tell by de whites of his acid green eyes
and the thump of his Frankenstein boots’

Again he hears the voices inside and
shuttered up by smoke, his hands to his throat
curls up into a ball of asphalt screaming

 ‘agh de fumes, de fumes, agh de fumes!’

Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012

Photography: Eric Lachey

Author’s note: This Poem was concieved through the found poetry method and is derived from John Updike’s Couples p.77

Oya

Oya

Amid castellated crumbling dunes,
sage sea grass pockets and emerald gorse
cut sharp shapes along a slate path
wound around a driftwood hut.

Over its’ living roof a skeletal tree
bends low in deference to a wild dog rose
clinging for purchase on its’ rising root.
We two are like this often, he and me.

Along a mile long stretch of sand where
beach umbrellas once fluttered coquettishly,
dark racing waves explode across a wet expanse
and screeching gulls beg for mercy under shot up surf.

After the thunderous ebb where winds once whipped up
laden clouds promising Shango’s passion,
mauve mackerel clouds drift adagio
amorphously through flaccid minds.

We two are like this often, he and me,
damp flesh hidden in hollow shadows,
his head pillowed between dusky mounds
and his sweet salt like crystals on my lips.

Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012

Photography for illustration purposes: Charlie Snyder

Under an October Sun

Under an October Sun

Ribbons of light fragment an aqueous surface
and sky shot with shards of sherbet lemons
dance to the heave and thump of white horse hooves

And the footholds of purple pebbles
a path over sand fleas in shifting shale
track memories of childhood long ago.

At the water’s edge an empty beverage bottle
storm blown, side rocking, with red cap complete
a vacuous space; memories of long ago.

And brown eyes clouded and far sighted with age
that seek not the angst of clams harbouring fake pearls
close soft against a fizzing October sun.

For Evalyn

Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012

Road Kill

Road Kill

Ray’s back home after another day on the bins,
and in the kitchen, with a knife in hand he’s ranting,
chanting yet another disconnected mantra.

She has long since learnt to change the channel,
although he monopolises the remote and
his mouth keeps moving, even though the sound is on mute.

But today, the road-kill rabbit has something different to say
as its’ head rolls, disconnected  into the rubbish bin;
its’ body a position from the Kama Sutra.

This time his wife doesn’t miss the word cancer
and returns her attention to the entrails on her table.

Copyright©Talia Hardy 2012. 

The Catch of the Day

The Catch of the Day

Fresh from his fishing ketch docked
as fingers of sun touched a dwindling night sky,
on a plate, grains of rice profuse with yellow
provide a playground for pink prawns and green peas
in an alluring game of hide and seek.

To accompany it, in slender stemmed rose tinted glasses,
Rioja offers the promise of orgasmic bliss.

And in her remiss, fair Saffron, with wisps
of hair framing her face and feathering
across the pink of her cleavage
feels not, oiled tentacles of the octopus
projecting through a languorous smile and
encircling an English Senorita’s waist.

Copy right©Talia Hardy 2012 

Artwork and Photography: Lindsey Bieda

Out in the Cold

Out in the Cold

 

Under our bed there are two suitcases stacked and packed and tonight,

Someone sleeping, is breathing over the back of me.

His hand, hot, hangs heavy across my thigh

and I, lie here, finding it hard to sleep

and wondering why, the fire between us no longer exists.

 

And why, I am left like this, reduced to 

languorous self-manipulation.

Whilst he, breathes heavy, hot, across the back of me.

 

His sulphur breath smells of so many years, 

of so many years of one-for-the-road beers

and it feels, like this man, with his hand, hot

heavy across my thigh, is burning me,

as he dreams of the woman who is not his wife.

 

And I lie here, like this, aching, waiting

for the first fingers of dawn to come.

Copyright©TaliaHardy 2012

Photography Katie Brady