29th April 2014

Sonnet 138

The publicity shots that made her truth

Where the unimperished image still lies:

No shadow sunk snaps of a long past youth:

Charisma shines with all her subtleties.

Reprint a refrain of when she was young,

When I identified with her most best,

Before I spoke with her same sounding tongue,

Before my disappointment got suppressed:

Her beauty died with her, that felt unjust,

She'd always made younger women look old,

Including her daughter - who could I trust

To denigrate what every camera told?

    I pretended for her, and she for  me;

     Daughters , by mums it's best to flattered be.

27th April 2014

Sonnet 137

Black on white pussycat bow, teardropped eyes

Oh my remodelled blouse it's unique, see -

Every eye sports it's tear, bodice of lies

Confected like my public face must be.

Shutters clicking press expose bald looks,

Babez we know you're not here for any ride:

Why of eyes falsehood hast thou forged hooks,

Why is  your pussycat so tightly tied?

Vanity, all is driven by my vanity's  plot

To showcase me in this galleried place;

Ego controlled - I liked to think I'm not

(Wrong!  Your heart's desire's an expose'd face).

Should I admit a mother's heart that erred

With her plague - fame -  beneath these eyes transferred?

26th April 2014

Sonnet 136

If my soul checks me that you come too near,

Years of your probing, performancing will -

A will my pizzled* soul admitted there

Whilst subsuming it's own self to fulfil

Your will: rude crude mechanics of our love,

At first a tandem, lately built for one,

What do maritals' bare stats of will prove

When change of mind set registers a "none"?

Then in statistics let me pass untold

With fantasies of celebs you could be,

For nothing hold me , put my will on hold,

Me's dead to me, a some-time wife to thee.

    I changed my name for thee and love that still,

    Bu paid with my lusty maidenhood's will.  

*Word invented by AOL strategist - conglomeration of pissed-off and puzzled.

25th April 2014

Sonnet 135

This social media fuels our whoring, Will,

And how our ass heads get size'd extra-plus,

Poking sad virtual friends whilst sitting still,

Willing Wills onto sex addictions thus.

Insatiable Will (The Bard says "spacious")

Seeks 24 hours global love like thine

While trashing what Will used to call "gracious":

Wifi will's rubbed off romantic Will's shine.

Seas rising receive our acid rains still;

Add ice caps melting - God knows what's in store:

Homo sapien left to his server's will

Will do it less while fantasising more.

Hard Drive Warming - A Myth or does it Kill?

Our Carbon Footprint - Bigger than Our Will?

24th April 2014

Sonnet 134

So...now I have confessed that he is thine,

And me, myself mortgaged to the father's will ,

Saving myself means listening hard for mine:

Maternal steel can be my comfort still.

When she passed, I imagined I was free

To express myself, that one of a kind

Who doesn't need a guarantee of me,

Independent of mother/daughter bind.

The statutes of marriage (what's left to take;

Oh morals left bankrupt, such careless use!

Was it all just for procreation's sake?)

Breeding much generational abuse.

Matrimony's instutionalised  me,

Mum's three weeks gone , and yet am I not free.

22nd April 2014

Sonnet 133

Big Russian doll she broke let out a groan,

It was her father-in-law's (she was me),

Left in the room to stand disgraced, alone,

Scared of his temper - was this her to be?

Initially glad to be spousetaken,

Husband monopolisations ingrossed

Her inner babydoll; left forsaken

The maiden: dread spinster's rubicon crossed.

At heart of course she was still Mummy's warde,

A Mum's heart is always daughter's best bale,

Dead yet, yet beating inside her, her garde:

This inheritance used to be her jail.

So she tells him "Yes, your son's pent in thee,

Like I was in she - now she's pent in me".

2oth April 2014

Sonnet 132

Eyes, eyes, everyone's eyes searching through me

For pity, for mourning, or rank disdain,

Not finding who's gone, who I'll never be -

Have her fans guessed who's simulating pain?

If it's Nothing - nothing; if not - Heaven

That's waiting for her far side of life's East,

With that full Starre that ushers in the Eaven

Halfed in it's glory by her resting West.

Mary's* white mourning veil creeps round your face,

What would they find carved on this scotch queen's heart?  

 Road to Fotheringay,** playing her part,

Every stranger's wearing my mourner's blacke,

And all they foule that thy complexion lacke.


* Mary (1542 -1587) Queen of Scots, Reigned 1542 - 62, in White Mourning.  Painting by Francois Clouet.

** "The Royal Road to Fotheringay" by Jean Plaidy.   Tells story of   Mary's early years in the French court. 

18th April 2014

Sonnet 131

I can't be Liza*, echoing Mum's art

While fans eulogise biopics, the cruel 

 Proof of what she had to be, give - all heart;

Starlet supercharge left her carbon  jewel.

Yet in good faith some say that me behold

I am but chip off an old block (all groan),

I know they know I'm not so brave so bold

So no star quality - best left alone.

But to be sure, this is not false I swear;

Her talent died with her but not her face,

Her reflected reprise too much to bear -

My self-image was left in a bad place.

How I look's no memorial to her deeds,

Again - I'm no Liza: still Mum's fame proceeds.


*Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland.

17th April 2014

Sonnet 130

You're gone - I could do Page 3 in The Sun,

Collar and cuffs Elizabethan red,

Lose this academic's frizz of grey dun,

Kind thoughts and sympathy squashing my head.

Brass blonde to the end  - what's so wrong with white?

Decades of bronzer sunken in your cheeks,

Channel shopping hopping: deathbed delight;

"Part of the QVC Family" - that reeks.

What you're revered for - what the public know;

Strength; integrity; judgement staying sound;

Precious gems left semi as they fade, go:

Civic goddess falling softly to ground.

Condolence cards remind me you were rare:

I'm scared what I'll do now there's no compare. 

15th April 2014

Sonnet 129

Th'expense of spirit is seldom our shame

Since it got cheap to consume our rude lust

In fat, sugar and carbs - but who's to blame?

Whose buck broke mass consumption's deed of trust?

Injoyd no sooner but dispised straight,

The slow build-up: eazee tastee snax had,

Cadbury's hated as a  swallowed bait;

Loss leaders layd to make the taker mad.

I think Will's puns were mostly sex'd male*, so,

Laydees, gents, to undignified extreme -

Maybe morbid I know but it's our woe:

Flight weight will soon be  birdsong in a dream.

    All this the world well knows yet none knows well

     To shun the junk that leads us to this hell.


*"Spirit"...(line 1)

14th April 2014

Sonnet 128

...let your country and western favourites playst

In preference to more devotional sounds,

Sheer force of personality's what swayst 

When pure political theory confounds.

Should I emulate fans whose nimble leap

Of faith in you gets broadcast hand to hand,

Propagating the crop I won't reap?

No - self-independence is my last stand.

Kissing-off corpse make-up (laid out in state:

Petal pink face,  fingers frozen like chips,

Will I inherit XL coffin's gait?)

Rubbing poetic logic on my lips:

     Ingrate not to be grateful for all this,

     Feed  them the image; I knew who I kiss.

12th April 2014

Sonnet 127


Death robbed my prerogative "It's Not Fair!",

Mum, you left no more than a  father's name,

Still strangers think me the politic heir,

But incidental fame bred offspring shame:

It was crap hiding from exposure's power

Behind forced rhubarb rhubarb smiling face,

Anon anon: the nameless hokey's bower,

Fifteen minutes: all it takes to disgrace.

For her life's celebration - wear no black,

Not what she wanted.  Cry - let mourners seem

To reflect her colours (what they now lack),

 Teardrop'd rainbow: covenanted  esteem.

A daughter left, becoming in her woe

Just like her mother.  I can't fight it, so...






  

10th April 2014

Sonnet 126

...even The End seems to be in her power,

Timed from my leaving, it's within the hour;

She's  here yet in absentia and show'st

A conundrum - since she died my love grow'st.

Watching Nature recycle ruin (wrack)

From bud to deadhead and seasonally back

(To spot her in  cankerless bud takes skill):

This reversion: a promise death can't kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minnion of her pleasure,

Thinking you've bypassed grief, gone straight to treasure?

     Her Audite* (though delayed) answer'd must be,

     And her Quietus** is to render thee.


* final account

**quietus est - i)she is quit   ii)discharge from life, peace.

9th April 2014

Sonnet 125

I'll make her a handpainted canopy -

And deliver the last speech honouring

A life lightly rouged for eternity,

No mourners with their memories ruining,

I've  heard the dwellers on form and favour

Pay their dull respects of inflated rent,

Lip defence against death's rattling savour:

When I left just as her breathing was spent

I could not find obsequious in my heart;

Old photographs that belie I was ever free

Not to make dutiful daughter my art -

Our mutuall render:  one way me for thee.

    Laid out in white: stubborn, stubborn soul;

    I scribbled a  mask*, she gave up control .


*Refers to practice of applying cosmetics to deceased persons.

8th April, 2014

Sonnet 124

No, I don't want to see you laid out in state,

Proof of me now  unmothered and unfathered,

I love not feeling daughter kind of hate

Or like a weed left once the flower's been gathered.

Birth is better thought as Fate's accident -

Let stars decide what day your birthday falls;

Difficult now not to voice discontent:

 "She's the spit of me!" ( I still hear the  calls )

What's wrong with her?  Ungrateful Heriticke

Who willed away her mum's last breathing hours

Kissing my head ( body's too politic).

Weeds to flowers : re-use of old April showers:

    To this I witness call the fools of time,*

    Shared DNA's more infinite than crime.**

*  All of us, given that according to Shakespeare (and Einstein), time is subjective
** Prebiotic compounds may have extraterrestrial origin. NASA findings in 2011, based on studies with meteorites found on Earth, suggest DNA and RNA components (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) may be formed in outer space.^{[91][92][93][94]}

7th April, 2014

Sonnet 123


Yes! What's in me's same but what's out will change,

You were built like a pyramid of might,

The daughter in thrall to mummy, not strange

When  cameras were her chosen lines of sight:

A public property's tough to admire

Up close all her life  -  not publically old

Even when dead to costume jewel desire:

Still more precious than the dull rest, we're told.

Thy registers and thee I both defie

Without trying, now I've outlived your past:

Mouth kind elegies not minding some lie

Made more or less by thy continuall hast:

    This I doe vow and this shall ever be,

     Now I can be true to what's left of thee.

April 2nd, 2014

Sonnet 122

 Ruffs, stuff he wore, breathed with scent of his braine,

Recycled to rag, then paper memory,*

Burnt or buried, there's elements remain:

Will's carbon's still writing eternity.

Motes of an hysteric erotic heart

Air pumped still atmospherically subsist -

Breathed into A4 leaves, I blow to part

Rhymes of his; I steal breathing space of mist.

Tran substantive piece of you I can hold,

Write on. I'm a dog barking Mozart's score,

(What are you doing? Please stop making bold

When even Larry O.** didn't add more).

I write these adjuncts to remember thee,

Just to feel your breath breathe inside of me.

*Clothes in Elizabethan England were recycled because fabric was so expensive - from hand-me-downs to rags and, eventually, paper.
**Sir Lawrence Olivier

1st April 2014

Sonnet 120

I forgive you!  It's all forgiven now

I've felt all the bitterness I can feel,

Jealousy's taken her final bow,

Got back my nerves of brasse and hammered steele.

Despite the core of me being shaken

I still believe in Once Upon a Time

And not blaming me for choices taken:

Loving the sinner just hating his crime.

We came through our night of woe, remembered

How it feels to take all those vicious hits;

Get thrown back what kindness you tender'd,

With the knowledge your face no longer fits.

Fillies you're dating - they're No Win No Fee,

        April Fool!  (Not the one you played on me.)


Sonnet 121

Millions of Followers, yet not esteemed

Until foibles obliterate being,

Ridiculed; judged; dissected; not deemed

To have equivalence of self-seeing.

What eyes those eyes this small world has, what eyes

To hunt down celebs and scent their blood

Easily by drones - the moral mass spies

Dedicated to Ugly, Bad and Good.

Hounds bringing down white harts to levell

What's consumed for pleasure with who we owne:

This world's axis is in fact a bevel:

Sanity depends on what kids get shown.*

     Disgrace is meeja's birthright, we maintain

     (It's free-to-heir) this global platform's reign.


*"Smartphones risk turning children into criminals"

Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, April 1, 2014