Poetry (31/07/22)

i imagined a future today

i imagined a future today,
the sun rolling around my mouth like zinc
and the night stood
so monolithic and still
under the bridge
i could almost taste it
all salt and bristle
miles of your arms,
untouched, no footprints

my neighbour's coffin was
the shape of a tool-box
“my Father’s house has many rooms;
if that were not so,
would I have told you that I am
going there to prepare a place for you?”
i never saw it
but i saw the thomas the tank engine he built
for his children, until they got too tall
running rings round the grove,
breaking the fourth wall
and what a sunrise! reflecting off the hours,
colouring the days

i know our future does not sing this picture
i took as gospel,
but i see one anyway

i imagined a future today
carved out of the pasture like clay,
ours to find, despite being told it’s
not ours to take

insects on the windshield

insects on the windshield, a memory I don’t have
but I do remember
the worms after rain
a floor of snails
cracking under my feet
like a red carpet
i thought i was the only mammal covered in scales
i thought i was the silver sea
but it’s fish that glow like diamonds,
that run ruby red rivulets
i am
no river
and it was never my turn to be revealed as a wildfire,
shedding pain as a siren,
the high of a storm, the indigo sigh
of a ‘too late — going — going — gone’

an elephant

I once asked what animal you’d be
and you said an elephant,
because they’re neolithic walking trees

now, you say a mouse
small enough to fit in the walls
feet black from the cremation of past lives
or the fruit flies
only noticed in swarms,
living in sinkholes,
waiting for the bleach

who stole your tusks,
and used them for piano keys?
and made a circus out of your families,
then wove your face into their tapestries?

forget walking trees
when national rhetoric
conflates existence with disease

better not to know

looking out over the abandoned olympic park,
ladder rungs like the rib cages
of the roadkill car tyres crunch over,
bones that were supposed to move for longer

and discarded plastic flying like birds
how you blame yourself for a worldwide gutting
it’s on the tip of your
tongue

a flicker of an apple core
all seeds and dreams realer than life itself

with this builder brain
that never quite got round to houses

so turned to sentences, and moments
and feelings
parading round a past not yours to claim

like the white hot internet at your
fingertips

that aided you
in finding out
every artist you admired
attended private school

gravity

in our culture of pillaging,
we destroy from the ground up.
first came witches, then God,
Science,
then oil

glass penthouses don’t need floors
planes don’t need to land
rockets don’t need to be built first
if this planet burns to dust
you’ll move to Mars with Elon Musk

and fuck the backs holding you high enough to reach,
so tall you forgot your feet

but if we bring every building down
there will be no one to write
in the new books
that gravity was just another religion

the thief

i am scared i am not something to celebrate

a fevered birthday
a cheater’s wedding
a wake
of someone
everyone thought was theirs to name

a herd of stoned roses, they called us
“how strange for cattle to howl”
men who believed the sky belonged to them
so we conjured up another

thirsty Thursday night widows,
wolf-hounds at windows
cackling like witches

it’s going to be written on my gravestone, I was
the woman who cut off her hair

who wasn’t the goldilox amount,
or the perfect distance from the sun
because Icarus belongs to men
and I wouldn’t dare get close

was I

the perfect mass of a planet

was I

w o m a n

enough

but it’s all dying
(it was always dying)

and so we scarpered,
as scarless swarms of locusts would
our nameless anatomy
to be recorded in books of thieves

favourite smell

asked what my favourite smell was
wrote my mother’s car in the morning
it won’t go down in the history books, but it’s what I remember now —
told to cross it out and write flowers,
but the pen marked something else instead

“if you turn your life into stories, they hurt less”
is the biggest lie I was ever told

i heard a story about how a woman
fell through floorboards she owned,
and her husband left her there, to die,
so he could inherit the house
stalled before calling 999
and sat in clouds of gaslight
and before she could write that story, she died

told to cross it out and write flowers

a man
told me once
that no one knew true depression like him,
god, if I’d had to go through what he did,
trust fund boy who saw waterfalls in Thailand and still felt nothing
(always the real tragedy)

and wasn’t I selfish for not saying ‘thank you’ at breakfast?
deflect and protest,
night after night,
he poured steam onto my stage
more and more clouds,
and I coughed up my soul thinking out loud
of the woman who owned the house I once wrote about,
stuck in the floorboards

and nobody called 999,
and I pitied her, didn’t I?

pity is an easier feeling to swallow
than the slow, dawning realisation it not only could happen to you
but will happen, has happened, was always the only thing happening,
again and again,
your whole life
(how we were trained to never realise)

I thought, hey, lightning only strikes once
(but if I really think about it, it’s been most landlords)

how many films have I seen where a woman owns a house
so much she becomes it, then it burns down?
mother earth, cattle-cow

told to cross it out and write flowers

not enough room in the cutout of a person to fill
told to write thank god I live on a hill,
and yes, the flood was bad, but the worst didn’t happen (yet)

he told me if I meant my words so much,
I’d sing them from my chest,

and I pulled a friend aside and said,

I think I’ve had this all wrong,
I’m not a house or a school at all
I’m a person and I can’t dress that up
in flowers and rivers

but they were reading jordan peterson
and said
“sometimes your own mind is the liar”
(because we all know a man who doesn’t smile with his eyes is ‘unbiased’)

my body is a temple and I just have to
B R E A T H E through it,
and watch from the spaceship window,
that’s my privilege, you see,
to detach and view the world like a dream

so when I tell that story now, it’s at dinner parties,
and I turn myself into humour so I can still be valuable

told to cross it out and write flowers

watching men walk through walls like they’re doors,
laughing quieter to save energy,
never being the light of the room
but being told to smile like I was

to live as a woman is to live as a walking paradox

be everything, nothing
whatever, it’s always wrong

told to cross it out and write flowers

instead of how hate is just loneliness dressed as defence
as friends speak of big bad men like a god, but if I met them,
I’d recognise that same eyeless smile a mile off

funny how these men never have to lift a finger
to be considered the owners of free speech and freedom

Picasso said
“women are machines for suffering”
not quite human,
Picasso said
“either goddesses or doormats”

only men can transcend dualities
complex geniuses, forgiven
as women are stoned as witches

but separate the man from the art
and all you have is another man

asked what my favourite smell was

wrote down

knowing your life is never going to be beautiful enough to write flowers

it’s going to be

watching politicians and policemen kill your friends
and wondering when you’re next

asked what your favourite smell was
wrote your mother’s car in the morning

it’s no energy to fight
wishing ‘unwell’ really did mean bystander
instead of killed in plain daylight
as you’re told, faker!
faker!

(isn’t all the world a stage?)

asked what my favourite smell was
wrote my mother’s car in the morning

told to cross it out and write flowers

if I have to lie to gain respect,
I choose walking alone forever,
if deserving love is a sculpture,
that I must carve more out of myself to belong,

I’ll remain clay
for a hospital that’s homeless
and a thousand shades of grey

water damage

remember the year I left the taps running?
water poured
like bayonets to the floor.
sliced through the ceiling
and carved a home for a family of mould, all colours.
blue and red wed
without a headline.

I was! so scared! of fire!

I’d check the hob thirty times while everyone slept,
forgot the taps -
because when water licked my calves,
I just got wet.
“water does more damage than you think”,
I’d read on the internet.

as teenage years atomise,
and spread like mist,
I fall out of my old body
and watch myself
scavenge for new parts

my photos have been replaced by trust I will be remembered,
and I’ve been working on looking people in the eyes;

it’s not quite windows I’m scared of, but mirrors!
especially at night

spec in the hands of time

I don’t matter
I was always a spec why did I
let anyone demand I matter
tube strike, job centre plus
incineration trucks, a thousand likes
cyberwar, thermabombs
all the world speaking in tongues
isn’t all war a crime
when it comes to people’s lives?
picking fruit, front row fights
right from wrong, wrong is right
imagine it but never know
how it feels to forever leave your home
are we about to be at war
is there any point in even
knowing anymore
numb numb numb in the prime of my life
spec spec spec in the hands of time

soft sins

in this growing landscape
of peace offerings anew
and freshly painted dew
on the lawn of your life

where new flaws spring like wildflower
as the last season of your worst mistakes dies

all you have to do is listen to the rain
and walk aimlessly
to know none of it matters

your chest is rising and falling
with the risk of being alive

your sins are soft,
catching breath behind you

they’ll never reach,
just don’t look,
and keep living your life

the pendulum

I felt it in the air when I woke up,
that someday, poetry will be all I own
this week, I tried to eat a garden
in the name of peace
the world is my country
and one day, when the pendulum swings,
we will win again
but for now, there will be gardens
and words
and hands
to hold the small, quiet belief
that life is worth fighting for

so this is your lot

there are charity shops to sift through,
hands sun-wrapped around coffees, turning with
the tide of time and light
to be fed
there is a garden, for a little while,
so much to read printed on the leaves
you evolved from,
be still and live,
words never saved you
living enough to write about living did

look out that window

your ceiling is at war
with a drone of wasps
but still, the night, it fights
to sleep inside your loft

something killed your minutes
and turned your hours grey
but outside birds sing in colour,
reflecting off your days