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Best Poems Written by Alice Reynolds

Below are the all-time best Alice Reynolds poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Seven of Hearts

Oh Alice, where have you gone?
     Lost in your corridors again 
          Warrens of doors
               Infinitudes of space
                    Barely a child, and so out of place.
Alice, oh Alice! Where are you now? 
     You drew us a card	
          A seven of hearts		
               But it floated away			
                    Like mist on the grass			
Alice, please Alice, return to us now
     You’re slipping away.			
          The wick, it burns dangerously low		
               Come out of your corridors!
                    Those warrens of doors
					
               But leave me be!
          I’m safe where I stand
     Nestling my toes
Between grains of sand
               Let me go, let me stay!
          To you I am — forever lost
          I am — I am
     In my labyrinth of corridors
These warrens of doors

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Another's of One's Own

Reflected grief spat back at me to bear 
Another load, the double of my own 
To take and carry, this unholy pair 
Then tripled, multiplied, beneath I groan.

A beast of burden hauling my bloated
Carriage, cut into with refracted shards.
Whipped for my pain, heavier I’m loaded
Pile after pile, the crown a house of cards. 

I tread with caution over broken ground,
The tottering deck threatening to fall,
Step after step and though my wounds are bound
The load cuts deeper, I stumble and fall.

Impaled on broken ground, I’m laid in state.
Now. Did I this predicament create?

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Born Twice in Blood

I gave you a daughter
To have and to hold 
I gave you her gently
More precious than gold

I stitched her together
And formed her with care
Created her lovely 
Then born to me bare

Was bare as a baby 
I held her to me
Then she upturned her gaze
Looked sweetly at me

	You gave me no child
But something unfinished
Deformed and ugly 
So twisted and blemished 

Creature of sorrow 
I’d spare you the image 
All blackened and shadowed 
Reflecting your visage

You moulded it thus
Concocted its nature 
Then expected me
To cherish and nurture?

	Despicable steward! 
You hurt my daughter
Distorted her image
And raised her for slaughter. 

Despising my glory 
Dismissing her worth 
Her face my reflection, 
The salt of the earth 

Revise your destruction 
Bring her to water
Where her soul pants for me
Drink up, my daughter. 

	Returned to me, my child
Now forever mine
Born again in my blood
Sweet fountains of wine.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Lost and Ill-Replaced

Oh, what pale imitation now is this?

My train of empty carriages which held 
A score of lovers, harem of my flesh,
Now emptied of those who within me dwelled.

These rails since lain to waste, just fractured tracks
In rows like tombstones, each besides its mate 
A massacre of fellows, myself cracked,
My new friend, false as shadows, in their place:

A disappointment, dun-coloured and dull
This dumb doll, mute and fixed she cannot move. 
Her edges sanded, hollowed, empty hull. 
Red garnet-gleaming lovers she removed

For this pale imitation of my joy,
A coup de moi, my silent staring toy.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Yellow Lights

Toxic, intoxicating solitude,
With a tantalizing proclivity 
To slither inch by inch, or suddenly,
Back into suffocating loneliness

When will I again see my own person
Reflected back at me from the abyss?
There is a thrill in the uncertainty 
Of when yellow will finally kill me.

My jaundiced skin shivers in raw disgust,
Shivering life into dissolution. 
It kills my blue and sickens it, lost light. 
My own bioluminescence has died. 

Yellow tunnel vision sharply focused, 
On sheer emptiness, an omni-vacuity, 
On the devastating futility 
Of my erstwhile blue kaleidoscope world. 

Yellow asylum lights, small evening lamps,
Make me forget there ever was an outside, 
That blue skies ever shone or oceans roared. 
Instead, it shows me damp, flaccid colour. 

‘No difference,’ says Yellow, ‘both beautiful,’
In one hand a withering buttercup,
In the other, a wilting bluebell. 
‘Both the same,’ it says,
And I believe it. 

‘It has always been me,’ it says, glowing. 
‘Always and ever only me. Yellow.’
The glow is blinding, too bright for my love.
How will my darling azure overcome? 

So I am consumed with a blinding rage.
It is better to see nothing at all
Than to allow that yellow pus to seep, deep
Into my bones, poisoning my marrow. 

It does not ooze, but floods in a torrent
A murderous tsunami, drowning all,
And when all its bloody work is done,
It stagnates, obese with satisfaction. 

Its arrogance perforates my being, 
Leaving parched holes, I’m forced to drain myself.
I ploughed red striped like bloody torn up earth, 
But the infernal yellow still remained, 

Until I bathed myself in that red blood. 
Then with the red lethal stripes I was cleansed. 
With the slice, the desiccation, I danced. 
Now my scars are of beautiful conquest. 

Yellow light in bloody fight defeated,
And red cremated, scattering ashes,
From which I now arise, old self slaughtered,
Killed in blood, now new in blood established.

You foolish adolescent, budding growth,
Do not heed the buttercup’s seduction. 
Its piercing rays will sear you to the brains. 
They will murder you, just as they murdered me.

Now waves buffet my soul to ecstacy. 
Consumed with immortal vitality,
Indestructible joy, undistilled,
I see two worlds united as one.

Smile, my love, upon this fair conjunction
The binding marriage of both essences. 
In the windows of my soul they are seen
These lovely greens, borne by our own dichotomy.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

A Harmony

While smoke enshrouded us one crowded night, 
Obscured by grey and ashy sea-breeze air,
Your face reflected flame and sparks took flight,
Eyes burnt-sienna, set a-dancing there. 

Your voice stayed with me, wrapped by memory. 
It played the deepest emerald melody,
To me, not quartet, but a symphony; 
I only wished the music just for me. 

Unknown to me, you heard my singing too, 
And day by day sat listening to my song, 
A quiet audience to me, running through
Each possibility, what could go wrong. 

So many trials, our voices rang in tune. 
But hope surmounts, beneath this glorious moon.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

The Goat That Goes Into the Wilderness

This rope that strangled me so mercilessly, 
Frayed ends unpicked now, twisted into twine, 
My Judas noose made into tapestry. 
Make fruit of these dreaded labours of mine. 

I could hang pallidly but now instead, 
I colour this dark world the deepest hues
With emerald, amber, ruby, silken threads, 
Stitched all together with shimmering blues. 

A friend’s betrayal that led to saving grace,
I’ll turn this heartache into something pure. 
My God, take futile bitterness, replace
It for your glory, make it something more. 

But take this cup away from me, I begged, 
For you, He said, I bled to give you living bread.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

We Live in Denial

In blackest halls, a phosphorescent light
Shines forth from darkest depths, a honey glow.
Enraged, ignited, I now blinding bright,
A magma burning, pyroclastic flow,

Torching golden beams to desolation.
Enveloping destruction, ash I leave 
Until it’s done, my wounded heart’s cremation.
Now hushed to ember, my healing reprieve. 

Returned to dormancy I hear it more,
The walls that groan after each explosion: 
A leaning ceiling, tilting walls to prove 
The damage I cause from each eruption.

Like cherry blossom rain the charred wood falls
Death I see, but I? Safe in blackest halls.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Another Dawn

Then whistling strands went silent 
And cries bled out the ground 
Hushed over earthen weeping 
And golden fields were drowned. 

In tears of quiet, silence
Sounds out the nothing drum
Beats thrums of peaceful sleepers
A voiceless, ashen hum. 

Tears of quiet dried to rust
Lit up by morning glow
Picked off, a surface crust
The under-flesh to show

Un-scabbed earth with silver vines
Unearthed new ground rubbed raw
To house embedded saplings 
And see another dawn.

Details | Alice Reynolds Poem

Daddy

My best friend saw me born.
Coronation of blood,
Tearing through his long beloved.
Floppy neck and flailing limbs,
Protesting my own birth.
Constricting cord,
A life noose, murderous 
Cut from me free, my airways clean. 
Chest to dead-weight chest,
He forgave my assault,
That which he had sown.

Plasma glow to glass-blind eyes,
Milk not frothed, elixir to survive,
Feed the baby lump with plastic breast,
Far from she who bore her,
Her mother seeking rest. 

Years ago, from floppy she came 
To floppy she now goes,
Noose of life returned,
Retreat back into black.
Daddy, you were my best friend.
Suspend me—
Rising to Your Presence,
Falling to air,
Like when you carried me,
When the ground was miles away.
Here I am in air again,
Daddy my friend, 
From floppy I came, to floppy I go.