Picturesque Peasantry

Fear

Terrified,
I stumble
Through the forest
Trapped in some other girl's
Nightmare.

Lightning
Strikes each tree in turn
Everything turns to ashes
And we stand by
Watching

The forests burn
And then we turn
And we walk away
Leaving the vultures
To devour their prey.

First Snowfall of the Year

Time to celebrate the first snowfall of the year which coincided with my first binge. A huge meal of vegetarian quiche and chips. At home I eat little and often. I was obliged to purge. As I listened to the ever entertaining Charlie Wolf. To use his own favourite insult against him: what an utter schmuck! 'The one thing I dislike about this country (the UK,' he announced to the nation, 'is its devotion to the Welfare State.' Well, bog off then, Mr. Wolf, and I strongly suggest that the next time you move away from the good old U.S of A that you do some research first. Or did someone put a gun to your head and force you to move here. I know - it must be frustrating, we're so un-American. Well, guess what, there is a very good reason for that. And, speaking of the welfare state, I once corresponded with a medical student at Michigan University who was receiving S.S.D.I., Medicaid, living in section 8 Housing and driving a Saab. Just who is wedded to the Welfare State again? I know of no one in this country who is on state benefits and living in such luxury. Call me strange, but I think if you're well enough to be a medical student you're well enough to be relatively independent of the state. Charlie Wolf, it seems to me, revels in his own moral superciliousness.

Candy Striped Girl

Hag

Fearsome
Chapped reddened hands
Worn down by decades
Of work, work, work

And I tell her
That I cannot remember
The last time I spoke
I hold out my own hands

As soft
As ripe peaches. They yield
But still I cannot feel
Sporadically, I see

A vision
Of you floating before my eyes
Toughened by time in life
But in death you are

As you were before
And I see but still
I cannot hear
And I flee but still
I feel no fear

Autism

I often wonder if a close relative of mine is autistic or situated somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I handed him his Christmas present and he unwrapped it. No reaction. Resentment rose within me but then I wondered if he is capable of reacting. Aspergers syndrome is my amateur diagnosis. Half in, half out of the real world. A granite heart, incapable of feeling.

Into the Dragon's Den

The Mutiny Remains

This Parkland’s fit for ambush
We are puritan, scathing, dismal to the last
As those grand coronations are diffused
Remnants of trees stripped down centuries ago
But the mutiny remains. Party after party
Voices, sounds, echoes, scents too pungent to inhale
We still don’t wish to sleep within those great stone walls

Together, we flee our erudite captors
‘But we cannot be pure without you’ they call
We are so sought after. They would not let us leave
A thong gathered around us. ‘Stay, Sainted ones,’ they say
‘Bur we are stained,’ we respond. A prickly silence ensues
Our captors – heads bowed and tearful - resume their blackberrying

Good New Year

On New Years Eve, last year I whispered to God, 'Please, whatever Deity you worship. make life a thousand times more interesting than last year'. I remember whispering to God or some unidentifiable deity asking him to please, please, make my life interesting. Lesson Here Kids: 'Be careful what you wish for. It may come true.' That last quote was from the pen of the playwright: Oscar Wild in Lady Windemere's Fan. I played a walk-on role in that play in out local Youth Theatre, before anorexia attacked with a vengeance..

Remember Martin Luther King urged us to judge people on the content of their character rather that the colour of their skins. I'd like to see that adopted for the 'Feminist' movement', disparate as it is. acknowledging of course that that there are those who don't wish to reach the dizzy heights of a comporate career. Individual cloice, anyone? I thought we were defending that position in Iraq.

Clearly, I do not advocate pullling troups out of Iraq and giving in to the terrorists. What would leave behind - carnage. They should really have gone onto Iraq in the beginning - marched onto Baghdad and obliterated Saddam and dynasty, But, strangely, no one paid and anttenion of my milistary plan because 1. I was atill at school. 2. I was a bit nutty 3. My voice was not raised loud amidst the thronging 'Bring the Boys Home'

Out of the mouthes of babes, huh?

Eight hours to pass before my Mother arrives to collect me.

Writing however badly seems to take the edge off the anxiety

Bella Does A Star Turn

Some Dark Raven

Her rage is scrawled in blood-red ink
Across the plain white page. Her shadow
Lengthens, stretches as the day grows darker
I feel an irrevocable connection with her
I venture further into that bleak territory
I fear the gift she has bestowed upon me

This diary takes my hand and leads me
Through life. I cling to her word
For she was truly great and I turn
To contemplate her portrait. That image
Painted by those circling vultures
Who never knew her and never will

Her dismembered corpse lies there
On that wasteland, in that public mortuary
Laid bare for all to see. Blue blood
Seeps from her memory. And I
Have delegated all the responsibility
That was bequeathed to me

Her ghost is some dark raven
Huddled in an unbending tree
By daylight I hear her brood
By twilight she slips nimbly by
In the devilish deluge of darkness
She pays no mind to my distress

I am strangled, entangled
By her opulent prose and her convoluted
History. That sumptuous, pungent plot
And she has never forgiven me
For permitting those in authority
To bury her on unconsecrated ground

'Chaotic Lifestyle'

My Housing Officer telephoned my mother and they proceeded to dissect my life. Apparently I lead a ‘chaotic life style’. ‘But I’ve seen worse,’ my Housing Officer remarked. Oh, how nice of her. By ‘chaotic lifestyle’ they mean papers and books and drawing materials spread out across the floor, my P.D.A., laptop, MP3 player spread out over my bed. I would have thought that was evidence of a productive lifestyle. People are strange. No wonder I avoid them so much. Mother was told that providing ‘support’ for me would cost £50 per week. I cannot stress enough that I have never asked for said ‘support’. It is my mother who thinks I need this. She wants to employ a cleaner or even come up once a month to clean my flat herself. (That is her hobby, you see). It is hoped that my upstairs neighbours won’t be there for much longer as they may be moved into a house. The two children means they are top of the list. Some noise is inevitable, I know, but not so much that it feels as though the ceiling is about to collapse on top of me. At a push the council may provide sufficient funds to strengthen the ceiling. This will happen next year. Along with a new kitchen and a new bathroom and did I mention a new door.

Breathless whirl of shopping ensued yesterday – M&S for a bag, a scarf, a watch for Mother, Borders for books for Mother, father and Doug and HMV for a DVD for my brother: The Rocky Trilogy. I wound up spending about £160 and there’s more to get. I am destitute (Weeeeellll, I do have a few shares in various companies I could call upon and a fund I swore I’d never touch unless absolutely necessary.) Tomorrow I have to get Bella’s Stocking.

And, once again the GP surgery screwed up my medication. So I have to get half today and half tomorrow. I stood before the reception desk imagining myself actually exploding – my head bursting off and hitting the ceiling followed by a fountain of blood … delightful. The receptionist shrugged ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

Finally, I don’t share many views with these whack jobs but this was spot on.

Swirly Girl

Diminutive Devils

Those elephantine children
Whose heavy footfall pounds the ground
Above me. It quakes, it yields

The shriek, they shriek,
While their mother looks on, proud,
A saccharine smile

On her cowlike face
Revelling in the carnage they create
I fix my eye

On the white expanse of ceiling
Watching, as fragments of plaster
Dislodge themselves. White powder

Falls to the floor
And then the roof caves in
And venom surges forth

Those two, they are
Blemishes on my bleak landscape
Diminutive devils

Misshapen gluttons
Like multicolured sky rockets
They ascend, arch and descend

Tick Tock

Sign of recurring depression number one: inability to sleep in spite of copious quantities of medication
Sign of recurring depression number two: a sense of impending doom
Sign of recurring depression number three: reluctance to interact with other members of my species

I think I need to have a chat with Dr S. Because Christmas is coming and the goose is being fattened. And turkeys’ necks are being wrung. Not for my sake though – I am vegetarian. Have a mad shopping spree planned for today. As always I have left everything ‘til the last minute. And the clock goes tick, tick, tick. There is never enough time for these things but I am trying my hardest not to disappoint.

Having said all that: Am I the only one who has difficulty mustering up any sympathy for this guy?

Yes, I realize I am a little behind the times.

Christmas Angel

The House

This ancient stone house speaks its own language
And I cling to the blueness afforded to me
By the cracked windows. Not enough, I complain

But the danger lies within, not beyond
These impenetrable walls. I am reminded
By a sharp, verbal slap in the face

I feel those old ghosts grieve. I am numb
I walk through those colourless rooms
Seeking, yet dreading, revelations

A signal – full and clear. A shout! Danger!
Someone else is in this room with me
A fragment of him embeds itself within my psyche

Paltry Offerings

I can’t remember anything that happened yesterday. It has been wiped from my memory like chalk from a black board. According to Doug I rang my ever helpful housing officer and confronted her. I asked her what was so special about the woman living above me and why she was being protected. I am being visited on Friday. My mother is coming down earlier than planned to sort this thing out. Then I will be whisked away to my home town where I will spend Christmas with mountains of gifts. Amnesia is such an inconvenence. Whole chapters of my life have disappeared because of this. And not the right ones either.

Back to wrapping my paltry offerings in gold paper…

Bella On the Prowl In Black and White

To My Mentor:

She was the only woman
In a class of five
She was the only woman
Who was half alive
She was the only woman
For him to compliment
For it’s no fun flattering
Other men.

These Little Yellow Things are Failing Me

My pills - those magical potions - are not doing the work they were made for. The anxiety they are supposed to prevent is attacking me from every direction. After a sleepless night (listening to TalkSport and doing nothing that could even loosely be defined as productive) I awoke to hear my ceiling caving in. Or, at least, that is how it sounded. My neighbour was stomping all over her flat, dislodging fragments of plaster from my ceiling, and her children were screaming at one another. I checked out my own tenancy agreement and there is nothing in it that gives the residents of this block permission to set their flats on fire or flood out their neighbours. I guess she must have signed a different tenancy agreement to me. Most peculiar. And the joke is - the really big, sick joke - that when I was coming back from the shop I saw a notice the caretaker had pinned to the bin-shed: 'Do Not Deposit Refuse in Front of These Doors: Maximum Fine: £50,000 or 12 Months Imprisonment' Methinks a group of people not very far from here have their priorities ever so slightly screwed up.

But, for now, silence reigns.

Freddi Dog in Black and White

Cherubs and Gargoyles

Cherubs and gargoyles meet in the stone
Walls above the street, Feet pound the pavement
We do not lament the witches that were burnt
Three centuries ago. Right here-

Where I stand now and yet somehow
Their spirits shriek above the wind
Eyewitnesses to darkness
Their essence remains

As it rains and rains and rains
Dark spirits adore a stormy climate
And above me the bright moon rises,
Setting the scene alight.

Tenancy 'Support'

I have finally received a letter from the 'housing support' officer minus the promised insurance application form:

I write with regard to your recent concerns about living at __ ________ ____ whilst you fear a reocurrence (sic) of a fire from the flat above, which you feel is having an effect on your heatlh (sic) and makes you feel unsafe.

After visiting your flat and discussing this issue with you, I feel that you need some help and support with regard to this and have therefore asked that a support officer from our Tenant Support Team contact you to explain how they may be able to help.

An Officer from Housing Support will contact you to make an appointment to visit you alternatively you can meet at a mutually agreed venue.

With regard to the issue of wanting us to move your neighbour I must inform you that there are no grounds for the council to do this as she has not broken any tenancy conditions. We are aware of the concerns and assure you that the tenant has co-operated fully with the council with regard to her property and her tenancy.

I think that letter speaks for itself. They are basically saying that it is perfectly acceptable for a tenant to set their own flat on fire (by accident or design) three times in one year, throw garbage over the balcony, regularly make enough noise to wake the dead and deliberately flood the tenants' launderette. 'Curiouser and curiouser', said Alice. Or maybe they're not saying that at all. Maybe they're only saying it's okay for certain tenants to do these things. There's something rather weird going on here. Something is very, very rotten at the heart of this organisation. But then I've always known that. From the very beginning. I wonder if Sam will be the housing support officer sent to advise me. I'll tell you about him another time. Suffice to say, things are about to get very interesting.

Collage

Design
Originally uploaded by briekitty.

From Beyond

Peeping out from behind this purdah
White-faced and fearful. Infinity awaits
Melancholy seeps, seeps, seeps out of me
Like some strange yet beautiful melody

From some instrument clasped to the heart
Lovingly. And passers by stare
My sisters glare for I am a bud that refuses
To flower and I cleave to my sacred prison

Forgetting

My mind is dissolving. Unravelling. I forgot my mother 56th birthday. Never mind. I'm sure my brother made up for it. What do you get the woman who has everything anyway? A strange dread of Christmas descends. It is my mother's greatest creative act of the year. Going home is like stepping into a time warp, a parallel universe - I am catapaulted back into childhood. And, paradoxically, this serves to emphasise my advancing years. And then, of course, there is the food. Enough to feed several armies. A rapid transition from real life to the online world - I appear to have been banned from one of the blogs I regularly read. How will I cope?

Lost Girl

Nothingness Between Us

There is nothing in the channel
Between our two countries. Nothing
But blackguards, pirates

Bent on our annihilation
They amass themselves on every border
The darkness gathers overhead

Nothing legitimate remains
And we take the easy path - we surrender
Our victim status is engendered

We are bound down
By wave after wave of hate and onlookers
Sit back and they contemplate

Flaxen haired nurses
From the other side of the world
Wander among the wounded

Beneath an expansive, turquoise sky
Far above the flavour and the stench
Of fear, of blood, of death

And everything pauses
As they stoop down among
Endless columns of refugees

Agile and skilled
Dressed in crisp white uniforms
They genuflect to the abandoned

In Hibernation

Sleep, sleep, sleep. I am in hibernation for the winter.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, a group of teenage 'Happy Slappers' kicked a man to death. If this isn't murder then could somebody please tell me what is? They were found not guilty of murder and convicted of manslaughter. A baffling decision by the jury imho.

I telephoned my housing officer yesterday and demanded to know how she intended to 'resolve the issues' I have with my delightful upstairs neighbour. She told me that she thought the issues had been resolved. ('I don't come out looking for trouble,' she told me coldly after denying that she had ever promised to get back to me. It's strange then that Doug swears that he heard her say exactly that.) She went on to inform me that she knew how the fire had started but (and this is where it gets really absurd) she couldn't pass any information onto me because it was 'confidential'. I emailed her with extracts from this very blog. After a couple of 'phone calls I was connected to my H.O.'s supervisor who promised to send me details of the council's own insurance policy and told me that she would investigate the situation further.

Platitudes designed to placate?

And so the saga continues...

Three Generations

Embittered Daybreak

An embittered daybreak on the battlefield
Dead combatants lie amidst the tall grass
The Inner Circle stoops over maps and
Those Generals cast shadows over the landscape
Destroying, then sculpting, then rebuilding

And when they speak columns of soldiers obey
‘We’ll bomb them off the face of the planet,’
They say. And horseback riders stop and stumble
‘The Calvary have arrived,’ we cry
And I send a prayer into the sky

But the deity I plead with is deaf
Or maybe dead, like the bloodied corpses
That stain the earth crimson
And my words remain unheard
And no miracle is despatched.

Some Topical Talk

TV is ‘dumbing down’ apparently. Odd because I don’t believe it was ever the bastion of intellectualism. Only Misty Eyed Nostalgics believe that. Some of us have clearer memories and recall that wonderful decade the ‘seventies. Remember On the Buses and That’s Life. Meanwhile the price of oil is going up. And no-one can deny that this was a true miracle.

Only 4o-something people injured and no fatalities.



And no we didn’t hear it in Cambridge. Despite what people on certain fora may have claimed. I know. I was up at 6 am – enslaved to my insomnia as always.

Shrouded

Dreaming and Scheming and Screaming

Beyond my shroud, beyond my borders
Something hideous and yet heavenly
Unsurpassed by what I have experienced
They are burdensome, these limitations

I do not engage in repartee with those around me
I am jaded, devoid of both expectation and apprehension
I glance outwards. I fix my gaze
Beyond their horizon for I inhabit

An isolated inner island. My heart is momentarily
Elevated. I stand on the precipice
Edges darkened with sorrow
I find myself dreading tomorrow

A blade poised to descend
Their brilliance, their vitality, is killing me
There is nothing here to revitalise me
And they bemoan my apparent inflexibility

While I long for the immensity of the ocean
I will never see, those shifting blue waters,
It is far too calm here
As sunset sucks the life out of the land

I do nothing underhand
But dream and scheme and scream within
Wild eyes hidden by dark glasses
No feelings revealed, everything concealed

The land is too solid beneath my feet
And those pale people press against me
A coal black sky descends
It shows no mercy for anybody.

Incompetence and Profligacy

I am not animated. I am in repose. A still-life. But something keeps me clinging to life.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

'Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening'
Robert Frost

I was wrong about my neighbour's children. They come every weekend, rather than every other weekend. Or maybe she keeps elephants as pets - I'm sure that violates the terms of her tenancy agreement. I am going to ring the council tomorrow and ask them exactly how the fire (of the 26th March) started. I'm told they had to rebuild the place (and whatever they did has destroyed what little soundproofing there was) from the inside out and I'm sure they wouldn't spend thousands of pounds of public money without conducting some kind of investigation first. No organisation is that incompetent and profligate.

No, wait a minute...

Dark Days

Dark days indeed. Walking
Through the woods, through rainfall
And the beast approaches. Closer, closer
I have no haven. Heaven has dissolved
My shadowy guardians have been slain
And birds of prey swoop, screaming
They scoop me up and I am carried
Through the sky. They are now my
Companions. I nestle into their wings
I will never be alone again.

Christmas Shopping

I went Christmas shopping and ended up buying a present for myself: a digital radio. A long, stressful, tiring day. My Neighbour From Hell forced me to leave my flat. She was running, jumping, dropping heavy objects on the floor (Hello? You live in a flat. There's someone living below you.) Anxiety is twisting my stomach into knots. Hasn't she done enough? When will she be satisfied? Can we say: 'sociopathic personality disorder'?

*Pops another valium*

Dreamland

Drowning

This is what happens when the oceans invade
When the sky collapses and the stars implode
And the stratosphere feeds off our fallibility
Then the elements shift and the ice, warmed,

Turns to water and flows down the mountains
Engulfing us all in colourless water
The trees, the grasses, are burnt, blistered
We remain calm, we remain in hiding

Our thoughts, our ideas advance,
Limbless and laughing. There is no sound
Apart from the shrill utterances of grey birds
Hovering over polluted and muddied seas

Flying low and our crusaders cling to their wings
They migrate and we stagnate, we reverse
We recoil from the only thing we cannot slay
The malevolent proprietor of this dark universe

Doctor, Doctor

So clearly scripted. I mislaid my medication. Or some spirit who resides in my flat snatched them from me. I telephoned my surgery. The sigh from the receptionist was audible. I did get an appointment ... in the end. I told my doctor about the side affects of Zyprexa - weight gain, primarily. Some have even suggested a link with diabetes. The BNF (British National Formulary) does not mention this - internet hysteria, perhaps. It did mention the tiny sparks that shoot up my arms - tingling of the peripheral nerves is one noted side effect. It also disturbs my peripheral vision. I got yelled at by some madwoman in the street for bumping into her. I didn't see her. I shouted after her, 'I did say sorry. What do you want - blood?'

So much for Christmas Spirit. I'd like to see some.

The Lady and the Worm

The Evacuee

I was a renegade
They knew this as I stepped
Off the train and who were these strangers
Standing on the platform, waiting for me?
I stepped down and they greeted me

They embraced me but their hearts
Remained sewn up tight and at night
They were the villains that populate
My recurrent dreams. And I was shackled
To that dark country house

Filled with shadows and spirits
And ghosts and voices from the neglected
Daemons whose faces floated above me in the dark
I was sleepless in my summertime robe
I had no Guardian

No one to narrate my story
No one to shelter me from these
Glowering spirits that gathered round my bed
Laughing and grabbing at my covers
These entities despised me

And these stone walls
Muffled my cries, my cries, my cries
Of terror, of terror, of terror
But they refused to hear me
As I waited, upright and breathless, for the morning

And decades later
They have forgotten me
They have cut my picture
Out of the family album
For one last time I look back

At that house and drive away
Finally free, finally me,
And I became a global gypsy
Leaping halfway across the world

Needless to Say...

a minority of tasks on my list were completed. I was overwhelmed by a stack of proofreading that made its way via e-mail attachments from the College. Spent the day in a sedative haze but have rechecked work over and over again to ensure there are no mistakes. Then I marched through the town, shopping, and the money slowly ebbed out of my bank account. Soon I will be destitute once again but at least I can seek refuge in my parents' home.

Binged on slice after slice of toast. Watching The Bill. How may police officers from Sunhill have been killed. I'd call that 'over-kill'. Every Christmas they kill off another one of their own officers. So much for realism.

Pale Pink Butterfly

Emotional Bloodhounds

Pursued, through the dense green forest
Set against silver mountains, close behind
Emotional bloodhounds run her down
They are muses, intruding, emitting
Song after song, inhaling her fine fragrance
Their shadows overtake her
Immense matriarchs and patriarchs

Tireless as the sky grows dark
Bellicose, bold, like amazons
And dreams of the deceased decrease
And she is breathless now
And we witness the annihilation
Of a true visionary and she stands
Pale and silent as a nun.

More for me than for anyone else

Daily Essentials:

1. Respond to insurance company

2. Write letter of complaint to council

3. Set up Paypal Account

4. Scan 5 pictures a day

5. Draw 1 picture a day

6. Take set of photographs a day

7. Buy 1 Christmas present a day

8. Eat Five Fruit and Veg a day

9. Make one blog/diary entry per day

10. Set up Deviant Art Account

11. Design site for Poetry Book

12. Pay bills daily (1st thing)

13. Write one poem a day

14. Work on 1 chapter of novel/ OU coursework per day

15. Ring a friend every other day

16. Go to a poetry reading once a week

17. Go to mass every Sunday

18. Visit Nobby every day

19. Work on programming languages twice a week

20. Return laptop

21. Visit housing officer and C.A.B.

22. Return OU form

23. Contact literary agent

Spotless Soul

That devil ravaged my spotless soul
And then you died and were glorified
But I was numb and they mocked my bulk
And the bitterness grew like a tree
Within me. My mind was threadbare
I did not care as they fought over
The remnants of your great estate

They flee with the prime cuts
They swoop, carry away their prey
Leaving me lancing the wounds
And telling twisted tales in which
Your quirks become capital crimes
And you are no longer any kin of mine
And I retreat into the divine

Every Other Week End

Arson is still illegal in this country, right? I was just wondering because Neighbour From Hell, aka Little Miss Pyromaniac seems to have escaped all consequences for her actions. In fact, she seems to have been rewarded for them. I woke up to the sound of her two children running up and down the flat, screaming at the top of their lungs on Sunday. She does not have full custody and has them every other week end. I heard her little boy screaming at his sister to: 'Shut up, shut up!' but I could not hear her - no firm, motherly voice. I have discovered a website that may provide the answer to my problems: http://www.nfh.org.uk/

My diet starts today: Gillian McKeith's 'Diet of Abundance'. I had an avacado salad in the morning and then a large bag of peppery green salad (less than 50 cals) and a punnet of cherries - all from Marks and Spencer.

And, finally, may I present my new Deviant Art Page: http://bellarie.deviantart.com/

Big Cat

The Pseudo Messiah

Bull-headed and eagle-eyed
Monarch of this concrete block. His savagery
Emerges and for the first time in my life
I am truly afraid. He stalks the ground
Around, divesting remnants of itself

‘I will always be here,’ he hisses
Pompous and puffed up. Unrestricted, marauding
Governed by no law that God or man
Can conjure up. Immense and unearthly
Captivating the unwary

There is a discernible flow,
A gushing red river, of fear from those of us
Who cannot discern your charm
Your ego batters against
Our fragile edges

You offer us only malevolence
And you deceive your disciples
With false benevolence
And I can never sleep again
In your presence.

The Madwoman in the Attic

I have neglected this blog recently. I cannot seem to concentrate. I am afraid of the future. I am afraid of everything. I am afraid of no one being one my side. Oh wait, they're not! Most of all I am afraid of the Madwoman in the Attic - the woman living upstairs from me. She is pacing the floor as we speak. Her footsteps are gloating at me, advertising her presence, saying 'I am a pyromaniac and I could do what I did before at any time.'

And my housing officer still hasn't written to me about this issue. But I have no right to support as far as they are concerned. They have a limited supply of sympathy and it has all been used up on her.

My hand grips the mallet.