I came home
to sharp green heads
peeping from the
dirty allotment of Time-
where I sank my sorrow
to rest.
Unattended fields
yield no crop-
but there is no mistaking
the colour that
betrays the brown
of my
abandoned mud.
My loss I cannot reap,
yet cannot leave to die!
I want it so badly
to revert into the ground
before that’s where I lie.
Onder Meer (Among others)
There’s a patch of burnt grass,
Still blackened by the sausage rolls
We set alight when we were
Fourteen years old.
By the Beck, our prepubescent
Hand holding professed a love
Now lost. But still I hold
Onto the memories like a tree
Clings to its leaves-
-They twist
And fade
And somehow fall
Away.
I hear our laughter
When I see the burnt patch,
But I cannot place our faces
And I cannot taste the ash.
I am a world of many worlds,
And though I am no longer
A fourteen year old girl,
I am the smoke – the embers- of
All I have ever known.
This poem was written for a friend who’s putting together an anthology based on the significance of one’s home.
The single-sided handkerchief,
damp and crisp.
Folding,
against the white
of my skin,
and think- just think-
of bliss.
Cry me a pigeon
And spread your filthy wings.
I heard the others whispering
When the proud dove sings.
Oh, in the sky,
What a sight!
When the filthy birds shadow
Twelve arrows of white.
If I am to love only once,
Let it be with you-
For the Sun shines out your ass
And from your mouth- the moon.
I’ll call you a Summer’s day
And you will call me a silly cunt,
Waking in a puddle of your drool
With a glare, a middle finger, a grunt-
In bed with our socks on,
Stroking the hairs on our legs
Like stray animals on our sheets-
I am to love only once.
It was sixty seven days later at three o’clock in the month of January when I met my father for the first time. I remember the knock and my mother shooting to the front door with an explosion of rehearsed cheer. Then I wandered through. The man from the letters looked down at me with his unfamiliar eyes. He was not as tall as I imagined. In the scenarios performed in my head, my father would run to hug me before lifting me to the ceiling as though I was everything he had ever wanted to hold. But when I came into view he stood still and lifeless like a hanging cow at the butchers. There was an unadulterated silence as I waited for him to do something. My mum intervened, cooing me over in such delight to mask the awkward encounter. Eventually he patted me on the back with a noticeable hesitation. I went along with it until bedtime.
The last time I had heard my mother scream was when she gave birth. But this was a different scream. I heard it from my bedroom and then I heard it again. The night was entirely dark still, a coldness wrought the air. My chest started to pound as I feared what might be causing my mother to wail. I trembled across the hall, her desk lamp bled a dim light beneath her bedroom door. In my childish bravery I pushed at the handle. Four wide eyes greeted me with terror. What I saw devoured anything child-like that was still within me at seven years old. The man I was told to call father had enveloped my mother’s naked body that was stark red with
tender beatings. He was clasping her waist with his determined fists and clutching at her skin. Tears stained my mother’s cheeks as she was contorted beneath my father’s lurching body. The man stood still and my mother screamed at me to leave. I didn’t know at the time what it was he was doing to my mother. What he was taking from her. I yelled him to get off her but he just threw my mother to the ground before pushing me back through the door. I screamed and whimpered but the light in her room did not go out and neither did her cries. They have never gone out.
On the day I pushed my sister I stood at the cliff’s edge and glanced down at her body. It was still. In my mind I felt relief. There was nothing this world could do to her anymore.
In my dreams we kiss and love
And in my nightmares
I wake up.
In my thoughts you’re close and near
But beside my aching flesh
You are not here.
Will there be a day when
This torment ends
In my whimpering soul,
Or am I now
But half of a whole?
This is just a silly lovesick poem along with the product of my attending life-drawing classes!
There are lines in my skin,
A wavering taunt;
But I’ve grown old a thousand times
And I will die a thousand times more
I’ve been married twice,
Had children, not all with names,
Some I don’t even recall.
But I shall marry again, perhaps even twice,
And children; a thousand more.
Sometimes I die,
In a room, in a bed
Or on the floor.
But no need to scream
‘Is she dead’?
For I will die a thousand
Times more.
This poem is about looking into the future; how we go over events in our heads that haven’t yet happened or may never happen. If we live moments enough in our mind, can they eventual seem real or at least strikingly familiar? I’ve particularly thought of this with regards to getting older and life’s impending death. (You can always trust me for an optimistic spark to your daily reading!)
Also, by thinking and imagining the less fortunate futures, do we tamper with our present?
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