N J Griffiths

Tag: free verse

  • Vermilion


    Raw amnesia like mornings,

    like pillows, your hair falling,

    spilling into weeks. 

    Can you see the words 

    I leave for you? A trail

    in light, likeness in the linseed,

    vermilion in turpentine. I close 

    the windows. Watch my hands

    pluck memory from carpet strands

    I stand too close, I see too much

    I ask to forget and then – 

     – morning again – clear

    and wretched

    and almost beyond thought.

    © Nia Jane Griffiths 2024

  • Weight

    Comfort in the soft fur,

    the leathered couch,

    distractions before she 

    leaves you for the night.


    Downstairs, drunk and

    dozing, a home you’ve

    made soft in all but

    edges. A late day,


    a weekend. You think

    back to what you wrote

    before. Bent knees. Hands.

    Fingers. Lingering cries. 


    She hears you. Turns

    another page. Reads words

    you could have written

    but didn’t. 

    © All rights reserved. Nia Griffiths 2022.

  • Freudenberg

    That grey-scale paperweight town still

    lies heavy on my mind.

    Thrust upon an ocean of gold

    and cherry leaves, it stood silent

    and unfinished;

    an outline of houses made with

    oil-black ink

    waiting for the warmth of

    paint.

    Some will tell you

    that if you head east

    towards the sun-warmed hills,

    the sketched out town will

    stare you down;

    row after row

    of asymmetric triplets,

    watching.

    I remember looking in,

    from afar.

    Thinking that the people there

    must echo the measured monochrome;

    tiny paper beings of

    ink, and soot.

    Or, if they didn’t,

    that it would be my task

    to turn to ash.

  • Definitions

    I heard them in the park.

    After dark, two glass eyed women

    like forgotten trees, waiting.

    Through the silence their

    voices sang, floating the hills

    and swimming the valleys of my youth;

    winding the worn out path

    to me. I stood there,

    for a moment, almost alone.

    Thrust back to her voice.

    To all of their voices. Those

    women of steel

    of copper,

    of quilted pillows and quiet revolution,

    whose laughs could tear a mountain down,

    whose lightning  almost certainly had.

    In just a drop

    of their quilted voice,

    I could see the charcoaled skyline rise

    and fall before me like lifetimes;

    melodic and chaotic.

    I walked on. Past those

    almost forgotten fragments

    of home.

     

     

    Nia Griffiths, 2017

    © all rights reserved