It was damask and silk with woven flowers,
Azure, ruby and evergreen on a backdrop of black velveteen.
Her favourite scarf.
She wore it like a shawl
skittered, off-centre a-kilter
slightly syncopated in the spirit of her slightly singular eccentricity.
Shades of sublime serendipity
Shades of anguish unfurling
Shades of Betty.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
The image is my own. ©Alison Jean Hankinson
After a long week of woe and heartache
It seemed like the world was awash with grief and misery untamed
Souls perished along the stagnant shores of servitude.
Peeling back the political truths and untruths
Until all that was left was my own song.
I walked barefoot, thoughts naked and became the essence of what I always was.
At this point in my life whilst I seek connection and meaning and desire above all else to be of value,
It is what I give that matters,
What I bring to the table, my paltry offering, and I know this so well it has become my security blanket, my safety net, my default position in life.
Do what you will, take what you want, I shall continue to sing my own song with steadfast soul and serene simplicity.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
In the light of mental health awareness week, I thought this was the right one, I have had a long and complex fortnight, but hope I am still standing tall.
d’Verse open link night offering.
It was a monstrous mistake
The earth mover mounted the middle barriers and mowed down the Nissan Micra.
Five minutes later and all would have ended well.
Instead her bloodied hands on the steering wheel, airbags inflated windscreen broken
Laughter lost amidst the debris of a terrible double tragedy.
Can I buy you a drink you look like you need one?
She laughed nervously as he set the glass in front of her,
His charm left her glassy eyed and lost at sea.
Five minutes later and it would have been someone else at the bar, someone else he would have warmed his hands on
Her soul would have been free.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
How our lives and futures hang in a balance that is so often beyond our control is something that mesmerises me. For good or bad it can be a split second either way that makes the difference and then we must ask ourselves is this all by chance? Who rolled the dice?
This is my offering for d’Verse open link night.
Two faces of me
New fragmented disturbed thoughts
Spring sings silently.
The image is of Amy H Parker who was admitted to Whittingham Asylum. This is part of the Whittingham Lives project exploring the past of Whittingham Asylum. I was intrigued by the images and the use of the mirror in many of them, apparently, it was to enable the staff to become familiar with the different profiles of the patients.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
Infinite capacity to bring love and cheer into lives
Wisdom and wonderment and desire to reach for the skies
Attributes favourable, work ethic good
Meets the job criteria and you know she should
Be the right person for the job, but you know that there are two or three
Much cheaper than she, meets your budget ties
You don’t have to look in her eyes
To see the hurt and disappointment of being smallerised.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
Smallerised is my invented word for the day, it is like pulverised but different, it is when you are made to be small because despite your value and worth it cannot be recognised in the current economic climate, so instead you are forced to be smaller and smaller and smallerer….until you are smallerised, nothing left.
Fragile strands of hope
Adrift at sea, lifeless, mere driftwood in the doldrums,
Dear God deliver us from this desperate dream
Have mercy-throw us a line.
Lift us up above the relentless rips that ride us roughshod across the sands.
How little can we live off?
Give us some crumb of comfort
Let us know that tomorrow will bring new hope on the horizon.
It is a wild place
No comfort for those who care.
We are foreigners in a flawed landscape
Fettered by our need to belong.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
We have been through much this last year, and it seems like each day brings some new horror but we have no choice but to walk forward still. It is wild and a little unkempt and uncaring and I wonder if it can ever be any better, any less wild.
This is for d’Verse poetics.
We walked to heal our hearts and minds. The wind cut through like glass but the sunset set the ripples alight on the water. It was spring and a time of birth and regeneration. New life blossoming all around. But we walked with heavy eyes.
We walk often, it gives us chance to talk, or not as the moment requires. We walk to fill our souls with the soothing spectacle of the distant mountains and listen to the gentle lap-lap and let it wash over us. We are losing a loved one who is between the autumn and winter of his life and the knowledge that he is slipping away is becoming more than a whisper on the wind.
Spring blossoms slowly
Sunset cuts through the anguish
Life melts like glacier.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for d’Verse.
In this house we live year on year
Our lives enriched by treasured trinkets we hold dear.
Each memory good or bad permeates these walls
Each sound of love and cry of pain echoed through these halls.
In this house of love we played and plotted undaunted
Our lives enriched by dreams of grandchildren and children wanted.
Each wall on strong foundations built to withstand falls
Each garden flower planted with patience and nurtured with love grows tall.
Our house is strong from loving bonds
Our legacy seeps through each foliage frond
Every brick and stone when we grow old
Carries enduring imprint of our souls.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
this is for the final day of napowrimo2108
The sun set slowly
reminded us of the glory days
When we had youth and fortitude.
We cannot all age well
Yet we all remember our youthful ways,
when we danced playfully at the murky edge of maturity.
This body frail as it is now
was a totem, an emblem of our love and lives together,
hallowed in the summers of our spiritual enlightenment before we had children of our own.
The sun sets slowly.
Death washes over us,
creeps through the open window in the dead of night.
©Alison Jean Hankinson.
napwrimo 18 Day 29 the penultimate.
This is for d’Verse open link night.
I miss lavender
It attracted the bees and reminded me of home
When home was half a world away and beyond the realms of reality.
I miss home still, not a place or sense of belonging
But the physical space that keeps us safe from the rest of the world
The place where it is okay to be nothing to nobody in a non-descript kind of way.
I miss being valued and making a contribution that is deemed worthwhile
Beyond the futile measures of a financially strapped world or work.
Where experience, age and wisdom lies currently forgotten alongside dandelion dreams on the kerbside of parsimony.
I miss the bright star of hope and the sense of celestial justice
That came from the certainty that there was some unwritten moral code
Whereby staunch steadfast endeavour would be rewarded with reciprocal remuneration.
I miss being able to do what I do best
Taking my place in the workforce
Having my tools at my desk to bring the world alive for the future generations.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for Day 28 Napowrimo
Hues of Hankinson 