Three Poems by Martha Landman

Your Skin 

 

            You cannot travel within and stand still without.

-- James Allen

 

To be drunk from the colour of your skin

Wrapped around you in biscuity ash-white,

Flawless like a prayer-shawl

I think albatross, or even something bigger,

More severe, but I do not know why

My thoughts are analytical, like clear blue sky

The smell of wild animal, of wild

                                          of animal

The taste of you, reckless like chili

Con carne, travels inward along my spine

 

I pause — blue; like a sign of punctuation

Standing patiently on the bitumen’s edge,

The smell of your skin’s karri-tree aroma

Spreads faster than any train of thought

Tucked away in the shade

I think little leather miniskirt or naked flesh

The sacredness of spider’s silk, of spider

                                                       and of silk

Reassembled into a silhouette honest as

Skin on skin in the slit between dark and light.

 

 

 

Back Then

 

Just because it happened a long

time before my imagination’s

eyesight, my retina’s perfection,

Just because it now all seems blurry

and memorably impaired  .  .  .

 

When I relax the I and see the full

stop and let my mind loop from

thought to thought, I find symbolism

in the ulcers bursting in my stomach

feeding me organic wisdom.

 

My soul’s windows need a wash

to see my students in the balance

they offer me when they exercise

all the muscles of their mind even

though they don’t process the facts

 

I feed them day by day.  They are not

to blame for emotions triggered by

my hypnotic influence, my vision

training, my problem-solving approach

skilfully gazed upon their innocence.

 

Mother and child bonded on a clean slate

back then, but I’ve learnt to become scared

of dark material clouding my equilibrium.

My ears, my eyes, my orientation have

grown deaf, stress-inhibited, unrecovered.

 

My preference is to link sound, smell and

taste and indulge in a bowl of chocolate-flaked

ice-cream while I listen to Maria Callas’

frequencies even though some are missing.

It’s been a long time since my brain hungered

 

for otherworldly explorations: the ability to

communicate subtly through the electronic

ear, not shutting down at a baby’s cry or

closing my eyes when romantically kissed

 – my left stockinged calf elegantly uplifted.

 

Science of the Unknown

 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes.

            T.S. Elliot

 

The moon a yellow night,

unscandalous as ivory,

your unframed shadow

grim, an echo without vision.

 

Smokeless, lifeless,

your opium pipe smelled

of seaweed as you withdrew into

yourself, your skin cool and dry.

 

Not unlike Othello you moored your

misery, handkerchiefed it in a heart

dark with weariness as smoke

eloped from the muzzle of your gun.

 

 

 

South African born Martha Landman writes in North Queensland, Australia. Her latest work has appeared in egg poetry, Beakful and Jellyfish Whispers.