Ophelia

i

Ophelia never wonders why
the patchwork quilt of images
She creates, get smudged,
Varicose and eventually
Wiped clean
But she feels a disappointment
From the walls she cant subdue

She clenches colour in her fists
And finger-paints her ideals
As daubs on the corridors
Because she knows how colour can
Steal the darkness away
Just for a while. And,
For this rag doll, with ideas
Above, below, beyond
Her station.
Colour is all that matters

Shallow light will only work
Where There is darkness
To highlight the subtle difference
Just like the softest sound chimes more boldly
If it comes from within a silence.
So She scribbles on the blackened walls
To prevent light becoming
Just another sickly privation
Of a darkness which devours

Theres a picture on the walls again
Of 4 perfect square windows
Imprisoning her smile inside
Looking out. Seeking.
Encased by the archetype
Of a simple country cottage
Which, in turn, is framed
By an innocent looking blue.
With one perfect bulbous cloud
Like one box inside another
A Chinese Doll in a souvenir snow globe
bouncing against her horizons

ii

This faded little patchwork girl
With arms hunched around her knees
Sits in corridors of dusty black
Waiting for chalks to help her
Scream her songs onto the darkness
And its rippled canvas

The walls still wet in places,
Soggier, more bruised.
She squeaks her chalk across it
As a slither of dust follows like shadow
Not the block lines of dusty white
Just a squeal against the protesting walls
A thin,damp,weak-looking cream
Etched into drying paint

Life hauls us upward, but gravity pulls us down
We try and conquer a flat earth, then find out its round
Birds can cheat gravity, but the wind cheats them in turn
We think we have the answers, until we start to learn
So spill water on your tears Ophelia
And punch the bruises which bleed
Because your broken dreams are needed
To create choice, to be freed