Sky Dressing

Sky dressing

Fold me in your turquoise sky

Wrap me in your gold

On my feet those creamy clouds

I’m never growing old

Charcoal on my fingertips

In my hair some purple streaks

Evening’s scarlet for my lips

Amber locks and widow’s peak

Around my neck fine wisps of white

Upon my lids some silver stars

Lighting up the darkest night

Venus, Jupiter and Mars

Fold me in your turquoise sky

Just look up and watch me fly

FRIDAY NIGHTS

FRIDAY NIGHTS

Dolly-mixture daddy
With our Friday-night treats
With your world-weary eyes
And your sweet, beery breath
...
“Hello Mary dear”, you call down the hall
“And how are you my love?”
As you lay your clumsy hand
On our tired mum’s back

Eggs are fried briskly, bacon flipped
But there’s tension in her moves
Our dad’s a little silly
Our mum is not
Mum’s just tired with her life’s lot!

Sit down soppy daddy
As we lie on our bellies
Sit down dad as we squabble over sweets
Sit down Bill here’s your tray - Your Friday fry-up
And here’s your Daddie's sauce
At the end of the week.

Meg Marsden copyright

Who is Sylvia, what is she?

For Sylvia   (Sylvia Plath died 11^th February 1963.)

The freezing, icy winter’s breath

The snow of ‘63

It pained your heart, your bones, your flesh

That isolating February.

With blood-red lips you’d bit his cheek

And he’d set free your hair

How could you then destroy his books?

How could he just have left you there?

Impassioned, magic Sylvia

So fierce, so strong, so hurt

You wrote the poems one on one

Your captivating verse.

  

If it had been a summer’s day

Perhaps, perhaps, maybe

Some gentle warmth would melt the pain

Release the grip of agony.

And when we hear recordings

Your voice all round and strong

The English cadences ring-ring

Yet fifty years have gone.

For fifty years your poetry

Black lakes, red roses, blood

You gifted us your legacy

Word drenching, blesséd flood.

Meg Marsden copyright

When Alice met Dorothy

She looks up and there are garnets

embedded in the sky

Ten rubies in her toenails

A purple egret flying by

Her thoughts are all encased

in rainbow bubbles overhead

And there’s a polar bear in jim-jams

Just lying there in bed

      

The swan is all benevolence

Upon its silvery pond

And waves its gilded wings at her

As she makes her way along

the winding path of diamonds

All studded in the ground

And she hears the sound of angels

Singing rock songs all around

There sitting eating guava fruit

A marmoset with topaz eyes

And then a turquoise ibex

alarms her when it flies

Five unicorns come prancing

with pearly glistening horns

A badger’s wearing emeralds

But looking quite forlorn

  

Then a spotted salamander

Blinks an opal lid

and reaches out to shake the hands

Of sequined Sid the squid

A jewel encrusted beehive

drips its golden honey

And Midas-Queen thinks to herself

Ooh, if that were only money!

Then they form a sapphire circle

And do a random, little jig

The clouds have turned to candy floss

And there’s a grunting sugar pig

But no! they’re waving claws and paws

Oink-Oink, tweet-tweet, goodbye

And gone, they all just vanished

In the twinkling of an eye.              

by Meg Marsden ©

Wheels and Me .....

 This was me when still at Convent School and before I started having more

 majorly conflicts with machinery!

Reading recently of my daughter Sian's journey on Martha's Vineyard on a tandem 24 years ago put me in mind of my own tandem experiences and others.

I would have been 17 years old and together with my first love we were duffel-coat wearing, CND supporting, Bertrand Russell followers with strong beatnik leanings.   We read James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Sartre, Francoise Sagan and The Outsider by Colin Wilson.   At the time, 1961, coffee bars were the place to hang out and our favourite was Birmingham's La Boheme.  Dark and moody with prints of real paintings on the wall and the constant gurgle of the first espresso machines serving up coffee in smoky see-through glass cups and saucers;  we would stay there for hours, smoking, talking and plotting of love and peace.

We got a tandem and together on weekends we left the grime of the city for the nearest small rivers and fields in nearby Warwickshire.   I lived in a very small bedsit in Handsworth and my new kitten came along with us in a basket on the front of this wonderful piece of machinery.   Also attached to us and the tandem were the fishing rods, keep net and bait.  Then of course, there was the picnic and flask of coffee.    The sun always shone and he taught me to course fish - my great achievement being that of landing a 2lb chub.   I was quite a success as a back of tandem cyclist.

In earlier times when I was 13 years old I was run over by a speeding motor cyclist travelling at a great rate along the Chester Road as my friend, Jean, and I attempted to make our innocent way across to the famed Sutton Park.   Broken legs with compound tibia and fibula fractures, kidney injuries and facial lacerations resulted but unbelievably my parents decided that it would be "too complicated" to claim compensation!   Oh well apart from my much-loved camel coat never recovering, I eventually did, and received lots of undue attention not to mention many gifts of sweets, chocolates, books and my first camera.  I should really have been warned right from the start that wheels and I were not totally compatible.

Aged about five years old and travelling at breakneck speed on my tricycle - yes that's what we all had until 2-wheelers with stabilisers were invented several years later - I whizzed past my mother and baby brother in his pram, past the gaudy flowerbeds of Handsworth Park, past the "Parkie", narrowly avoiding other mothers and babies, down the sloping pathway to the bandstand where I finally careered, landing upside down on the tarmac, to the accompaniment of the Salvation Army playing The Dam Busters, with bleeding knees and minus a couple of teeth.

There was a period from about 14-16 years of age when there was nothing I loved more than my second-hand maroon semi-drop-handled bar bike - there were no casualties during this time and it represented freedom, a total escape from parents and a happy and safe time often with both of my brothers beyond the suburbs of our home.

In the 1980's a friend visited on his Honda 90 motorbike.   When about to leave I asked could I have a go.  Why!!!  No sooner was I on the wretched thing with its accelerator on the handlebars than I had fallen asunder.  The lethal number plate on its, now illegal,  metal arc over the front wheel sliced neatly through my calf flesh.   This time Macclesfield hospital for the stitches but unlike my Birmingham experience no siren bleating just a deal of blood contaminating the passenger side of a friend's car.

For many years following and now a real grown-up, I have steered away from the 2-wheel vehicles.   Just once a few years ago I got my daughter, Kate's, wonderful black classic Raleigh out of the shed and with my husband took a rather stately ride along the Middlewood Way and home again in one piece.    I was told by an onlooker that I looked somewhat imperious travelling along with its sit-up-and-beg handlebars at a cautious, steady pace.

This year, 2012 and following the amazing British Olympics, we were so inspired by all the intrepid male and female cyclists that we took ourselves along to Decathlon and I bought a brand new silvery-blue bicycle - it's lovely, magnificent it has a cross-bar and it's for our 25th wedding anniversary and it's for HIM.   No more cycling for me thanks - I've learned my lesson!



The Smacked Child

The Smacked Child



           She slapped me on the legs that day

                                  For all the world to see

"Spare the rod, spoil the child"

Was what she used to say

Whilst waiting for the bus to come

The No.22A

My legs were pink

My  face was red

My shame was everywhere

Please let the ground

Just open up

Please let me disappear

It's not about the pain you feel

                                                                              It's loss of dignity

                                                                                       It's all about the loss of self

                                                                                      About the loss of

                                                                                           ME!

                                                                                        by Meg Marsden

The Ballad of Nigel & Sian

Yeh he was Nige and she was Sian

And yeh she lived at 211

His house was posh

And dad was corporate

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor

Yeh there was Nigel on the train
And Sian got on there too
She wasn't meant to go that way
The fate of Sian & Nige that day

Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, mudcart 

Yeh she was Sian and he was Nige

Doc Martins, denim, leather

Her house a terrace, his exec

But they just went together

Yeh he loves her

And she loves him

The Jam was up & jumpin'

The parents all met up one night

On velvet sofas all polite

Discuss their kids to keep 'em right

Yeh, yeh, The Kids well they're alright!

Says me, says you, So say The Who

Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief

Oh first love is bittersweet

The Clash were out there clashin'
And punk was all the fashion

The photo's circa '82

And Nige is there

And me and you 

Yeh he was Nigel, Nigel Tate

Was it chance or was it fate?

He was bright & she was clever

This year, next year, sometime, never

And Siouxsie she was rockin'

Two, four, six, eight

Who do you appreciate

Love is here, love is there

Old love, new love, bittersweet & O so true love

First love, worst love

Love is bloomin' everywhere ....

Yeh he was Nigel

She was Sian

And mum, well she was looking on .....
Yeh, she was simply lookin' on .......