Becoming Human

Gloved hands fluttering
Like navy blue bats
An ice sculpture
With red-gold hair
And wide eyes
Stepping from the canvas
I have been working
On her all day
And still she is only half way
To becoming human

Homecoming

Your history resides in my bones
It runs through my veins
In my dark and skeletal remains
You left without ceremony
And then you return
Bringing home your knotted laundry
Suddenly, so alien to me
With your calcium enriched bones
Unhealthily healthy
Your armour repels me

You trouble me and I am effaced
Frozen out of your entanglements
A new worldliness
Has welded itself to you
We gape and then embrace
We watch one another
You, still hostile as a cactus
Me, skittish, nightmarish
I am terrified of this new you
You Changeling Child

You took all the love from me
And then you pass on the baton
You open your hand. It is empty
You have brought no gift for me
Peel off your layers, I beg
But you refuse
You were my refuge
Your claws left scars
But you are unmarked
Lucky boy

Pushing

Pounding on the walls
Pushing at the doors
A rush of air sends
Medical notes flying
Carried on the wind
Cacti on the windowsills
Standing guard
On the border between
My room and reality
Spring flowers
Beyond the glass
Aloof, untouchable
But beautiful
A ceasefire is declared
And I am escorted
Into my morphine twilight

Lamplight

Lamplight reflected in puddles
We walk down these rainwashed streets
The sky is a navy blue dome arching
Over us. We look up. Enraptured
And we savour the silvery

Flavour of the stars. We move on.
Surrounded by city walls. Rats run
Beneath our feet and tramps seek shelter
And hurl a welter of curses at us
As we pass but we pay them no mind

And focus on the road ahead
A smooth black ribbon we trace its curve.
We stand on an arched bridge watching
The river swell and, agile and audacious,
We climb over the wrought iron gates

Of a great stone mansion
We wander through its unlit grounds
While within, in dark chambers,
The wealthy sleep on feather beds
And debutantes weep as stealthily we creep

Across the stone courtyard
Our hopes as high as the owl's cry
For anything is better than nothing
We lie on the damp lawn and we sleep
A sleep as deep as death

Moon

The Proprietor of Dreams

I ride with my horse unsaddled
Onto the field of battle, wondering
Just who is the proprietor of my dreams
Is it the moon, corrupted by trees
Whose black branches reach up and up

To caress it. The usurper of a sun
That once witnessed two towers fall
An ineffectual element. In decline.
Each rock is eroded by its sister: the sea
These are the songs all children sing

As newly dead ghosts depart
To join the ancestors. 'One day
We'll be back,' they say, moving away
I drift with the river instead
Grey waves, grey waves, they greet us

And we pour blue blood
Over the red of some pauper
I tried to die a thousand times
But I was always dragged back
To the stench of that trench

The European Night and the American Poetess

The European night is unfamiliar to this American poetess
In a way that she cannot define. The stars are brighter somehow
No matter, it is indeed divine. A lamp burns at her window
It is the star that beckons us home. It seems to smile. At what?
It is displaced by the moon
And our yesterdays call once more

And the moon gloats
At the stars she outshines
Like a brilliant big sister
Are the trees overwhelmed too?

Their fingers reach up, up, up to touch
Her as she dangles there for all to see
What a narcissistic show-off she must be
That full, all-effacing (rather fat, actually) moon

'I think I'm on the side of the Angels'
'No you're not. You're on the side of the cool kids. Watch Mean Girls if you don't get the reference.'

This Week I Be Mostly Reading...

'England is, above all, the country of the amateur, and the wireless operators, couriers and saboteurs who went to France, were therefore amateurs, officers working behind enemy lines. They had a fine contempt for the professional spy. They were ordinary men and women in that they sprang from ordinary walks of life. The don, the stock-broker, the bird-watcher, the doctor, the insurance agent, the shorthand typist, the widow, the anthropologist and the head-waiter...'

Odette
Jerrard Tickell. (p.44)

See Saboteurs.

No Real Job

Nocturnal bride
Wears black tonight
Grainy pictures
Of a faded wedding
I am naked, draped in leaves
My hand clasping my heart
All foliage suffocates

A fragment of my mirror (broken)
A shard of my heart
Books line the walls
Who lives in those leather-bound volumes
Even they are soon to be forgotten
So I devoured you
And I relished every morsel
Torn and bleeding
The grey sky in my head
From some ancient tale
Pale ghosts hovered over me.

'Pin This Butterfly Down'

They call me 'Madam Prozac'
All night outside my window
Cats shriek, fight, cry
Beneath a dark sky

I am the wallflower at the party
Sweet scent blossoming
I hover on the outer circle
My perfume grows repellent

Then like a kitten I curl into a ball
Sleep leads me into dreams
I hide beneath this black veil
My memory of the sun is dimming
The sky grows greyer every day
No light is strong enough to shine through

Acorn (Flying Meat Software)

Some see Angel-children
Singing in Sunday school
And others see Daemon brats,
hovering on the line between
Heaven and hell
Cowering, beneath the birch
For this is all that they deserve
‘A burden on the parish’
From the moment they were born.

Too Brief, All Too Brief

Whatever hell you've been through
She has endured much more than you
Whatever territory you own
She will claim it as her home
We stood by and watched her fall
As she spurned the greatest gift of all
She could not see what she had already
And that, we all agree, is her greatest tragedy.

The Patron Saint of Victims Everywhere

I stamp my feet,
This is not fair
For I am the Patron Saint
Of Victims Everywhere

Self-appointed, self-anointed.
But never, never effaced
I offer superficial harmony
In a chaotic world and this is why
I am universally embraced

Oh, come all adore me
For I am the one you have chosen
To stamp your identities upon
I am womanly, you see
The epitome of purity and passivity

But, in time, my foot soldiers fade away
Their attention strays, it wanders elsewhere
While I look for a way to remind you
That I am still the Patron Saint
Of Victims Everywhere

Adoration dissipates and this unlit stage
Is a lonely place. I expect empathy
But I cannot reciprocate
For I do not want others to share
My status as the Patron Saint
Of Victims Everywhere

The auditorium is deserted now
And I am devoid of admirers
I call out, into the darkness
I stamp my feet. This isn't fair
Am I no longer the Patron Saint
Of Victims Everywhere?

Witchfinder General

I am the Witchfinder and I wander
Through a deceptively tranquil countryside
In which daemons, devils, Lucifer himself reside

I pursue them, they run, they hide
I hunt them down. I am the dark shadow
That hovers over them, wounded, defeated

We hunt in packs - my minions and I
We run them to ground. Young girls, their faces
Smeared with blood and dust. We corner our prey

Respectable farm-girls until the crops failed
And it was that bad harvest that brought them to me
Wild eyes blazing defiantly

They resist but we persist and in the morning
The villagers gather wood for the fire
But I am the one who insists on igniting the pyre.

How Beastly the Bourgeois Is

by D.H. Lawrence

How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species--



Presentable, eminently presentable--

shall I make you a present of him?



Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?

Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?

Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day

after partridges, or a little rubber ball?

wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the

thing



Oh, but wait!

Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another

man's need,

let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life

face him with a new demand on his understanding

and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.

Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.

Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new

demand on his intelligence,

a new life-demand.



How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species--



Nicely groomed, like a mushroom

standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable--

and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life

sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life

than his own.



And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.

Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside

just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow

under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.



Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings

rather nasty--

How beastly the bourgeois is!



Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp

England

what a pity they can't all be kicked over

like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly

into the soil of England.

Stepfather

I am merely an object moving through space
Out of place and lacking in grace and you begin
With a disclaimer. You tell me I am essential
But incomplete. You desecrate my disordered dreams
'Your mother is gone. She died in the night'
No one cried and then the great divide arrived
You only die once, after all. You move in on me
You disagree with my methodology. You disapprove
Of my every move. My words are unheard and undeterred
You detach me from all context and you begin,
Slowly and deliberately, to deconstruct me.

The Queen and the Great Revolution

Little empires crumbled
Miniature kingdoms toppled
As the princess became a queen
And men knelt, grovelling
At the feet of this new matriarch
She loved no one but herself
The peasants that lined the roads
Were but money-making machines
Fairy tale figures - Snow White,
Rose Red and Little Red Riding Hood
So pure, so soft, so good
To be trodden underfoot

They threw flowers at the motorcade
A rainstorm of roses aimed at that princess
Her feelings were suppressed
By vodka, vodka, vodka
'She is an angel,' they said
But that was long before
The Great Revolution
When this new Queen dreamed
Of cutting out the tongues
Of rabid republicans
Now she is still the centre of attention
She is still the star of the show.

But she is not adored anymore
And up in that dock she can smell
Her own blood, her own death
And those who once revelled in her grace
Will dance jubilantly,
Madly, on her grave.

Against the Tide

She always swam
Against the tide
She never compromised
She was never pulled under
She refused to go down
She did not drown

And now she is standing
On some strange shore
There is nothing left
There is nothing more
She was once the woman
All men adore

She blazed, she amazed, distinguished
Until her flame was extinguished
For old age was a destination
She never believed she would reach.

Loss: For the Irretrievable Ones

Morning

You feed me sweet mouthfuls
Of syrup or something similar
And your spirit comes
And drags me through the sky

No one hears my cry
I learned to fly just so that
I could be with you
I soar through
The dawn’s cool dew
And, oh what a view
I have of you.

I Remember

I remember
My lips against her cold cheek
My hand resting on a dying face
My body, weak and trembling
As they lead me away

At night I walk upon water
At night an angelic being visits me
In the land between sleep and consciousness
She takes my hand, leads me out of my body
Through the air, across the land and into the sea


And death shall have no dominion
Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Warning

If you attempt to dismember me
I will not sit passively
I'll sharpen my tongue
I'll sever the cord
That restrains my song.
You flay then slay the beast
On which we feast
We dine with the priest
From whom festivities flow.
'Til we bite into his heart
And no guest moves
They glance at the clock
Make their excuses and go.

Chaos

Accompany me on my journey
Over the sea. I am leaving
A country whose soil
Is stained with blood
I am the iconoclast
Cast in the role of villain

This is a kind of primal tribalism
I set myself apart for I am neither
The devil nor the divine
I swim against the tide
I resist the divide
I will not surrender

But they hunt in packs,
The emotional bloodhounds
I stand between them and their prey
I am pushed aside and we watch
As she ascends the scaffold
Old and mad and terrified

They celebrate their conquest
They serve as mutual mirrors
In this land of polarity
There is no dawn, no twilight
There is only day, there is only night
They will never love me
But their love was and always will be
A prize not worth possessing
A desire to belong used to burn inside me
It will not return for I know now
That their missiles do not always
Hit their target

For even they cannot hold back the night
Even they cannot hold back the tide
Even they cannot hold back the chaos
One day it will come rushing in
It will engulf them. Eventually.

The Streetsweeper

Caged, enraged,
A life reduced
A lap dancer
In some sleazy club
Then the war started
And the river parted
Incredible, indelible,
Pink flesh glistening
Under hot lights

By day she is
The street sweeper
Barely there
Only half alive
We pass her by
She emerges from s family
Of filthy scrubbers
Derided and despised

But in the dark
At night so bright
With stars. A hidden
Inner self emerges
Magical and ethereal
She is cut and shaped,
From the same cloth
As her foremothers
Embracing duality

An inner twin
Concealed by day
This is the way
She has learnt to survive
A wraith in ragged overalls
Unnoticed by passers by
As she waits for the end
Of these friendless, endless
Days of decay

But in the dark
She is not the same
She dances on the tabletop
Ageing, affluent city bankers
Thrust money at her
Forgetting for a moment
Their wives, their children
The dullness of their lives
Chanelled into something they despise

And for her, this is survival
But, for them, it all remains
Just a game

Unlit Stove

There was no warmth in that room
The stove was never lit
And upstairs her children slept
Milk and cookies beside their cots
Huddled beneath heavy eiderdowns
A towel blocking the vents in the door
While downstairs something rots
It rots, it rots

The nurse came but she was too late
The mother had already embraced her fate
Coal gas descended and her neighbour slept
Enveloped in dreams beneath crisp sheets
Of cream, a freshly baked cake
Coated in icing sugar, breath slowing
Unaware. It was not that he did not care
For he had imbibed that poison too