Amber Natalie Kennedy is a poet and fiction writer from Oxfordshire, England. She has a master’s degree in Creative Writing and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, both from Durham University. She has attended and led a number of different writing groups. She is also the Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Spellbinder quarterly literary and art magazine. Amber’s poems have been published in Better Than Starbucks, Write Now Lit, the Ice Lolly Review and Idle Ink.

ENDLESS ODYSSEYS

Whispers wage war on waking seconds:
concealed conchiglie clusters within.
Puppets praise promise of perfection, 
thriving not writhing, wrapped in motions.

Whispers fixate on oxymorons,
paint skies with unforgiving contrasts;
brushes taunt idle comparison.
The road blocked: diverted back to start.

Whispers lie low in the earth under,
tugging me deep into slick quick sand.
Puppets play with endless odysseys
requiring Herculean efforts.

Whispers thread bones jutting out of flesh.
All fed words of prophets and preachers,
warped inside churning modulators,
delivered limp, like fairground goldfish.

Whispers ricochet, wreaking havoc
as I try to tug a repelled weight,
force it into shape and replicate
what puppets proved every man could be.

Whispers draw back curtains, open light,
send me dizzy, sick with altitude,
clutching Tibetan prayer flags – frayed ends,
now wandering eight folded paths lost

Whispers wield fragments of past to cut 
into flesh crucified on future.
Puppets play on other heights shouting
far from Everest’s lonely summit.

Whispers seize my heart and show me a view
puppets promised too, and I am poised -
There between their wide-eyed blind triumphs, 
And a wilful slow ascent... to silence.