I'm all about something
You don't know about
If you don't break
You won't know what's inside
Fearful as a pigeon
On a window box
So that is man-
A cold star at the end
Of the day....

A man wrote to me. He is writing to all the artists in a  Who's Who book and seeing who answers. This appealed to me. 

This is a box made for me by Michael Phillips http://www.area2.co.uk/

new page on website

Princess of Swords by Veronica Aldous

Ugly and Wrong get Cursed

( for you know who)

They set up shop, it was near the East End

They plied their poems and their rattlearsed art

They paraded in gowns and hats, whatever worked

To make Ugly look cool and Wrong have a heart

Oh but I do! He cried, throwing his hat in the air

Ugly smiled and blew kisses, a gun in his pocket

A pin in his bloodstream drove him to think

Of how he was misunderstood, thwarted

She drove them to drink.

Both Ugly and Wrong built up their defences

Like a skinfull of sandbags, they smiled

Held tea parties-

Nobody knew, no one suspected

The hole in the lining, the ticking of tacks

The cracking of thin ice

The bruises all hidden

The blade in her back.

 Copyright and published Veronica Aldous 2015

http://www.womensaid.org.uk/

Domestic abuse:

• Will affect 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in their lifetime.
• Leads to, on average, two women being murdered each week and 30 men per year.
• Accounts for 16% of all violent crime (Source: Crime in England and Wales 04/05 report), however it is still the violent crime least likely to be reported to the police.

Emerald

We don't say we are sad any more
We just put paint on it, look at the trees
There is no time to be lonely
We go out, stare at the gliders
They make crosses in the sky
We must not speak
When we have names
Tattooed on our tongues
We don't say any more
For fear of detection.

The water glints next to the picnic table
We don't talk about the furry wasps
The longlegged spiders
The jam traps hung in the trees
The angels that go rusty
Every time it rains
Except it's not raining

It's just blurry, it's just cold.

Copyright Veronica Aldous