About

P1230232e Mark Russell h&s S4 b&w

Hello. My name is Mark Russell and I’m a fully qualified podiatrist – something you will probably already have gathered from the main page on the blog.

3 comments on “About

  1. Linda Russell on said:

    Since this is an avant-garde type of internet space, I thought I would pen my (fairly) recent poem……

    Café Contemplations

    The air is dry – like snapped twigs
    Anticipation no longer reigns supreme in my artificial heart
    The scything of knives and thunder of galloping forks still
    Just for a moment, then resume without regard
    Follow no rhythm, though I keen for it!
    Your love has gone…

    The grey faces are conspiring with the night
    To blot all rogue colour from my life like a sponge
    Chatter crashes wave-like, then hovers in dark corners
    Receding with a sigh of swelling furtive smiles
    Long to join in – feel it wash past me
    My smiles are gone…

    Plates arrive as trains at a station
    Clattering, bulging with weight, tempting to savour like a journey
    Salad leaves, rustling in sheets, entangled in heat one moment
    Then limp and bedraggled, as inspiration and passion cools
    Oh! To feel alive again!
    Your body’s gone…

    Censors, closed against emotion
    Light cruelly darts to the shutters in my mind, burning the cortex
    So that all vision ceases to register past sepia
    And reality is only ‘Café Rouge-like’ tones
    Feelings never come again!
    Our love has gone.

    In Retrospect

    It took a lifetime to get to here
    The feeling of being unwittingly led is strong
    All the circumstances, false turnings and pain, a mere sentence
    In the story of a life spent running away

    Real emotions? – to be avoided at all costs
    For the luke-warm diet of numbness like tea taken liberally
    Serves to flush out any likelihood of discovering sordid detail
    The could overturn the apple-cart, spreading smashed fruit all around

    For those who trod on the contents, albeit without hindsight
    To have to face the ruin, and in turn, questions themselves
    It would be unthinkable and at best, unlikely
    Given the personalities and the time elapsed

    What would be gained from the disclosure?
    Swift pity?, revulsion?, a measure of culpability?
    An overdue plaster laid 29 years too late?
    Or silence, a stonewalled refusal to believe?

    Yes then, the secret far from being out and salved
    Would lay bare and fester in the glare of THEIR guilt
    For no-one thanks the bearer of bad news
    Nay, some have been shot for less!

    A secret then, however despicable and cruel, it must remain
    Lest it topple a heart fed with scraps of love
    Gleaned from a lifetime of smiling, forgiving, serving hell
    Because the telling of it wouldn’t change a thing…

    Neglect would not disappear with its disclosure
    Love wouldn’t spring up from shoots crushed without care
    Retribution wouldn’t conquer over evil
    Only pity might lift its head and crush any dignity remaining there

    No, let it, by its very nature, languish there
    For with realisation comes the truth of a life laid bare
    And the power of one to destroy innocence
    Shall NOT be given credibility from this day hence!!

    Linda Russell

  2. Linda Russell on said:

    HIGH SEAS (ON)

    We are ships in a sea of confusion
    Sailing together but parted by the winds
    Tousled by the root of our adventure
    Cleansed by the bitter-salt of our sins

    In the calm waters our sterns touch caressingly
    The storms of yesterday forgotten
    We are one with the world
    ‘Til life’s relentless parry breaks our decks again

    Timeless in our endurance
    We sail for know-not-where
    The bridge between lost in its solemnity
    For whence we sail, we drift without a care

    Carried on in hope culled from tranquillity
    We are mapless, yet ever drawn within
    Grasped by reason far from sane decision
    Crushed by storms no man alive can win

    Peace we seek, though none would speak it to us
    Here, on high, we choose our destiny
    The touch of failure can but pull us onwards
    For where, but here, can souls alone be free?

    Linda Russell

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