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Best Poems Written by Charlotte Jade Puddifoot

Below are the all-time best Charlotte Jade Puddifoot poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Rape - trigger warning

October: I'm eighteen, shortcutting home
through an autumn-burnished churchyard -
copper-lustred leaves, moss-skinned stone -
a jaunty swing of skater skirt and arm,
college folder square-sturdy in my hand.
In the moment. In the last pale pulse of sun.

Hey, can you tell me...?
I halt. I turn...

Cold earth. Colder blade dimpling my skin.
My coral cameo earrings scatter,
daisy-dotting the green.
My back is spiked by needles of yews.
Sun skews, sky side-slides
until his face is the firmament.
I'm staring into the tumid blank-bloat of blue;
the ground hardening beneath me,
the death-spike trees stiffening.

Heavy Special Brew breaths.
Grubby, moist fingers
like grubs crawling over my breasts,
and, weirdly, I'm smelling pepper -
horror-spice of pungent lust,
its acrid nose-thrust -
and woodsmoke is drifting from somewhere...
lung-flame, tongue-flames
of searing words - his words -
blazing like the umber tumbling leaves.

Please...Please...I'll...
Fear-forced bargaining, but I'm beyond care.
And I'm aware
of the church steeple rising,
its phallus penetrating sky.
The tilting church could topple
as tears crystal-crush in my eyes.
Fear-faint, already half gone
in a soundless scream, my muted mouth
mouths silent goodbyes
to Sarah, to Mum.

Time slows to a crawl.
I try to call. Nobody comes
but the man who has me ground-pinned.
Bleachy stink of semen
whitening my ripped skater skirt,
but some things don't fade
and there is no clean in this, just dirt,
wet leaf-mulch, shame.
Ineradicable hurt.

Sacred soil is soiled, sullied.
Stunned, I stumble
shoeless, knickerless,
into the trees and heave
into the mud, into the leaves
strings of spittle-sick,
my thoughts strung out,
reality spun out.

From stinking, pulped leaves I retrieve
crushed coral earrings,
ground-grimy knickers,
my white court shoes
that whitely scream the 80s,
the scattered tatters of essays -
white, like fallen feathers, sunk in the sludge,
muddied, the red-inked words bloodied.
I gather them together.
Gather myself.
I go

forward into my future, stained from pain
and tainted touch, the smears of fear and disgust.
And oozing slime-soft into my ears
the mire of incongruous apology: I'm sorry
don't tell anyone - I won't.

I don't.

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Moonlight on the Ward

Midnight. This white ward
drifts softly through chalked moonbeams
shifting walls argent to cream,
sifting sterile halls.
Full moon fingers reach within
touching each silvered sheet-shroud.

Jaded nurses drowse...
vials drip crystalline hope
elixirs into sick veins,
bedside water jugs
shimmer with ivory pearls;
glimmer-gentle light soothes pain.

Shades of frailty flit,
whisperings of the once-well;
escapees from harsh daylight's
hot taunts of the sun.
Reality receding,
moonlight kinder to dreaming.

Caught between two worlds -
health and no-way-out unhealth;
fear smoothed by the balm of calm.
Lustrous illusions,
in this vault of dream we wait
for morning's impending fate.

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Confessions of a Baby Snatcher

This is my last confession; there will be no more.

I am impercipient and slow from last night's sleeping pill,
wincing away from the harshness of day.
Kitchen cold, the room tear-splintered,
sunlight striking a watery rainbow in my eyes;
air smothering-stale from my hopeless coffee cup crying,
whilst life outside the window ticks on relentlessly.
Seconds turn into minutes turn into hours...

When you plashed your pearlescence over my pale skin
I never guessed the inner ugliness of those seascape pearls
encircling each ovary, stubbornly adhesive, leaching new life.
The scanner's screen sizzling static, darkening to nightshade depth,
its impersonal probe trailing damp viscosity over my belly;
shockingly sticky as the first time you came on me
but lacking the warmth.
Puppetted by pity, you brought me pink carnations,
crushed their bright, baby-frail faces into a tacky hospital vase.

I am weighted with a multitude of baby-frail faces.

Indifference cold-eyed me at the hospital: histrionic, hysterical,
a blubbing huddle of neuroses - Doctor will I conceive again? -
a collocation of surgical steel and wonder drugs.
Drugs to inflate the ovaries with a Botox bloat.
Drugs to wipe clean the scribbled slate of the mind.
You left me to weep amongst white hospital sheets,
coffin-cold, my hands folded on emptiness,
a paint palette of blood-inks seeping from me.

Brushed by the soft wing of silence, what was being concealed?
The products of conception, screened from view?
The unseen dead, faceless and nameless,
trundling on trolleys through sterile corridors
to the eager heat blast of the incinerator - their crematorium.

They said I could try again
but barrenness occupies my bed;
it is a womb-burrower, fattening stealthily on menstrual blood.
The claw of infertility is clamped on my shoulder,
torturous flesh-hooks digging at my skin.
I ache all day from blanched almond ovaries;
fragile finger-fronds stilled to nothingness...

I find myself miraculously in the shopping mall;
my feet have no memory of the pavement that brought me here.
Fruit machines flicker and wince like migraine.
I circle the shop floor, keeping a safe distance.
I am not dangerous. I am not predatory.
I only seek to protect the meek,
to shield them from the vodka bottle,
the beatings, the needle in the arm.
Beneath the strip light's dizzying glare,
tenderly fingering bootees soft as puppies, mittens like kittens,
the meek sweet sleep smell pulling me in.
My purchases earn me a benevolent smile
from pretty Pollyanna at the cash till.

The tapestries of faces at school gate gatherings -
faces daffodil-bright, sunstruck and open with joy;
the happy heaving hordes.
I am not dangerous. I am not predatory.
I only yearn to merge with the scenery of domesticity,
immersing myself in routine and normality.

Noticing individuality,
the way it blossoms in every pram,
hazed by the human differences.
Vertiginous spinning of kaleidoscope and rainbow;
the park a synaesthetic playground:
blood bursts of poppy, fire flames of freesia.
My audible emptiness clattering; a hollow pod rattling
amongst bud bursts of green, fruiting trees, flowers heavy with pollen.
A sickly size six drifting diaphanously;
the scenery of pregnancy swelling around me.
Encircled by circularity: round bellies, round faces,
roundabouts spinning, globular beach balls and balloons,
blossom spheres shaken from trees shivering to the ground.

Awake again last night in smothering, starless dark,
that tiny bloodied form beating like a trapped butterfly inside my head,
face pressed into a tear-damp pillow,
recalling the bathroom's midnight chill
as I knelt in raw ruby carnage on the floor.

This is my last confession; there will be no more.

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Out my window

the moon swoons in enfolding arms of sky -
a glassed-out world I cannot touch,

seen through pain and this pane
my four sycamores, sick to the core and wanting more

than the moon-smitten sky is willing or able to give.
With this they live, and compete for love in their darkening peat -

ghosts of the garden, guardians of the eastern gate.
The dark and bark begin to flake...The pane perspires

pain droplets like fever-beads...Nerves like wires
sizzle in my hands - little cerise, scorched trees.

Stirred by a breeze of unease, my rootless reflection
melds with the trees. Now light is darkening in the window

the moon is a cold blinded eye on high,
blind to the needs of the sycamores that plead

as their rotating blades are freed -
desperate spinning seeds that scythe the sky

and drift to loam, their cold-holding home.
Night begins to bleed and seep. The garden weeps.

The outer world recedes; pain splinters lodge deep.
The pane is a sheeted and shattering mirror.

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Illness is

a lonely place.
It's nothing to do with that person
who asked how are you? this morning.
It's to do with staring through
fear-frosted windows
as snow sugar-sifts the street,
watching through dark windows
as firework flowers burst to bloom in a New Year sky,
or watching day-jaded mums
dragging snot-nosed kids to school -
and wishing it was you.

It's watching cacophonous YouTube family vlogs
because you're so lifeless, so ghastly ghostly-wan,
you feed off the energy like some hideous vampire or leech.

It's listening to people moan
about doing the bloody washing up
while you find joy in the rank sink-slops
of last night's rancid pots, giving thanks
when you're just able to do it.

It's sitting sweltering in 80-degree heat
under summer-scorched ashes
and looking grey as crematorium ashes.

It's coffee alone at 5 a.m.
waiting for the world to wake
or watching fluorescent clock hands creep round
until the hour is godly enough
to text or phone for help.

It has to do with rocketing house bills
because you're awake when the world is asleep
burning midnight lights and fuel.

It's the horror of an unexpected knock at the door or a visitor
because it's 3 p.m. and you're still slop-dollying round the house
in your dressing gown.

It's the horror of being buried alive in an MRI coffin-scanner.

It's taking comfort where you can with whomever
and seizing moments when or if they come.

It's the cliche of feeling alone in a crowded room.

It's about when they assume
the anorexia's back and you're on a f*****g diet.

It's about cancelling appointments, leaving restaurants early
or making excuses not to go out at all.

It's shutting off the laptop because you're too tired to see,
disconnecting the phone because you're so weary
you can't speak, while a filthy grey fog
creeps into your head and mind-twines.

It's reading their words while you fumble
to find your words or the right words,
or being suddenly blessed with the write words
to squeeze out a line or three of poetry.

It's about family discussing the plot of a film
while you're losing the plot in another room.

It's snotty sobbing, screeching at doctors
and mewling for the f*****g morphine.

It's that precipice where you teeter
awaiting the latest test result.

It's fear so intense you frantic-fumble
the phone book, scrabbling for a hypnotist.

It's a late night date with a suicide site
(you flirt but don't know if you would)
researching helium versus hanging
because you don't want to become a burden,
you don't want to lose your dignity.

It's about the outer you staying intact
while the inner you slowly disintegrates.

Illness is all this.




15/3/2017

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Cardinal and Rose

Rose, in your redolent, roseate glow -
your firelight petals like hearth of home -
I alight with messages from beyond walls of night,
imparting hope over din of planetary spin.
It's a reciprocal transmission.
Two energies vibrating veracity.
Transference of truth, proboscis to petal,
secrets to sepals, faint signals to stamen and stigma,
exchanging the numinous universal codes.
Luminous wings flickering like tentative candle flames
or a breeze ballet of cardinal crocus flames.
Antennae telegraphing otherworldly signals,
strobe-spinning the globe with light codes
to shake the shackles and free humanity
once imprisoned by dark-world weaponry.
An infusion of love, pollination of light -
new earth emerging from chrysalis of night.



14 January 2023

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

The Clearing

It's summer, and sunlight's syrup pours sweet into afternoon.
We've come to the bungalow's cemetery
to pick over bones of bygone days;
touch time's tender skin, lay flowers on childhood's grave.

The lodge is razed to the ground. We raise
our eyes to sky and take each big breath of blue.
Sharp lemon-light cuts through
the detritus of our days; the oaks once cloaked in dark.

The knotweed nooses and dreamlike domes of fly agaric
have all been cleared; the forest sentinels' leafless limbs
discarded - an abattoir of strangeness, sawdust-strewn.
But all dismemberment is a clearing of sorts.

The echoes of emptiness eavesdrop
on each reminiscence, as we forage for a few last remnants:
blue paisley swirls of 70s tiles,
red bricks from an 80s fireplace.

A yearning rises suddenly, slick sick-sour in my throat...
and yet, it feels cathartic, this purging of the past;
this merging of our then and now,
this blending of bitter and sweet.



23 February 2023

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

New Beginnings

Now is all there is: warm petals of promises
Evergreen; my hopes unfolding flower-fresh,
Waking as from sleep-shawled earth.

Bringing you the crystal-crush tears of
Endings, transmuting dawn-wept moments to
Gifts of dew. For you this inspired
Iridescence of the new.
No more the shatter and shards of starless
Nights to lodge within, without
Illumination and lambency of hope.
Nascent buds of love-light now unfurl
Gilding evermore promises pledged to you;
Sunlit seconds birthing this eternal now.

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

the night is freezing fast

and under a starless ceiling the fumes flood in
like plumes of breath in February-frosted air    
fusty flu fumes   gas fumes    
though there is no flue  
just phlegm tar-sticky in snow-stung lungs    
this winter a whiteout of words   snow-diamond freeze    
down on my luck   down on my knees
in every way   on the floor   not only before the oven door
whatever lies beyond

snow-soft the little cloth cushioning my cheek
the bell jar of night presses in and upon
stifling candle buds that fade to dull blue duds    
the bone-hooded moon grows cold and glows    
above the shaken turning globe   the voiceless snow    
fatal flowers begin to bloom in arbours of arteries    
heart-hued like the fuchsia's blood bells    
like the roses I bled from everything    
blood-bright vein flames that blazed in vain    
igniting a touchpaper of pain    
whatever lies beyond



*Lines 12 and 16 reference words from Sylvia Plath's poems 'By Candlelight' and 'Medusa'
The title is borrowed from A.E. Housman's poem 'The Night Is Freezing Fast'

12 May 2023

Details | Charlotte Jade Puddifoot Poem

Komorebi

i Trees

A kaleidoscope cathedral rustling,
hustling life-light into every thinning limb.
Earth-emblems embalming every rogue
marauding cell in resin. Violent poppies
dripping blood-petals on never-ending war.
Wood knots are eyes, never closing. They must close
or shed tears against sear of sunlight, the coffin of night,
as tree-pillars confine, toughening with time to bar the light.

ii Escape

A prison break of glints and tints
yearning to move above and beyond;
the body sinking to soil as the soul absconds
to slip like a wraith through bark-bars of shade
and glide through glade; the woodland warm in its cloak of oaks.
A liberating light show shifting through sparking trees
and the filtering light waltzing with whirling leaves
performing a forest floorshow that frees with ease.

iii Sun

Lifting from ground into lilting light
and a choir of cricket sounds; sprites of sunlight
dancing and darting through leaves lasered by rays;
lifted above and beyond into spark-gilded haze...
A sun-stippled urn that's destined to burn,
pain dissolving to ash in the furnace of gold.
The spectating sun splinters to a thousand little deaths,
orgasming shimmers as trees shimmy their last leafless breaths.