Cat fur and itchy crumbs,
The soft and milky
Spell of films and laughter,
Salty tears the blanket took,
Stretchy holes and threads
Pulled loose by happy claws –
The ecstasy of dribbling jaws –
Bobbly bits I want to pull
(Pigtails on the girl in front)
And dingy bits from god knows what –
Old friends –
Do not wash my yellow blanket.
Paint me with a thousand stripes
And let my life heal in my face
Briefest dream: the fall is sharp and wrenches
Ribs up down with shocking force.
Eyes sudden wide with fear
And shock: I shout my ‘No!’
But choice has no place here.
Briefest dream: and hands, once clasped, release you
Back and back, away, so small.
Eyes sudden wide with fear
And shock: I shout my ‘No!’
But that won’t keep you near.
In longer dreams, the story seems to change:
Different scenes, new people face
New problems, so it seems.
But look again, look close,
And still the same old themes.
Roots crushed by asphalt, Iris stands her ground.
In everything hopeless, hope can be found.
Watering can, little shoes,
April sun, baby blues,
Wet socks, soggy flowers,
Tired eyes, long hours.
Chubby cheeks, half-formed words,
Drone of cars, songs of birds,
Deepest love, smothered rage,
Silent protest, mother’s cage,
Eager eyes, sticky hugs,
New to nature, eating bugs,
Scraped knees, mummy kiss it,
‘When it’s gone,’ they say, ‘you’ll miss it.’
In fresh air, short of breath,
Should he nap? What if: cot death?
Filled nappy, teatime tears,
Guilt, resentment, shameful fears.
Fences, hedges, walls divide
So many of us trapped inside,
Feeling we are not enough,
Scared to say we find it tough.
I find it hard. How do you find it?
Do you ever wish you could unwind it?
Do you cry on cold baked beans
And plug your babies into screens?
Join the club. Come and share.
There’s others like us everywhere.
When we hide our fear and pain,
Depression smugly smiles again.
We saw humanity itself,
Cut into flesh and bone,
Of young and old:
That love and love’s self-righteous fire
Ignite the icy flame
Of hatred cold;
That cowardice and bravery
Alike can end in tears,
Or beauty hold;
That jealous rage and parents’ love
Are sibling seeds to sow
The end of days.
Competing vanity of gods,
Like clouds in still water:
Our mirrored ways.
The tide is changed by whim, or turned
By heartfelt quest for truth,
But wet it stays.
In Homer, just as now, we live for show,
And miss the mad adventure as we go.
The richness and the poverty of all
Is in the savage beauty of her fall.
Fierce garish horses trotting
Up and down with groundhog rage;
Paint chipped and reins long-handled,
Chasing nothing in their cage.
There’s something in the chiming
Tinny clatter of the songs
That speaks of childhood toys and
Rocks like parents’ well-loved wrongs.
And so she rides again, enduring
Sickness all the while,
Because it isn’t home without
That raw nostalgic bile.
There’s no use telling her to
Change the route of her old horse
Because she’s bound, with it, to
Take the same old dizzy course.
If only we could stop it:
Take her arm as she stepped down
And show her all the other ways
To play in this wide town.
If only we could stop it:
Take her gently by the hand
And show her she could live a
Life much sweeter than she planned.
A life that feels so strange at first
Without the seasick dance,
But one where love and happiness
Will grow with half a chance.
Now in the nightmare lights
We just slide by in coloured streams.
She slips from rescue reach,
Like whispered words from fading dreams.
In the stale car, it’s hot
And smells of crisps.
The tinny sound of old
Cartoons through headphones
Mixes with the birdsong.
That thing which frightened me:
It found me.
I won.
I knew with total certainty
I would be
Undone.
But sometimes we surprise ourselves;
Our strength is
Inside.
I fought the thing I dreaded most
And I have
Survived.
Long lost and prodigal, you return.
But like the spoiled cat
Refused the fish,
We turn our backs,
Pride wounded
By your long withheld warmth.
Now your caress is quick to
Melt our bitter hearts
And head-to-heel when we
Are heated through,
Satisfied and tingling,
We relax our limbs.
But not for long, for spring
Has lit a fire in our soles
And suddenly,
Invited to life’s dance,
We lift our skirts
And gamble in the fields.
Kiss of heat
Heart swell
Whisper of
Long days
Tending earth
Birds sing
Butterfly
Wing beat
Colour back
Feet skip
Coats come off
Knees breeze
Winter weight
Leaves me
Dancing in
Sun beams
Today we made a green robot.
It had cardigan buttons
For cheerful eyes
And glitter on its chest;
An old black thing
To press and beep.
It was done: without doubt the best.
Today we took out your skateboard
And had a go on the path.
We laughed and clung
To each other with fear.
Step up with one,
Push with the other,
Then fall with aplomb on your rear.
Today we hunted for nature;
You had a takeaway box
And filled it with
Flowers, acorns and leaves.
Red in the face,
Hair everywhere,
All sorts of damp bits up your sleeves.
Today we created three masks
For superhero figures.
Each had its own
Logo: complex and small.
Card to cut out,
Paper to stick,
And a place on each bedroom wall.
Today we went to the fun pool:
The one with the slide and jets.
I was the beast
For seeking and hiding;
You swam away
Squealing with glee.
I was the whale for riding.
At bedtime, cuddled on my lap,
You smelt all lovely and warm.
We read a book
About life’s rights and wrongs.
You brushed your teeth,
Not without fuss.
You slept whilst I finished your songs.
And now you’re in bed and I’m tired,
But I’m not stressed out this time.
I leave the mess,
Admire the cat’s repose.
I have to take
These little wins
And hold them close.
Click and drop of water pipes,
Slightly off the beat,
Startles silence, cracks the hum;
Sacrifices sleep for heat.
Plaintive howl of aeroplanes:
Tired, waiting to land,
Dragging those who fled the grey
Back again from sun and sand.
In musty air, the gentle speech
Of ones who seem to know
About the world and politics
And how things ought to go.
But in my bed, I stretch my feet.
I wriggle my hips down.
I am the queen of duvet-land;
The pillow is my crown.
And, just for now, it sinks away:
The complicated stuff.
This sleep-soft world is all there is
And maybe that’s enough.
No I could never wash myself enough.
I do not wish to be a British girl
And yet I’ve had the good of empire wealth
Hard won by others’ hands and others’ health.
So in complicit luxury I kneel
And kiss the feet of those we used to steal.
In sweaty filthy dark we chained you down
In service to our tastebuds and our crown.
We trod you underfoot with polished heel
And gave you numbers so as not to feel.
No ‘sorry’ now could ever bring to life
Your children or your grandpa or your wife.
No ‘sorry’ now could ever make you feel
The way you did before he made you kneel.
No ‘sorry’ now could ever bring back days,
Or clothes, or food, now lost to British ways.
No ‘sorry’ now could take back words that stole
Your childhood; spray paint insults take their toll.
No shame, or guilt, or ‘sorry’ now could clean
Our monied hands of their blood-sugar sheen.
And even now I sit in candied bliss,
In clothes that maybe felt the slaver’s kiss
And drink my tea and wonder where it grew
And if the one who grew it got paid too.
We tend to think of slaves as those who died
Long long ago, brought here by whip and tide.
But slaves are kept in farms and brothels here
They live today in pain, exhaustion, fear.
No I could never wash myself enough.
I do not wish to be a British girl.
And yet, if I’m to take rich empire gains,
Then I must wear its rancid greedy stains.
It is not much to pay for what we took,
So I will hope to hang from history’s hook.
I do not wish to be a British girl,
Great Britishness: it makes my white toes curl.
Eaten into dark beams,
The breath of those
Both strange and same.
Beer-soaked wood is sticky
With long tired relief
Of workdays old
And in the grimy folds
Of cracked-seated chairs
Sit our short lives.
Warm light, as though flame-shone,
Enfolds us like a
Mother’s happy myths.
Amongst the heated noise
A shared mad question
Of our purpose
Hangs and waits in amber
Whilst we laugh. For some
It waits through tears.
And left to feel the vain
Weight of knowing first,
The pub endures:
Feeling in its bricks, which
Crumbling hold, the quick
Of mortal joy.
For still we come to play,
And maybe always.
Finding in her years
The truth of our days.
ThinkingInk 