Poems and Fragments

Sunlight in the Afternoon

Hello all, I am so pleased to be able to share a few poems I have recently written in the time between my studies. In many ways they touch on light, nature, and personality, as well as the act of writing itself. I especially enjoyed writing the little prose fragment at the end!

I hope you will enjoy.

Artist: Anne Magil

Sunlight in the Afternoon

the sun is almost gone
and the light
is too far 
below the trees
to slant through my window 
in clear rays.
i ought to live 
in a cave somewhere—
where that gracious light
will shine just right
through the cracks of rock,
and where a fire 
is always burning
to keep the coffee hot. 
that is something 
i could hold onto—
a warmth, a liquid warmth, 
bright and bursting:
running, swimming through my chest 
and spilling over, outward 
across these pages. 

i write from a place of warmth. 

and desert fires erupt 
lighting up 
the darkness—
to reveal a wasteland 
of wandering shamans 
and black cats.
for the life of me 
i could not put those fires out
if i tried 
even with some scratchy blanket.
they survive on my oxygen.
those flames warp and flail
and rise and rise,
and so long as i keep breathing
on these pagan pages
they will never die.

i often mistake 
the flickering of this fire
for the sound of trees 
rustling in the wind,
or the murmurings 
of my voice
for the raptured speech 
of tyrannical kings.
yes, over my papers 
i exercise a tyranny
and will let no-one else speak
or have liberty 
to question my images,
or the placement of the em dash,
or the use of oxford comma.
i run this village:
a veritable fiefdom. 
and i brutalise my villagers—
they offer me words in return
and i am pleased,
so long as they
burn themselves for me—
so long as they ache 
and yearn 
and wish for an end.
some end they find in the em dash—

---