Brush Pass, Royal Albert Hall
The power of the secret
Is in the having and not the telling.
But I can’t deny
That you’re here for me, or rather
My information. The orchestra roars below
As we approach, and we must be
As bold as the coming cadenza.
They’re all here, watchers or not,
In the rose light – the barefoot man,
The lovers, the reader, the widower,
And all this exists only
For you, for me and for the secret,
And our hands that have hardly touched and can never hold.
Scarlet
When the door had closed once more
on the open-shut room, and
walls reformed and broke until
he was the god Panoptes,
vision running through the dark
into the heart, he took hold
of the scarlet thread, studying
its blood-bite on his fingers,
dragging at it, umbilical
to his gut-mind, pulling until
resistance broke a pathway
and the handle turned again.
_______________
Clarissa Aykroyd grew up in Victoria, Canada and now lives in London. Her debut pamphlet is Island of Towers (Broken Sleep Books, 2019). Her poems have appeared in publications including The Interpreter's House, Lighthouse, Ink Sweat & Tearsand Strange Horizons, among others. She also blogs about poetry at thestoneandthestar.blogspot.co.uk
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