The Gingerbread House

The Gingerbread House

Some call it quaint the liquorice windows
Glace Payne's to hide in in silence
All is quiet in the gingerbread house
each crumbling brick conceals a tear
As tiny hands try to hold together the pieces
of broken dreams and sugar coated insults
The walls enclose and threaten in a courtyard wafer
ice cold the frosting across the gaze
The children line up six at a time
tormented by the gum shoe
a pretty house the gingered bread home
Empty inside the fireside grate
And in the picture perfect garden

No bird is to be found

The Portrait

Portrait

Confusion comes in water colour

a pale imitation of the self
the riot that is in turmoil
delves deeper into the murky pallet

And blend the waters of the perception
a tale in oils on a soiled canvass
till life is art in every line
hold still the fruits of the mind

Mix mauve painted madness
into shades of depression
And all that develops
is the scream

And yet there is something
about the eyes
the windows to the soul
dark staring empty in the frame

That holds the gaze
like a butterfly pinned under glass
sinister yet inviting
the sadness to answer within

Golden Delicious

at the centre of it all an apple
bitten , once tasted never forgotten.
the journey travelled in endless circles
testing the fruit and tasting the bitter sweetness.

unravel the golden yellow peel
to reveal decades of enticing ideas
each a moist melting morsel
in the sea of a rising tide

The apple once bitten destroys the whole
temptation to decide the taster
in the name of science its pip is planted
the tree spring forth the forbidden fruit

And each child anew bites the guilded orb
only to drown in the poison of its knowledge
least we deceive ourselves forbidden is not to eat
passing idea from infant to man
spurned in the candle of a moth to a flame
We bite the apple again and again

The Flowering of little Emma

my seed has flowered in unfolding bud
her skin glows in dew and glittering rain
a child woman born in me
rooted in ordinary soil
how beautiful she became.