Poetry

Luks85 photo

By

Leslie Philibert

Bedroom

A red-faced room, secret with night breath,

pained whimper of release.

This another land, that of animals

that turn into each other.

As if you had landed in the wrong place, in a secret.

This the graveyard for fantasy collected, the hopes…

When the lights of the traffic make patterns on the ceiling,

you sleep under a sort-of stars. Soft and slept off.

When you wake do not ponder

about this sort of ash.

Gate

Six small screws on a butterfly.

On a gate that opens like a drunk in a toilet.

A scream of metal on metal, bitter cry,

that foretells the paperboy`s careless swing.

Like the flowering between a women’s legs.

Like the start of a story. A breaking of quiet.

This gate opens more than it closes.

Attic

A crate of thin light from an anorexic sun.

Half air, half shape.

An old tape recorder, a typewriter that looks like a fallen bird.

A box of children. Foreign hope. Thin wood from abroad.

Wreckage for the next Christmas with reduced joviality.

Old books fade into legends, burnt maps.

Dolls taste the fall into dust. They lose all

semblance of form, they are broken copies.

This is not even close to a sanctuary.

This is the least most perfect place.

Children shout in the street.

Voices have lost their bodies.

We are safe in a timeless box.

Kitchen

Proverbs 20:20…his lamp will go out in time of darkness

The early tea after Dad died.

This place of steam and small radios,

where we heard the football on Saturday.

Perfect rings from the heavy brown teapot.

The cat looks up in question. Forgotten?

And when the ambulance left we remembered

That he would never need a dressing gown again.

Outside, the town-fox waited.

Stairs

A turn in transit. Transit in suburbia.

A roundabout in round about.

There are places and stains that hold the history

of small tea and wet shoes

Our heavy steps are weighed with evening

We are little more than climbers, steps

narrowed, the pained breath of routine.

This is the asthma of ascent.

When two strangers pass they turn for a second,

Both smell the warm breath of family,

the close density of rabbit’s straw.

Leslie Philibert

Leslie Philibert comes from London, England. After studying English Literature in Ireland he moved to Bavaria in Germany, where he now works as a social worker. He is married with two children. He has had poems published in a number of magazines in the UK and USA. He has also done some translation work for a South German theatre group.