Can’t look.
Don’t recognise that barren crown.
Lipstick on a pig.
Line four of this unbosoming and brimming with blubber.
Can’t talk about this.
Category / Scribblings
Poetry, prose and occasionally…painting.
AS SURE AS THE SUN SHALL RISE
An ocean of panic swells in my chest
As senses shudder into another day.
No calm before my storm;
Only perpetual tempest.
I dread these tides of confusion;
Predictable in their power,
But incalculable of depth
And — no oil to pour.
© Mel Lampro
IF I LAY AWAKE…
I have recently been advised that I cannot possibly care about everything and allow myself to be affected by everything then not expect to lose my mind entirely. Well, my sanity has been questionable for many years so I shall continue to care about whatever I choose and if that happens to be everything then, so be it.
If I lay awake, worrying about people I do not know, wishing I had more change for that guy on the street, crying for children locked in cages, fraught over the state of our environment, mourning the precious animals that are hunted and abused, unable to grasp how anyone could distrust another human being based on gender, race or religion, despairing for folks trying to survive below the breadline and being totally, 100% frustrated that I cannot do more then, I would rather it was this way than just to be satisfied with breezing through this short life we are afforded, completely unaffected.
I do everything I am able – sometimes all I can do is care – but if I stop caring, simply to ‘protect’ myself, then I am lost. If we all took that stance – we would all be lost. Look around you; people are becoming lost, every day, because they think that by caring they will not make a difference.
Oh, but, they will. We will. You will.
Sign the petitions, share the videos, support the campaigns, go to the rallies – if you can. If you cannot, remember that the very expression of being moved by any of the atrocities that are going on in this world right now means that you are most definitely not lost to it.
When you stop feeling – then is the time to be concerned, not because you do.
EDIT: I wrote this piece before the news broke about that Trump woman and her jacket - I rest my case... #ireallydontcaredou
ALL CLEAR
Three years, three months and three weeks after I discovered that my body was harbouring an inoperable tumour…
© Mel Lampro
Three Drops from a Cauldron
My long-time friend, magical creature and pirate queen, Kate Garrett-Nield has her capable fingers in an abundance of pies – one juicy example being the delicious Three Drops from a Cauldron online journal which features myth, legend, folklore, fable and fairytale.
I have worked with Kate a few times and in several guises but for Issue 20 (October 2017) my role was that of cover artist, after I responded to her call for suitable submissions and, here we are (again).
Hallowe’en is not a new piece but October can very much be a time for reflection so it seemed appropriately whimsical. Go check out Three Drops from a Cauldron and lose yourself for a while…
© Mel Lampro / Hallowe'en Cover Art; original painting, water colour and ink.
WHAT DOES YOUR LOVE FEEL LIKE?
What does your love feel like?
Is it soft and fluid
Or does it cloy on the teeth
Like a bloodied, boxer’s mouth?
Does it make the heart sick
With sweet, sweet sugarings
That spin and drip in sticky clouds
Or as dry as a vacillating savanna
Flecked with dead oases
And forgotten bone?
Is it warm and peaceful
Or does it retch
Like the last breath of a suicide?
© Mel Lampro
EYEGLASS SKY
I am no stranger than the next person yet, I am far more flawed that the last. I experience no more, no less than any one of you; it is but a quarrel of proportions.
My sky is a lens that magnifies every moment into a monster; distortion thuds through my tongue and chokes the light into shards that bloody my sack-stitched mouth.
You only see the surface. Your view is the millpond that mirrors my eyeglass sky whilst I hide in plain sight, drowning beneath the unbroken surface.
This is about me.
It is not about you.
It is all about the dead-weight of me.
Me, myself and my eyeglass sky.
© Mel Lampro
ONE SECOND
Once apart from time there exists a second where nothing happens. Between every breath of life that begins, struggles and ends there endures one second of stillness that is darker than the farthest shadow of any conceivable star. It is younger than the universe but older than the ocean floor; quieter than a vacuum and more potent than blood. In that second where nothing happens there is no clock to be paused and no action to suspend. There is no wait, no before or after, no anticipation nor regret. Just one second, where nothing happens. A tic in time, the most valuable void, the vessel of my salvation and I am damned to an eternity of its protection because, I will never see the end.
© Mel Lampro
INVITROGASM
© Mel Lampro
OLD FORK
When I say that my heart hurts, I do not mean the stabbing, searing pain of injury; it aches in the way that hunger ravages the pit of the stomach. I can taste the emptiness in my mouth; sour and tainted, like the prongs of an old fork. My heart feels hollow, vacant; my heart is starving and I am fearful that if I open my mouth it will leap out and consume the world.
© Mel Lampro
D'emo 