The Moon Woman

(Source text: The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy by John Clute and John Grant)

The River of Stars

I lived beside a river of stars.

One day I saw a bird

fly into the water

and thought him dead. 

Then: a knock 

at the door, a place 

by the fire, three days 

without a word.

I fed him porridge oats 

and pumpkin seeds.

He sat by the window, 

looked up at clouds

with his black eyes.

Where are you from?

What can I give you?

No reply.

On the third night he set 

the moon in my hands,

wrapped in a tea-towel 

like a porcelain plate.

He opened his wings

and flew into the sky.

In dreams I followed him

along the blue road.

The stars lit my way,

shone with a gentle light.

I did not feel the cold.

And with me, the moon.

From NaPoWriMo: Today, I challenge you to take a chance, literally. Find a deck of cards (regular playing cards, tarot cards, uno cards, cards from your “Cards Against Humanity” deck – whatever), shuffle it, and take a card – any card! Now, begin free-writing based on the card you’ve chosen. Keep going without stopping for five minutes. Then take what you’ve written and make a poem from it.

Lottie Loves Cake

My young friend, the magical and creative Lottie, gave me a list of words to write into a poem. Her words are the colours of the rainbow and this poem is for her...

LOTTIE LOVES CAKE

Lottie loves cake.

She loves it so much that she eats it all day long.

For breakfast she eats Moon Cake,

silver and round and full of the wonders of her dreams.

For lunch she eats Sky Cake,

big and wide as the clear blue sky,

with puffy clouds of icing on top

and a bird or two for decoration.

For dinner she eats Jungle Cake,

a very exciting cake,

covered with great leafy plants and bright pink flowers.

It is also a very noisy cake, 

with tigers growling and parrots squawking.

When her friend, Matilda, comes over for tea,

they play the viola and sing songs about cake

such as "every cloud has some silver icing"

and "there was an old woman who lived in a scone".

They eat Rose Cake together and paint their nails the colour of Roses.

Sometimes, they magic the cake into a real rose.

Then Felix, the dog, runs around in circles 

trying to catch the rose with his nose, it smells so good.

Barack, the cat, sits like an emperor, 

calm and majestic, and sips milk from a golden bowl.

Lottie asks her brother, Louis, if he would like a piece of Rose Cake

but he prefers to run around chasing Felix

and, anyway, Louis loves ice cream.

Lune

The football moon

someone kicked up a tree

never came down.

A Penal Colony For Poets

I committed a crime when I was young:

I threw my poems away.

The poetic police caught up with me,

they said I’d have to pay.

When I asked them how they found me,

they said I had a haunted look

from the ghosts of words discarded,

enough to fill a phantom book.

The colony was on the moon,

the mode of transport: ladder.

I had to build it myself with words;

this only made me sadder.

I had thrown my words away, you see,

so I had to go door to door

asking if anyone had spare words.

My cheeks burned ’til they were sore.

Eventually I had the words

like toaster scuttle marmalade.

They weren’t my own but they would do;

I had none that were homemade.

The ladder hooked the crescent moon,

I climbed in my bare feet.

Hands snatched at me, knives cut my skin,

how I wished I could retreat.

When I got there all I had were years

mining words from the white dust,

words from my lost writings,

words I did not trust.

The first I saw was corridor

then travel dream and trees

always time skies flown and child.

They brought me to my knees.

Happy I was to see them again,

I would reclaim my poems at last.

But they had dissolved into each other,

stray phrases floated past.

Let travel you me with always

I couldn’t piece them together

of the through the labyrinth night

my sorrow had no measure.

But whatever I found was mine to keep

so I made a little garden.

With autumn sunlight meadow and rose

my heart could now unharden.

When my time was up they found me,

said I was free to move to Mars,

but I told them I would stay here

in my hut made out of stars.

breakfast after space travel

two eager astronauts 

we board our rocket

strap ourselves in

lap up the sky 

fast as we can

we explore the stars

from sargas to altair

play on lyras harp

hear orb music 

in the silence 

fly on the wing of apus

dizzy with constellations

meet other worlds

they show us 

how we are all dust

we love the taste of oxygen 

we dont need food

our minds grow wide 

fill with particles of light

bathe in ultraviolet

nebula dive 

deep and deep until 

our rocket shakes and smokes

rust metal bits threaten to fall 

we have our fixing kit 

try to fix 

the planet rings 

screw those rocket bits in place

we land on earth

we cant explain 

but i see in your eyes

what 

together

we have seen 

we try to make a normal breakfast

what do people eat for breakfast?

what is normal?

breakfast

two astronauts

sit together at a table

it sounds like

the start of a joke

it seems important to get this right

we sit for hours 

take in the scene

liquid fills the glass

is this milk whiter than the moon?

why do the flakes of bran

not float into the sky like asteroids?

any moment i expect the furniture to drift

gravity is strange

what keeps us sitting here?

i have to take my space suit off

gloved fingers 

cant hold 

so intricate 

an instrument

a spoon

you keep your space helmet on

the visor down

how will you eat?

i like the oxygen you say

its better than the stuff out there

but the world is out there

the table is out there

i am out there

how will i kiss you?