Skip to main content

Patterns



I am that pattern she so loved in her life
Now I am tucked in around the sides
As she always liked me to be
She quickly named me
her Cadbury dark chocolate blanket
When things got painfully
Arthritis annoyingly bad
Her aches and pains I dulled
I was her safety net cover
giving her a happy hug of heat
I happily, willingly, lovingly
helped her love her life again
She looked to me many times
for warmth, solace and comfort
When others had without thought
her carelessly abandoned
I was forever there for her
I thought I always would be
She soothingly snuggled
beneath my deep dark brown folds
Now she lies still and cold
beneath my tenebrous brown
soft rose scattered spread
My raspberry pink roses once
matched her rosy cheeks
But now they look out of place
against her cold drawn,
pallid pale expressionless face.
She often times
Said hello to me and then
called me her beautiful blanket
of red raspberry stars
Before this
those very raspberry stars
matched her gilded glow,
before this they matched
her gliding glowing stellar wit
Now I am left like a bitter black
chocolate earthen shroud
Wrapped around her
Small shrivelled
Half-size wasted frame
I don’t want to be used
by anyone else any more
It was she who gave me
the fillip of life and energy
to be more than just a mere blanket.
Please I ask this of you
after I have helped
her finally like this
don’t just put me by
Or store me
in a cupboard high
I do not want to be that forgotten thing
that once was and never again will be
For I never once more
to her will be that mantle
of soft comforting emollient pleasure
Or to be that of welcome warmth
and of cosy consolation
I will no more be any of them
For I am left now,
Like a loyal sentry
to be that floral
soft shroud of pattern
on her death bed.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Protein Man of Oxford Street- Stanley Owen Green.

I wrote this Obituary piece for The Guardian about Stanley Green while I was an undergraduate at Goldsmiths' College.  I contacted The Guardian and asked them if I could submit it for publication. It was sent off to them and I waited in eager anticipation for their reply. It was published on Wednesday January 26th 1994,   the Editor  made no changes or additions except by adding some photographs (the photographs used here are later additions by me): "A Consuming Passion.... Stanley Owen Green who has died aged aged 78, was that tall thin man with steel-rimmed glasses who marched it seemed for an eternity up and down London's Oxford Street. It was his banner that made him famous, held high above his head and proclaiming "LESS LUST FROM PROTEIN" in large white letters. Underneath the banner he endured the taunts of sticky schoolchildren and the spittle of office workers alike, to bring his unique, indeed puzzling message to the people of London. He later wate...

Childhood

I don't remember any of the good times,  They were few and far between, Only the bad times, The three week sulks, The temper tantrums,  The silence of meal times, The brooding menace of each waking day, The not knowing how each innocent word, Would fall on those temper attuned ears, The rare smile, The rare laughter. Above all,  The silence.

At War with the Invisible: The Deadly Miasma

The Reverend Henry Whitehead said a short and mumbled prayer over the body of John James Morters and quickly re-covered his own nose and mouth with a scented hankie. He turned and nodded to the undertakers. They took the shrouded body and half threw it into the waiting cart. They didn’t want to hang around in a cholera house; neither did the Reverend. He had attended a few such deaths recently. He thought there were far too many deaths. He walked out into the stench filled air of Soho’s Broad Street, took a short breath and covered his face again. The undertaker coughed and forcefully spat out a gobbet of phlegm, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the Reverend, ‘’Pologies Sir. It’ll be the stink what gets ‘em too Sir. Taken a few from round ‘ere.’ ‘I don’t subscribe to the theory of bad air my good man. It may stink but it carries no disease.’ ‘That’s as well as like Sir. But we seen ‘em all off. Usually from places such as this stinking hole.’ ‘Have you had m...