Poems

by Ruth Mark

Separate Lives

Loud, persistent laughter. Hysteria
almost. It’s Saturday afternoon
and the downstairs neighbor
is entertaining as usual. The
volume escalates as the day
wears on. A rhythm of sound
ebbs and flows, while the damp
streets outside remain silent
life abounds just below my feet.

Night Noises

Across the road in the uppermost glass cube
a blue column of whispering light dances
vertical between the potted plants
cream paintwork a backdrop.

All around televisions reflect their eerie light
projecting other lives, superimposed, layered
like so many cardboard sheets onto our lives
and his upstairs, a thin ceiling away.

I can hear his perpetual cough, a hack
from the diaphragm, can almost smell the
beer on his breath, feel the crunch of the sharp
bottle lids under my slippered feet.

Music, tinny echoes course from the carpet
a cranked up box, movie from yesteryear perhaps
rolling beside the faux-mahogany
as the grandfather clock marks time in whumps.

Gehum, gehum, the noise twitches my nerve ends
draws the knot between my eyes tighter
a fist of tension, throbbing, the blood
keeping its own time.

A walky-talky bursts static noise out of nowhere
robot voices drift disemboweled hither-thither
finally landing on our windowsill
cops like giant eagles out on the prowl.

The radiator clicks, heat pulsing through pipes
it too has its own sweet rhythm
yet through all this cacophony somehow
a stillness descends like a blessing.

Voices from the past

They echo in the stillness
of the small hours, sleeping
time when she lies rigid
flat on her back in bed,
feels the sweat cold
on her skin, wonders
if the ghosts will ever leave
her, if she’ll ever experience
peace, escapism, denial –
nothing works, no matter how
good she is they still visit
except now she has no
alcohol with which to drown them
flush them out, numb her brain.

The Lesson

Nesting doves announce the morning.
Two of them crammed into the
bird house meant for robins, for blue tits.
Their tails hang over the ledge,
the sticks from many-aborted
nest-building-attempts bristle
spiky all around the wooden rim.
The whole house swings with their
weight, exposed to the elements.
Yet none of these hardships matter.
They’re home, together and know it:
cooing contented tones fill
the morning, while we watch fascinated
learning a lesson in happiness, learning
how little possessions matter.

Ruth Mark is a licensed psychologist, poet and editor. She’s Irish but currently lives in The Netherlands where she teaches undergraduates about the workings of the brain. Her work has been published in diverse print and web venues including Riviera Reporter, Dakota House Journal, Poems Niederngasse, Midnight Minds, Snakeskin,Wicked Alice, Pebble Lake Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Superhighway, and many more. She has her own website at: www.remark.be