Poetry by L. A. Traynor

THRAWN

I am a dangerous woman
with words that are Fierce, 
can pierce, punch through barriers
some would place in my path.
 
They can reduce others to tears,
highlight fears that only
 a woman would know.
 
I am a dangerous woman. 
I have a voice
and it will sing,
it will ring with a truth.
 
And when my words are hoarse
and bloodied from the battlefield
my Fierce words will lift me
and set me back on my true course.
 
But this voice can soothe
embrace you in words
that keep your weeping at bay.
 
Support you, hold you, until the day,
your own Fierce words form in your mouth
and you stand in this place and
are free to have your say.       





My sister sleeps

My sister sleeps in my garden shaded by a plum tree.
The same tree the old man told me he stole from.
A story, ninety years in the remembering.
 
My sister sleeps, escaping from a story
she would not have chosen to write.
Her's, twenty-five years in the forgetting.
 
With each exhaled breath, words escape.
Words that she would trap if awake.
Malignant vapours that wreak havoc,
draining her will to live.
 
My sister sleeps hummed into slumber
by bees beating their wings against a blue haze of lavender.
Releasing its minty sweetness.
The aroma pulling her further into a faery land of rest;
one she doesn't want to leave.
 
Surrendering, other thoughts invade her dreams.
Dreams of when she is that girl again.
Running through a wood of lilac trees. 
Laughing as the wind soaks us in blossoms.
Clusters bursting onto our skin like tiny parma violets.
 
This I know, as she smiles when that same
sweet scent drifts down from my own
memorial tree to childhood.
 
My sister sleeps in my garden shaded by a plum tree.
I, sentinel.  Protecting. 
Ready to catch her as she surfaces
into deep turbulent water.  Her life.
​

Bio: L. A. Traynor lives in Glasgow and is the author of two novels, Anomalies and Revelations. She is included in several Scottish anthologies and numerous websites and magazines.  She opened World Community Arts Day 2016 in Edinburgh and has appeared in two five star Edinburgh Fringe events. She is founder of Woman Poets with Fierce Words and the co-founder of Fierce Poetry in Motion which produces Poetry Films and delivers events to bring them to a wider audience and runs the THRAWN project which encourages women around the World to support other women have a voice by being filmed reading the poem THRAWN.

She is on the Council for the Federation of Writers (Scotland) and member of Scottish Writers' Centre and Scottish Pen.

​Facebook  L A  Traynor/Lesley Traynor
Twitter @latraynor
Fierce Poetry in Motion @motionpoets

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