What Happens To Women

Photo credit: hotblack from morguefile.com

It’s what happens to women, no matter who you are.

Divine inside? They’ll only see the face.

It’s coming, despite your warmth, your grit, your heart –

the sudden shift from beauty, to disgrace.

A light snapped off, and you’re gone. You’re in the dark.

No-one can see you now. You are unglued,

for while you slept, the world took you softly apart.

Now man after man walks through the ghost of you.

On a morning like any other, she wakes to find

her lover moved out, and all her admirers gone

from her steps, as if with one breath, one mind,

they abandoned their roses there like skeletons.

A half-penned love note stutters towards the sea,

embarrassed, undoing its ‘love’, and ‘dear’, and ‘we’.

~ Ros Barber

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It starts when you sink in his arms and ends with your arms in his sink. ~ Anonymous

What Happens To Women

Photo credit: hotblack from morguefile.com

It’s what happens to women, no matter who you are.

Divine inside? They’ll only see the face.

It’s coming, despite your warmth, your grit, your heart –

the sudden shift from beauty, to disgrace.

A light snapped off, and you’re gone. You’re in the dark.

No-one can see you now. You are unglued,

for while you slept, the world took you softly apart.

Now man after man walks through the ghost of you.

On a morning like any other, she wakes to find

her lover moved out, and all her admirers gone

from her steps, as if with one breath, one mind,

they abandoned their roses there like skeletons.

A half-penned love note stutters towards the sea,

embarrassed, undoing its ‘love’, and ‘dear’, and ‘we’.

~ Ros Barber

_________________________________________________

It starts when you sink in his arms and ends with your arms in his sink. ~ Anonymous

How to Leave the World that Worships should

Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.

Let junkmail build its castles in the hush

of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst

and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.

As hours go softly by, let others curse

the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.

Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.

Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,

immense and wordless, simply understood:

you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -

now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.

See how each wave arrives at last to heave

itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.

~ Ros Barber

_________________________________________________

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them. ~ C.E.M. Joad

How to Leave the World that Worships should

Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.

Let junkmail build its castles in the hush

of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst

and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.

As hours go softly by, let others curse

the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.

Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.

Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,

immense and wordless, simply understood:

you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -

now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.

See how each wave arrives at last to heave

itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.

~ Ros Barber

_________________________________________________

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them. ~ C.E.M. Joad