Old poems

The void

What happened to the words
Transformed from images
In my mind?
There’s a space between paper and I
Where a feeling, a picture
Fades into oblivion

Maybe one day
I’ll see a dress being sewn,
Or a bed of frangipanis
Covering autumns concrete,
Or they’ll take my picture
And the flash will tell me
Where the words went

© Suzanne Madden 11/5/2000


El vacio

A donde se fueron las palabras
Convertidos de los imagines
Dentro de mi mente?
Entre el papel y yo hay un espacio
En donde un sentido, un dibujo,
Se marchita al olvido

Quizas un dia
Yo vere a algien cosiendo una vestida,
O una cama de flores cubriendo el suelo otono,
O me tocaran una foto mia,
Y el flash me diria
A donde se fueron las palabras

© Suzanne Madden 11/5/200


Beneath the Pencil

Would you transform my body into print?
Would you sketch the curves
Voluptuous and real?
Would you caress my skin
With lead between your fingers,
Creating what you see?

Passionfruit’s purple cover
Houses seeds amidst
Succulent flesh
Would your pencil break through?
Would you go inside?
Your incisive grey body –
And mine
Tasting drawn reality

I’ll kiss the sheets
of the life you want,
the life I want

© Suzanne Madden 2000


The Waitress

I served my life on white china
Hollow mussels oyster shells
Published secret ingredients garnished
With obliging smiles

Coconut insides fade on white –
china on the path
Lost fragments amidst spilt milk
Like futile jigsaws
Awaiting my naked feet

© Suzanne Madden 1999


Stream

If you asked me what I was thinking
I would not reply
A restrained tear
Would fall slowly,
Sliding down smooth skin
And when you’ve gone
Tears left behind
Would rush through the gap
Of the first truth.
Amidst brewing emotions,
A smile.
You wanted a glimpse of the within
You saw a stream
Do you like swimming?

© Suzanne Madden 28/3/2000


Exposure

Across unmade plains of
Water’s grave
Ancient shells scattered
Like discarded babes
I slide blistered feet
Beneath the naked bed

Where rain once tickled
The ocean’s surface
Day’s middle
Shoots spears of blindness
To the pupils of those
Born before their souls

Deserted dreams
Sit in clouds
A floating oasis
Shimmering the upper divide
Pain’s wake steers sharply
To now

Unveiling
Spring Ostriches

© Suzanne Madden 2000


Dust

She exposes you,
Pirouetting particles
Slippers within her beam

I pause
You dance with air

Finale on my skin,
My freshly polished piano

Solitary nights when you
Sleep with the sun
I play alone

When life-fire subsides,
My closing song
I know you’ll be waiting

Someone will watch me,
Some day,
Glimmering

© Suzanne Madden 2000

La mariposa resplandeciente

Quiero salir del capullo
de la ambiguedad
a la intimidad del especifico
quiero dejar que aflorezca mi alma
- fuego y hielo -
tranquilizando los demonios por dentro
ellos crecieron en espacios encerrados pero
al llegar al desconocido
se disipan
y yo
despierta
la espontaniedad elimina la repeticion
yo no se
- y yo se -
en medio de la nada
florece una semilla
no afectada de lo antes
una lona vacia de
ilimitado

(c) Suzanne Madden 27/12/01

La mariposa resplandeciente

I want to emerge
from the cocoon of ambiguity
into the intimacy of specificity
I want to expose my soul
- fuego y hielo -
soothe the demons inside
they bred in confined spaces yet
into the unknown they dissipate
and I
awake.
Spontaneity eliminates repetition:
I do not know
and, I know
In the midst of nothingness,
a blossoming seed
untramelled by BEFORE
a blank canvas of
limitless becomings.

(c) Suzanne Madden 27/12/01