Mausoleum

Let’s start off with a poem.  This started off as an idea that we are ourselves preserved monuments to decay, that we are locked into our mortality.  So, I guess it’s not a cheery one!  See what you think.

Mausoleum

The moon’s pale eye stains glass,

Casts dust in shifting shades of blue and grey.

Furtive scratches break from shadowed corners,

Shapes skitter through spiders’ ragged homes.

 

Darker shadows hold in etched masonic creases,

Posterity telling lies in stone:

Beloved father, mother, niece, brother.

 

Silver-fingered ivy plucks bricks from mortar,

Grave-born creepers clutching at the void above.

The yew tree frowns as headstones swell,

Ringed mutability made guardian,

Roots snagged on human limbs below.

The spade stands tired by the empty hole

And dreams of digging dirt.

 

But posterity is vanity:

With each of us locked up in cells,

The cells aren’t stone but flesh;

And bone-deep tombs are what

Bind us in our mortal crypts

To the steady pulse of time.

A blank page

So.  Time for a blog reboot.  It’s been bloody ages since I wrote anything on here.

Why the overhaul?  Well, for the last nine or so months, I’ve been taking a creative module with the Open University.  I’ve decided to use this is as a place to post a few bits of my scribblings – short stories, poems, and anything else that blots out from the nib of my pen and onto the page.

I know that my writing can be improved – I’m taking another writing module from October – but I hope having somewhere to put my words might encourage me to write more of them.  My tutor kept telling me to work on finding my voice; I can’t say I disagree.  I know what I’m writing isn’t quite polished enough yet, but I feel like I’ve already come a long way, and perhaps this will help me chart any progress I hope to make.  At the moment, I’m pushing, pulling and pressing on the edges of my writing – in short, I’m practicing.

Please don’t savage my work, but any constructive criticism or other feedback is welcome.