Shocked at the sight
Of an uninvited drain-liver
Inside,

I pulled the face of a Gargoyle
And made a loud “Ugh’ noise.

He plopped over my hand
In the shadows
A good six inches.

We played that game of ‘statues’
Like at school – turn away
Move.

He proved a match ’till I caught him
Mid hop in my
Mop-bucket,

Like a rubber toy I once had,
He dived upwards all slime,
Scaring me with the sudden
Rigidity of his blob-body.

I took him to the door
And put him out like Tom
For the night.

A slimy toad in the drizzle of a
Cold midnight
Jumping.

I knew he would never be
A fairytale Frog:
A handsome prince.

Jane Sharp

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Working in the olive grove,
Dimitri thinks only of the yield from his old roots,
This knot-knarled tree is one of his favourites,
Years of pruning has coaxed its spreading shape
Into a willow-wide bouquet of boughs,
Laden with bullet-blooms that beg release.

Now, the master stands back and admires
All that nature (with his help) has created,
And before the purging begins,
Silence.

Then, with every thwack of his katsouna,
He urges the fat, cobalt fruit to shower onto
Carefully laid collecting nets.

This hessian pack, unloading onto stone
From the wooden back of unshod Neddy,
Is filled from that great, cracked tree (a good year),
And Dimitri, we see, is pleased
As the press begins to wind, and the screw to crush
The olives.

So the scene with stubborn Herk,
In slow perambulation making work the grind,
Till mushy purple-tinted juice infuses fabric
With virgin-sweet scent,
Ali-Baba jars are brimming full of oil,
And tired Dimitri is content.

Jane Sharp
2004

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Howl Turkish moon, slither of light,
Illuminate my destiny,
Stamp void with influential might.

Howl Turkish moon, slither of light,
Howl dark orb, scimitar of night,
Squinting fluence of third degree.

Howl Turkish moon, slither of light,
Illuminate my destiny.

Jane Sharp
2010

A Triolet is a 13th century poetical form.

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I am in being
Tomorrow is becoming
Now is in passing

The Papa smiles and
The wisdom of Sofia
Is in his aura

In a tiny church
I lit a candle and prayed
For those who suffer

It flickered beside
Other diminishig flames
And danced in the dark

And spent wick littered
The eternal sand-filled font
Glittering gold-leaf

The eclipse is a
Shadow at the edge of dark
Where light is dissolved

Jane Sharp
2004

View the original article here

Through no fault of her own, she was chosen,
In fact, she was minding her own business
At the time,
Involved in cleaning her own house.

I suppose it was due to that selfish moment
Whilst not keeping company with her neighbours,
Or peering from behind curtains,
That it happened.

It didn’t register at first,
Ordinary things never do;
A mindless glance at her wrinkled stockings
Caused just the right angle for her vision.
Even then, it was like looking at
A piece of tissue paper on a skating rink,
Marble-white being perfect camouflage.

And in that instant, she became aware of
What it was,
And what it meant.

Looking over her shoulder she bent down
To focus on such a delicate thing,
Not exactly light enough to be air,
And yet, not rooted to the earth.

But the illumination was too bright,
And the perfect feather
White and sacred,
Seamed to dance around her feet.

She heard the absent bird call out her name,
And in her heart she knew from whence it came.

Jane Sharp
2004

Mummy-like I sleep atop my bed,
In sheet-shroud hemp, to save me from the mites,
Which creep inside my app’ and feast the night
On flesh and fat,

And now retreated undenied,
They wait unseen, my sweet-oil limbs,
To tap my blood from top to toe,
While I in dream am numb to flow,

Maybe they sink into the nap of duvet, pillow,
Or some gap between the legs and wooden slats,
Which gather dust and harbour gnats,

And, once so fed they rest for days,
Before prepared to guzzle and gorge
The nectar of my honeyed veins,
Again the cause of so much pain,

So, whether these unsightly blotches
Come from micro-mite or other biting thing,
I hope this tight bound swaddling sack
Will keep me safe from next attack.

Jane Sharp 2004

Oh soft the sweet computer calls you by
And flirting bids you sit for hours on end
‘Clicking on’ and ‘keying in’ which I, shy
Of talking by machine my right defend
To play Sudoku, watch TV or sew
And silently do pass my day (and night)
Alone, widowed by a whiz whose bloggin
Pays for my homely comforts, don’t ye know!
And though I’d love some male attention, right,
Nothing beats a profitable ‘log in’.

Jane Sharp
Lonely Poets’ Society

At Latino Bar
Beneath the October moon
We sipped fruit cocktails

Knowing that too soon
The bewitching hour would come
And splinter the spell

I had in my head
A tune which tinkled softly
Like Tibetan bells

Music teachers come in all shapes and sizes,
Like dinosaurs, they are thin at both ends
And fatter in the middle,
They come in a mixture of genders,
An assortment of ages,
And they peer,
As teachers do, over your shoulder,
As though seeing the sound you make.

They can be plump old-maids – not quite nuns -
Middle-aged puffs with dripping fingertips,
Down-at-heel school masters with good imaginations,
Would-be sergeant majors, forever tapping their batons,
From a podium,
Euphoniums growling um-pa-pas
Screeching Stravinsky strings,
And cymbals missing that one chance,
To smash the silence,

And their peering goes on,
Relentlessly,

Miss (Sister Bernadette) Ogden,
Had a mission,
To refine country girls,
Recorder on a Monday, Raffia lampshade-making Thursday,
As if farmhouses needed the cows piping in,
Or, raffia lampshades, come to think of it,
My descant filled the gap between 3.30 and teatime,
It was a chance to get out of milking,
But ‘London Bridge is burning down,’
Did not impress my bible-bashing dad,
Who liked to sing ‘We plough the fields and scatter…’

Before I had time to master hymn tunes,
Miss Ogden went to live with God – they said,
Leaving her little cottage full of raffia lampshades

Mr Haygarth was tall, thin, and fussy,
He had a double piano-stool
And a ‘naughty pussy’ called Tibby,
He peered over my shoulder, wagged his arms,
And pursed his lips to say, ‘Oo – dear – mistake,’
Like a pantomime dame (he’s behind you),
My Dad said he thought he was a bit queer,
It made no odds to me,
Until he ran off with a senior boy
From the grammar school,
Leaving Sonata in C, unpolished

Sonata in C played on my rescued-from-the-rubbish overstrung,
Two notes in every octave missing,
Didn’t impress anybody either
Dum, thud, dum, dum, thud-dee thud, Thud,Thud, dum…

It would have stopped there,
But my parents had entered ‘the mission’
And found me another teacher,

Miss Hall was a serious mistress, (so my Daddy said),
With a grand piano and a metronome,
She corrected my sloppy performance,
And drilled me into accuracy,
While peering incessantly over a red fan
That she closed to hit me with,
Whenever I made a mistake,

It was a miracle I passed exams,
Thinking of ‘naughty Tibby,’
Expecting a fan on the wrist,
Playing scales without a ‘ray’ or ‘soh’
And finally, I lost the will to ‘thud’,
Wanting to rip the felt out of my Knauss
Hating the sight of my Adler,
And wishing I could make a raffia lampshade,

Mr Michael Murphy, Catholic, with three kids,
And a head full of organ music
Tried to teach me harmony
But teenage hormones and Bach didn’t mix,
No matter how much peering he did,
And I began to loose sight of the plot,
The title,
That ‘thing’ that I was ‘to be’,
In my case, ‘not to be’,
When I grew up,
A music teacher,
I began to like Michael Murphy more than Bach

My Dad stopped my lessons and blamed the Pope,
He said Murphy was the devil in disguise,
Meanwhile my best friend had just won first prize
At the show, with her raffia lampshade

Mrs Gillian Ruddick, short, plumpish,
Happy graduate,
Cambridge Cap and gown,
Came down the street singing, ‘The hills are alive…’
A knowing twinkle in her eyes,
And a fan tucked into her handbag,

I should have clocked the look,
I should have recognized that pernickety smile;
That dinosaur stance;
The way she peered into my hands
As though hearing trapped melodies

And now I’m back in the chair,
Or on the stool, as it were, (not double)
With Mrs Gillian (on a mission) Ruddick,
Hell bent on extracting the bad wisdom
That I grew up with,
Drilling and filling-in the un-refined gaps
I am loving every single minute

Mrs Gillian Ruddick extraordinaire!
Not a hint of a raffia anywhere!

Jane Sharp
9 March 2010

Notes: Knauss was the name of my German Upright piano.
Adler was the make of my descant recorder.

Stuff keeps dropping down the crack,
Into a dark abyss of black
Nothingness, where it rots and splits
In decay, leaving only bits
Of matter, and images that haunt
The niche behind my eyes, and taunt
Me with forms I recognize, but
Cannot reach

I have in mind the gap between
My boiler and my stove, which seems
To lay in wait for unsuspecting
Prey, ready to gobble up each thing
That strays, unbalanced, from my grasp,
A noun in decline, where fast
It joins forms predestined to
Become unknown

It was a sausage, cooked and fat
That fell most recent down the crack,
Over the edge and through the grid,
Like a burial at sea it slid
Into the deep, where now it finds
Its rest and what it leaves behind
Is pure geometry
Thought at its best

Jane Sharp 8 March 94
Edited April 2010