Denise Woodhouse

Denise Woodhouse Poems

Denise Woodhouse Biography

Born in Hampshire, I spent a chunk of my childhood in Malawi. I trained in visual display and exhibition design and have worked as a secretary, medical laboratory technician and freelance designer. My poems come from 'rootlessness' and the effect that clinical depression has on memory, sense of self.)

The Best Poem Of Denise Woodhouse

Mtv Heaven?

From among the silver birches
Backed by a low sun
Come the young men.
All dark beauty, full lips.
They glide downhill,
Golden and lime lit leaves
Wind machined through their jet set hair.
Sprayed on jeans, a glimpse of shirt
Revealing perfected pectorals.

We are in no doubt
About what we want.

Our point of view spins round,
For nothing here is earthbound.
And from some other trees
Unfurl the light bright teen angels,
All airbrushed, fluttering, with jutting hips.
White silk runs like rain after drought
Over breasts and knees,
Their wings like smoke and frost,
Their eyes all pout.

And as these all-knowing children
Meet and mingle
Mick is just beginning to get it.
He's letting us get it too, as near as we'll ever be
To what we need.

I can revisit and replay any day
My childish flights of fantasy.
Press a button and I still go rushing up
To dip my burnt-out head
In pools of cool haloed sky.
We all leave our hearts up there
Somewhere.
Look at our eyes, all pale jade.
The hairbrush held to our pouting lips,
The music is still taking us up
Above the spun silver unreeling
Of our unrealised lives,
Where there's no time, nor healing,
Just a slow, grey fade.

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