Balloons of emotion
rise like swelling tides
pushing to spill
as unravelling surf,
lacking sense of reason
upon sandy shores…
until…
Pop.
They burst,
shadowing to
mere rubbery ribbons,
growing tidal marks
as marine tattoos.
Sometimes they waver
on incompletion’s palm
as No Man’s Land
where lines are lost,
rubbed out by conflict:
soldiers forgetting
what side they stumbled from,
lost in limbo (within mud-caked worlds)
that blur at conscious edges.
Emotions can morph
or change patterns
like mosaic tiles that move,
yet the aim is to solve puzzles
on Roman villa floors;
tiles rotate, square to square,
searching for straighter lines,
a safer symmetry.
Until click:
a finished portrait
with raised paintbrush
or luscious landscape
which rests, drying upon an easel,
having found easier breath.
It can be found,
slotting into place
as a two penny piece
at the seaside arcades,
in the hands
of an expectant child,
eyeing the wares
as pendants from God,
so bright is
fool’s gold,
flashing his cloak
like a superhero
readying to save damsels
from high-rise hell.
Sometimes: in fact today,
It is nameless:
an anonymous poet
hiding in bracken,
peering over bramble
trying to catch syntax,
siphoning adjectives
via a net-wired brain
where morsels lay,
after washing:
cleansed, naked, highlighted
with neon strokes of my pen.
As crossed Ts
and each dotted I,
they stand out -
marking their place,
glinting in the sun
as crowned kings and queens,
lifted high, buoying on tides,
amidst emotion-thick, regal climes.
They spoon sensibility
into privileged mouths
upon sugared teaspoons;
sensibility drips…
…like maple-syrup clouds
on austere autumnal days.
by Emma Wells
Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with and by: The World’s Greatest Anthology, The League of Poets, The Lake, The Beckindale Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Porridge Magazine, Visual Verse, Littoral Magazine, The Pangolin Review, Derailleur Press, Giving Room Magazine, Chronogram and for the Ledbury Poetry Festival. She also has published a number of short stories and her first novel, Shelley’s Sisterhood, is due to be published shortly.
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