.
humble as the tallow candle meant all along to melt down
and gutter out to greasy spot not meant to be mentioned
i accept
.
the yellow gold treasure of gun-metaled memories almost all spent
dripping from combs of our own, the honey-tressed kisses he meant
i kept
.
i toast
the ghosts soaked into lemon-sweet laughter hovering in corridors down
peeling papers and lacy window voiles soaked in sunlight and dust motes
notes of zesty yellow-labeled chardonnay that is our favouite, stilled as
i listen
out for the yellow-beaked black-birded words sung out
in yellow syllables and helium hieroglyphs i cannot hold on to
he holds my yellow-gold pony tail and pulls my throat back accept his kisses
i melt
into golden-yellow moments
i craved
the lumpiest custards he made
he lobbed it over dapple-apple
crumbles and Sunday buttered
scrambles, later the mustard gravies
i raved
about splatted over stacks of potatoes mashed with saffron threaded
pomegranate-herbed experiments to all and sundry
but who would have listened me, but him, only
i tasted
.
this mess
this mess
.
i love him to the moon
and back
he spoons my amber-brazen back
i curl into his tawny arms
and swoon
.
he lived in a caravan back then
gypsy eyed, crimson sashed and yellow patterned bandana
tight about his long black hair
stranger then
.
he pulled me in
i came undone
as he mouthed
i-love-you, i-love-you’s
gasping in golds and blues
he played his songs for me
and meant the lyrics that slipped from his tongue
yellow, warm and precious as the sands
that slipped through our fingers
i linger
.
i remember
we made our home together; a hive alive with
hums and tongues
and sticky
sunlit minutes ticking along with happiness
.
his kisses, ah, every one meant something
sovereigns spent on my skin, golden-sheafed in archives
i kept
i keep
.
what is it all for?
.
i wander corridors that are tarmacked in song
i mime in time with dandelions cluttering verges
where ordered double yellow lines run along
side me running for my life; it all blurs and merges
i cannot stop it
.
forgive me
forgive me
.
i sick
up bile-clotted clumps in the toilet sink sink sinking
white painted walls floors yellow-
eyed squinting out
of slits trying hard not to read the signs
the dotted traffic-cone moans, the licence-plated
screams, the cats’-eye gleams that slowly drift
off road for good good good-gracious me
a canary i am wary of wavers in and out of sight
.
he holds back the blackness
he holds the pale -yellow gold of my pony tail
in his fist, loosely
kisses the back of my sallow neck
holding on for our precious life
trying to forget the sword-worded doctor
who meant to be gentle but wasn’t
he catches the ochre-tinted whites behind the curtains
of my eyes, of his wife
he latches onto the kisses
while
bile-butter cups in his hands
he smiles, not bitter
never backing away from…
never changing his spots from
the first to the last, from
those first golden days in his caravan
til perhaps this last yellowed one
still, i am
humble
.
btw
april 21 2024
Pinewood Park, Rousden, East Devon, UK
.
Day 21 prompt-: write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color. Some examples for you – Diane Wakoski’s “Blue Monday,” Walter de la Mare’s “Silver,” and Dorothea Lasky’s “Red Rum.”
barbaraturneywielandpoetess 