It is of no great wonder It is of no great wonder on an August day that you should find me out at play. Or is it? This is not your usual haunt My, my, you are looking thin and gaunt. I'm fine I say or so I think, Teetering on that rusty brink Of Charon's boat all on its own: Am I to ascend to my throne? I doubt it for that could never be; It would all be done so easily If I never had to aspire. Never had the throes of desire. Never felt the synapses' fire. We each take our place on the softing silk, Scarce aware of the serpent's milk Waiting right beside me. And still waiting. The minutes pass, we laugh and cheer Towards the blondied babe we leer (I didn't wish to be so base I am not of that Neanderthal race) And take our solace in the fact that we all share a common pact. Or do we? The eyes turn round on me and stare Those vicious vessels of verisimilitude. I stop. Dead. I cannot succumb to your purgatorial passion 'Tis not in my nature, it's not of my fashion. At last the truth is finally out The gutless'd shirker, the courageless lout. I stay awhile alas forsooth Who can argue with the whitened truth? Those sunny days so now pass true Endevilled by the forks of you.
I Wed Myself to Promise Oh, there, see that nothing weights lighter than glass. I first saw him walking the straight, cold road From frit to flint; though I thought, hoped he might pass, His cool hand slipped round my heart and he slowed. A man made from glass, blown to reality By the warm, sweet breath of unknown spirits, Molten beads of heat swelled to vitality Worth all care brittle perfection merits.
the owlet issue 1, michaelmas 2010 email: theblindowls@live.co.uk blog: www.theblindowls.blogspot.com
But take care: resting all your hopes on one scale Can cause a splinter of pressure to trace A path through it, a fissure of stress through frail Frosted touch. For his lips pressed to my face With the hard certainty of truth, a false trail To only bitter shards now in his place
In Michaelmas 2010, a creative writing society called The Blind Owls was founded in Pembroke. This, The Owlet, is a selection of some of the best writing produced by Blind Owls members. Happy Michaelmas (and Happy Christmas!): we hope you enjoy reading The Owlet as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
Madeleine Stottor
Map to You
Scholar if you read upon
He wasn’t there She couldn’t think why But she missed him she missed him Her room seemed empty the moment He left Despite the bed, the books, the bright Light of day stroking their surface
Scholar if you read upon The darkest archives of my mind, Would you recoil? And like a stone, Cast me upon the wastes behind? A tablet scored with fertile text, That feeds the thinker’s thirsting tongue, Tells not the fault with its ore mixed, Until the heart’s with its lore’s stung.
He wasn’t there And she didn’t know what to do To fill the hours till he’d be back He would he promised so so soon but Till then She couldn’t rest couldn’t sit still couldn’t Focus because
The serpent hissing world’s undone Beguiles a woman to his bed. He speaks the script of which no-one Could know, ‘til he’s the Bible read.
He wasn’t there So she missed him she missed him She found an old map of the city And walked the streets with her fingertips Until she reached Where he would be And she could stop since
Alexandra Paddock
Alex Fisher
He was there She closed her eyes Breathed slow Measured breaths And wasted watches Waiting for him to return 4
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Madeleine Stottor
A Tree The weathered oak grows and stretches, Leans down the slope, and straddles the wall, Heaves the weight of years, And grips a stone between each root. He plucks and casts the fragments, Wailing, tumbling, down the slope. The wall was built in a long hot summer, And torn away in the flash of an age. An old tree writhes in the wreck, And his roots are distinctly moreish. William Bond
The Field Boys Long, low cottages, hipped roofs not lately thatched lean with lion-hearted trees, distorted by high plain winds, arching as though attached to the curls of steady chimney smoke; as if each supported the other, continually. The field-boys, who's sleep was snatched while horses fed, now lay swapping still taller tales; each reported misadventure as glory, rejection as conquest, and each felt better, knowing himself as truthful as the rest. These blossoming roads, mud baking dry, go to town, Though the boys never went beyond Mr Finley's fence. Never but once, when with maids to wrap their arms around They pounded down in moonlight, led by the brightening sense that the entire county, the whole country was to be found at the end of those roads; found beyond the dale and gypsy tents, if only they held at it, held at it, dizzying blear-eyed, Ran hard enough, kept laughing and the girls kept by their side. Daisy-chained and light linened, these girls now came, To sit and closely talk . Like river-tide they were as ever had been, narrowly the same yet wholly new; this year's smiles were as wide as last's, and drew them as before. The blinking boys were left lame by those canny girls, who took a cynic pride in making dimples of their cheeks, and splashing water on their blouse; Tricks as old as the water, as old as the feelings they aroused.
Michael Kalisch
Promises Here’s my promiseYours to take from this, my outstretched hand My proffered promise plentiful with plosives Empty words. Yours for the taking- should you so wish.
Irony On the Irony of Patriotism
Twelve is the perfect number of syllables.
True Patriots, pray look upon this sty, of modern brutes who slander England's name; the proudest men who cause the greatest shame. No voices tell her beauties, save the sigh of those who know her ancient blood runs dry. Great poems, prose and treatise lose acclaim. What stirs proud hearts but anger's endless flame and flags held high, as swords to pierce her sky? What country do they boast of? And what good is pride? Their empty praises pound in waves, wearing the slate of noble English graves! Those Lords of art, long passed, shall name this nation great still! To think their hearts held British blood! While lesser men are roused in cheap elation.
Dougie Sloan
The Guermantes Way and Other Impressions Anglers, sewn in the pockets of clear embankment, shielded in the shallows either side by high-reaching reeds, cast, and let reel. With quiver plashes and timid ripples, copper hooks drop, bob, and sway, as slowly, slowly the umber shadows of hidden prizes, draw near. *** This, too, the time of lilacs, though not of the heady, humming rush of first bloom; now, much of the lace-like, bubbling blossom lies lost, trampled underfoot, or shrunken among the leaves. Profusion has past, though in patches the perfume still pours arching over hawthorn hedgerows touched too with pink. *** She wore a gilly flower loosely looped within a curl. And when it fell, as she tossed her head skyward, laughing, it spiralled to the ground. *** As we stopped, you and I stared at one another. I believe you held your breath. Then we heard the doors shut, the rifle-click of the locks, and low whirring as we moved past our destination. We drew ourselves to the river, touching its banks, running with it, arching away, coursing through country we'd never known was there. A short platformed station, Victorian iron rusting, now came to view. There were, I remember, bold pansies in the box beneath the window, and a colly to keep a wagging watch. We had no bags, and alighted arm in arm with small change and the flask of tea your mother made.
Matthew Bird
A rainbow of a covenant The tying bonds of marriage My turn, your turn ‘I do’, ‘I don’t’ ‘I will’, ‘I won’t’. What does she prove this fickle maiden promise? That I’ll be here today, but perhaps not for always? A peace-treaty, an agreement to be Smoothed and signed. Are not the purest of promises Just those left Unsaid? Claire Cocks
spray above the surf from sky to sea the scene is pale and blank as is the dull and blaring wind which flows in gusts across the wet and level sands until it meets the weary water where it flicks the green and curling lips of waves up into white and vapid plumes of air that ride along the tapered crests and fade to spray that floats above the beating surf and blusters out across the faded bay -
Michael Kalisch 2
But don’t keep searching For a mysterious, unfathomable meaning ‘A promise is a promise’. Eternal in its fragility Easily b r o k e n .
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George Kenwright