Di Hills on Sussex Modernism at the Towner

A Woman in Colour

I am a woman in colour

flame red, but I do not burn

I am poster girl of passion

hang me in your bedroom and lust

My breasts swing loose in the forest cave

tingle when stroked by foreign leaves

My arms are ramrod shoots

My hand a broken olive branch

neither age nor youth can soil me

I am myth that stands fast in time

you can gaze at me

tremble at my fiery perfection

but you will never know me

if you touch me I will bleed

but my blood will not flow

pour into these trees, or into your heart

for I am crimson, rose, every red in nature

and I will morph into girdling leaves

a poster girl for sun scorched passion

I am Blue

I am blue as the Cretan sea,

Blue as Madonna's mantle

yet my eyes weep gold tears

into my billionaire's mansion

I am his and he must not see

My thoughts are black shadows

My mind is a bleached desert

Birdsong, a baby's giggles

words of love do not cheer me.

Opal rings, necklaces of emeralds

do not delight me

I am deepest luminescent blue

and i cry for a world that is blue:

smoke billowing from blue bombs

dropped on a cafe beside a blue sea

radiant blue sky peppered with drones

a torn blue Chelsea football shirt

blowing outside a shattered bedroom

My gold tears pierce my slit eyes

they drop as shards of glass

I weep for my own blue world

for the blueness of life in

countries at war, plagued with strife

and I fear my billionaire

so I will be blue in silence.

Roadworks

You should see them all now, Mister Wadsworth,

the queues of cars stretching from South to North,

Endless roadworks, like armies on the march

Toddlers being sick beside the verge.

Your bright bypass is now a monstrous road

with jumbo lorries carrying vast loads

A Sussex By-Pass by Edward Alexander Wadsworth

Your sun beat fences are rather jumbled

and into a hole your white arrows tumbled

Sweaty drivers are cross and bothered

and your bold blue flag is no longer honoured.

Instead red traffic lights go on and on

the beach just a wishful dream

better to have travelled by steam.

But Mr Wadsworth, please be assured,

the radiant downs are there as you painted

far above the rush of of life by machine.

We still sit, watch and delight in

your pastel curve of rolling hills

and like your workman sitting so calm

we know that roadworks

will do us walkers really no harm.

Bloodsucker

Myth, saint, devil, bloodsucker man

Alexi Marshall Bloodsucker head

you loom omnipresent in shopping malls,

your all seeing eyes zoom in, quick scan. 

From foliaged lens you send silent calls

to security guards policing chaotic crowds,

slave to the sly camera of your face. 

You spy on the beggar, once so proud

now half hidden in his ramshackle space.

But once you were worshipped, wise mystic

your image adorned walls of saints, 

your green head awesome, majestic,

depicted power to redeem, create. 

Bloodsucker man, idol, foe, spy,

nature's answer to the how and the why. 

Vision of the Long Man

When I was five, I saw a great tall man

a giant who loomed on the steep dark hills.

They said he'd stood there since time began

The Long Man of Wilmington by Ravilious.

but his faceless head gave me awful chills.

I thought he'd step down and steal me away

to a cave filled with goblins and monsters

I'd be the only child, no friends to play

hidden inside that terrible ogre.

But when i was older and much in love

I pitied the Long Man of Wilmington.

A secret, a shadow, an outline above

a field where passion grew and lay.

Now I think he stands tall in his glory

but does not want to share his story