terms

they’re not bothered with
instead just insist you dance
to their call of the tune

A. H / K. H-H (27th July 2020)

rose

thorn bush needle tree bare
air spiked striker at the year
dying back head deaded pruned
your sap gathers toward growth
a summation of all your points
all it’s left to you to be
delicate, silk petal fragrant flesh
concentrate of beauty’s hope
the natural conclusion
to your briar scratch upon the world

A. H / K. H-H (20th July 2020)

try two of my other poems about roses –

albertine

and more recently:

some tide has moved the season of a heart

Spotlight on . . . Pause

Pause

her doors all shored, swan sanctuary sought,
simultaneously shut out
she’s been beating them down to let herself back
in to herself

all because
– all? –
stranger guards
denied her temple’s sanctity

distraught a vision pauses her
all too human task

of so many temple intruders past
wild ones in need of a Holy of Holies
doors broken down broken in
to stand, sit, kneel, lie with it, in it,
on it, by it, at it, from it, of it, to have it

how deep even in unknowing
the temple lay, in every way,
all around anyway

so she stops
to behold —
held in it

doors open

A. H/ K.H-H (19th September 2019)

growing

what is this dry season
fed, watered
hesitant

A. H / K. H-H (14th July 2020)

i don’t usually say anything about poems, sometimes think they explain themselves, and i guess they don’t always. the dry season here has been a very long one, unsure where to go, maybe it is a trans thing in a cis world, or that is a part of it — it also may relate back to a poem like observations – a bit of a poet thing, or a holistic view thing, in a world that offers compartments, or even a world that i picture as offering them and a need to fit to them, or else little idea of how to make a world in which i have made my own infinitely flexible one

i’ve been attending the wonderful webinars with poet David Whyte in April May and now July that look at this journey we’re on in ourselves this year — relevant to me now through lockdown and yet broader, like this, in my life – i keep setting out on roads already made, a source of so much trouble – and we all need maybe to be flexible between fitting in and our own vision . . . maybe it could be an exciting time, but sometimes of a morning with a meds hangover it just seems barren, where do i start, no matter where i got to yesterday . . .

maybe its my own craziness too . . . and maybe is a lot more material than this short poem gets at . . .

it’s like one view – another may be verdant in fact – close my eyes and try and open them on that – but part of this view comes from how i measure where i am — i think of that writer’s tip when writing do not write all of what you have on your mind, leave the writing for the day and the next day it’s easier to pick up at that point, you already have more to say . . . maybe its the meds, maybe i’ve often done it, started as though at the very beginning again, or counted it as such as the end is not reached . . . but should just keep playing, i’m not nowhere just because no one else sees where i am . . . i know this , i forget it, writing this discovers it again . . . and of course in the world of jobs and product or direction it can suddenly seem like this again, be it maybe that world of jobs is particularly regimented it seems to say what has value has to be certain ways . . . or maybe that is just how some have made it . . . or maybe this is in a time of change

spotlight on . . . stream song (v. ii)

a weeping heart sinks toward water
in low levelling finds her kin
a stream she dreams sat by singing
rill harmonies of tears gush seaward
from all her dripping siblings, trampled

A. H / K.H-H (17th April & 29th June 2019)

This version is a slight rewrite that I published just over a year ago — maybe a trans poem, but it goes far beyond that, a human poem. I enjoy writing these short, as it turns out kind of square in shape poems that I’ve tried to make coherent in imagery – there are a few I’ve written now. I was glad to read I think Auden thought writing such small verses was a good training, he related them to a Welsh form.

There are quite a number of my spotlit poems now, you can find them listed here:

https://ablindcatchinthesun.com/?s=spot

for another

my heart is locked
by such a combination
until you dial it true

A. H / K. H-H (6th July 2020)

girlhood, politics

getting her hair done
highlighted liberation
another prison

A. H / K. H-H (6th July 2020)

spotlight on . . . xxv (’19)

something startling, to stay in one place
gentle gift, found seated on a grassy mound
half hour’s dying day, late spring
or early summer blurs, cloud drift cool
you start to feel that strange healing
present to yourself, hawthorn blossom full . . .

coma

long summers’ sleep
to wake for a harvest
gather what’s good
starts to clear rot

A. H / K. H-H (25th & 26th June 2020)

xxvii (2020)

threads a mess
spindle unfurled
fatally out of control
we spool we spool we spool
like spooning ocean
out of a rowing boat

A. H/ K. H-H (15th June 2020)

xxvi (2020)

tried to live a shadowless life
– what a joke
had all the natural shadow
and when the shadowlessness was poked
atomic darkness exploded
cracked all the mirrors in the west
trapped shady exit
left to diffuse
he tried she tried he tried to suck it back
and in the end the light
will triumph over vapour

A. H / K. H-H (15th June 2020)

brook – a new poem and intro

it must be a dream
to wake in a golden light
and run downstream in changes

A. H / K. H-H (25 & 26th June 2020)

– with intro . . .

spotlight on . . . Homozoic

Oil and gas
rule the world
a bloodline whisper bleeds,
ancient conspiracy of trees,
our carbon must be freed.

Reptile blood interest
wakes with warmth,
watches, working us
they, silent, see:
stared toward their dream,
immensity.

K. H-H / A. H (2016/2017?)

poem xxv (2020)

and so mute swan your glide was lost
frantic in the wreckage of your nest
all nests blown anti-cyclone
storm seeded hurricane breath
flattened trees, rooves blown off
locked into a comic swim
swan tutu’d mute, another thing

A. H / K. H-H (22 & 24th June 2020)

dream

all the magpies were in pairs
nestled together in the cold
but when i looked i felt
nothing could be done for sorrow
and besides, looking back,
they weren’t magpies but puffins

A. H / K. H-H (15th June 2020)

xxiv (2020)

shadow conquistador, golden heart
your safe coronation shared danger
the dark angel of angels tickled your tongue
a world on the whim of your butterfly wing
was lost

A. H / K. H-H (22 & 24 June 2020)

another day on the rocks

trolls roll barrels
of Diogenic cynics
naked, pure, virgins
of the quarried world
the Trolldom can’t abide
must make collide
with the rocks at the bottom
of their 1 in 2 slope
gradiant of dissidence
in the Stone Kingdom

A. H / K. H-H (15th June 2020)

failure

i didn’t understand
but insisted i did
that they don’t understand
but act on it

i’ll never get to show
my missing pieces
the golden dismissal
of black heart eclipses

A. H / K. H-H (24th June 2020)

the quest for fusion

poem from a workshop in response to Moniza Alvi’s’ beautiful poem ‘How the World Split in Two’

spotlit poem . . . tell me when

tell me when
just when
social masks
aren’t needed

tell me when
just when
the wind in the grass
is heeded

(c) A. H / K. H-H (21/5/18)

xxiii (2020)

he played a game of no surrender
always at his edge
frightened he’d defeat himself
blind to how we must
he only made loss worse

A. H / K. H-H (10th June 2020)

xxii (2020)

willow weep and briar
rose beside her thorn
sky weeps our dream
we drink until we flood

A. H / K. H-H (8th June 2020)

xxi (2020)

it is June
the sun mounts toward its height
the holly listens to the lesson

A. H / K. H-H (8th June 2020)

ordinary level

confident I wrote a note of everything
such a mistake when I came to revise
I could not face this further lens
massive limited imagination
between wells of infinity

A. H / K. H-H (8th June 2020)