Tuesday 22 December 2015

Baby

Good lord, it's a new poem! I wrote this about six months ago and have just now got round to fine-tuning it.

I think I want you
I think I do

But you see
The very idea
Of you -
And you are
Still just an idea
Still just a far off
Concept of conception -
Even that
Fills me with a terror
That's bigger
Than death.

Even though
You'll start tiny
And stay tiny
For what will
Come to seem
Like a fraction
Of a fraction
Of a second,
The magnitude
Of what you'll mean
Is beyond all comprehension.

At first
You'll be this
Little
squiggly thing -

A comma
Before you fledge
Fully into
An exclamation.
A pause, a breath
Before you form.
All red and wrinkled

And soft
Scarily soft
Too soft
For this hard
Horrible world
Full of hard
Horrible
Painful
Angry things.

But there you'll be
pure and blank,
Unwritten yet
Like the purest, blankest
Snow,
And I'll write
My wrongs on you,
Inscribe in your
Unknowing skin
My sins.

Let me be honest -

This once
Because you know
I'll lie
At every turn -

I'll fear
Losing you
I'll fear
Hurting you
Beyond repair
I'll fear
Without meaning to
That I'll make
Meanings for you
That you never meant
To mean

I'll fear
Making you
Like me.
Broken
And patched together
Haphazardly
Over and over
And over again.

But I want you
I think I do
Because fear
Is not reason enough
Not to want you

I want to live you
Live you
Love you
Write you
Alive and lovely
I want to
Be filled up
With the life
Of you

And watch you,
With uncomprehending
Eyes, take
Your first big, bawling
Uncomplicated
Gulp of this air
That will be ours.

I'll will you
Into the world
I'll believe you
Into existence
And you'll come
All too quickly
Screaming out of me -

Precious.

Perfect, but
Not perfect, of course
Like any other human
Frail and flawed
Full of promise
Fulfilled and otherwise
But perfect
Still in my
Biased eyes.

And then

When you're here
then
I'll find out
For sure whether
Your eyes are
A quiet, fearless
Brown
Or a fidgety, fussy
Blue

Whether your skin
Is pale, poorly
Pallid
Or a full
Hearty chestnut
And I'll want
to protect you
To swaddle you
With so much love
That you can hardly
Breathe.

And however much I might
have wanted to before
I won't be alone anymore
And I won't want to be
Because I'll want you
Because I'll have you
And you'll be
Inescapably
Beautifully
Mine.

Sunday 31 May 2015

No queen

Another rejected one. I did something unusual with the formatting, but I can't quite remember what so I've tried to approximate it here:

No
          (Scream it
For all the good it'll do)
A marriage bed, 
               this ain't
All hands, no heart
               no help
He's king
  Again
    Again
      Again
Lie flat, 
            sleep
And let the tears
           come
Secret, beneath your 
           eyelids
Tell no one
They all know 
          anyway
And laugh
         Sneak home
In bloody clothes
Carry
       your new wound
In stricken hands
Count your bruises
      One by one
Try it on for size
Who are you 
      now?
Not his
  Not this
    Nothing, surely


No queen

A history of our ending

I found these floating around in my email from several months ago. I submitted them to an online poetry magazine and didn't get anywhere (a bit of a recurring theme with me) so here they are. I quite like them. It was an experiment in simplicity and I think it came off ok. See what you think:

Knuckles

I miss your knuckles.
That sounds strange,
But I liked the way
They grazed my cheek
So gently, despite the
Roughness of your
Weathered skin.

You seemed so
Hardy, a great oak
Of a man, and I thought
You'd set down roots
In my soil,
Tough and sinewy,
Like your brawny arms.

So I was surprised
When you quietly
Slipped away from me.
It didn't happen all at once,
But gradually, you receded
Until at last
There was nothing left.

I've seen your face
Since then, in dreams
Or trees or clouds, or
Other men, and fancied
You were still with me,
Still loving me the way
You once did.

Afterwards

In the nights that followed
Your departure, I drowned
In cheap booze, in the hope
Of drugging my addled mind.
And in the hazy, hopeless days
I woke up, blinded by the sun and
My own sorrow, unfailingly
Angry with the kids next door
For their youth and carelessness.

Your ghost hung bright and
Luminous on those nights,
An image burned behind
My tired eyes. A phantom,
Your weight was missing, though -
No hand on my stomach, no
Knees tucked behind mine, no
Mouth pressed to my neck.

The worst of it was the silence.
I screamed at the empty space
Where you should have been,
Demanding answers, and when
You failed to appear and tell me
Why, I hated you. I hated you.
I can't forgive you and now, for not
Forgiving you, I can't forgive myself.

Picture


I have a picture of you
Smiling, which you so
Rarely did, in the sun,
Near a lake.
There are trees
And grass and a picnic
Behind you.
You look so happy
And every time I see it
I want to
Hold on to that.
I want to feel
The way we felt then.
I want to smell
The air and the grass
And the strawberries
I imagine you picked.
I imagine the day
We spent there.
I imagine we made love
Under one of those trees.
I want to call to mind
That best of afternoons,
But I can't remember
Where it was taken
And now every time
I see that picture,
It kills me
A little more.

Monday 11 May 2015

Be radical?

A little post election silliness:

You're so filled with hate
Standing there
Decrying the crying
Shame that is
Our government 
And don't get me wrong
I don't think you're wrong
But how about
A little love?
Now wouldn't that
Be radical?

Saturday 21 March 2015

Novel synopsis

I had planned to publish a relatively full synopsis here, with a view to gauging interest, but I had a sudden panic about unscrupulous people on the internet coming along and stealing my idea. It's possible I'm jumping the gun a bit there, but better safe than sorry, as they say. To that end, I'm now publishing a rough outline, and will elaborate to those who ask for further details. Here goes:

It's a murder mystery, but more literary, in a nutshell. It's a non-linear series of interwoven narratives, building out the story of the deceased and those around her, eventually reaching a (rather violent, if I'm honest) crescendo in which one man is wrongly accused, and the real culprit finally admits guilt. So far, I'm at about 30,000 words and I'm aiming for 50,000-75,000. Watch this space (and Twitter - @seenitheardit1, also the account for my arts and entertainment blog) for progress updates!

Saturday 7 March 2015

More rejected submissions

These are some poems I recently submitted to a small publisher as a potential pamphlet. I hadn't heard anything for months, so I'd already assumed it wasn't going anywhere, but I got confirmation yesterday. I think I've published some or even all of them before, but here they are as a collection:



Trick

I’ve learned the
trick
of you.
I’ve mastered it,
there’s nothing
to it. I know
all there is to know.
You thought me
so unfit, but
I’ve got you
beat, my friend,
Because I’ve found
the steps
ahead of steps
The way to make it
work
The lines between
lines
The empty whiteness
of blank
chasms, opened
For the filling
with words
You imagine I might have
said. That
is the trick,
I know, to fool you
into faith. Oh,
what have I done,
You’ll say, but unshakeable
now,
I’m in those spaces. That’s
the trick, and unshakeable
now
You’re full of me.

Smoke

You are cigarette
smoke and ungodly
hours
Clouds
in the void
of memory
Residual,
incomplete
You are waking
to find
my virtue
gone
Sweat on the sheets,
a hair
left on a pillow
You are spaces
between
spaces,
patches
of picture
You are a shred
of film,
a spectre
A shadow
in a photograph
A thumb
over the
lens
You are the vaporous
shroud
of dawn in
a foreign bed
You are half-formed
vicious words
and tangled
threads of
threats
on which you
never made
good
Not blameless but
unblamed
You are burn
marks
in tattered carpet
The blade of your
mouth
made dull
Blunted
by the mire
of time
But still
the scars of you
refuse
to fade



Shred

You make light work of my skin,
Strip it from my body,
Like there's a zipper in my skull,
All my sinful blood and flesh and
Guts and everything on show.

Excoriate me. Rip me up.
Make me tiny wretched shreds.
Claw my awful sinews from my bones.
I'm base meat to be butchered,
Till there's no human left.

No weapons, you use your teeth
To tear me limb from limb.
Grind and grind and grind and grind,
You pulverise me, punish me,
And leave me nothing at all.

Defiled

Spring, five years ago
A child still and reckoning
With the future
I committed the gravest sins
With you.
It is as real as real as real
A big, black mark
On my blotter.
Unresolved and unabsolved
Still a criminal now
As much as then
There is blight
On my leaves
And rot
At my roots.
I am defiled forever more.

The Taxidermist's Shop

Through a pane of elderly glass,
besmirched by years of inattention,
they gaze out -
a menagerie of vacant faces,
surveying the empty street,
ill-lit by adulterated London beams.

A bear.
A badger.
A bat.

Animals, exotic and otherwise,
hold silent court, breathless and
becalmed in perpetual stillness.
They have been
made eternal by the purveyor
of a dying art, and keep company
forever with the bettors and diners

who stare occasionally,
open-mouthed for a moment,
affording them a split second's
amazement before they walk away,
and leave them, flightless and sightless
still.

Brussels

Sickly sun on sickly trees,
whose spindly branches crave
a better life, lets me know

I am here. I have arrived.
No welcome will greet me
and no change will be registered.

It doesn’t matter. The sad,
pale yellow light will not
shift for me, and the weak

willed wind will continue
in the same unbroken breath.
I will not impinge upon

the consciousness of this
ailing town, and not on
yours, either. I will come

and go, unseen and unheard,
unmissed and unkissed, and you
will never know.

That would be that

“But why shouldn’t I?”
she would scream
in a voice much,
much too loud
for indoors.

They wanted to quiet
her, and still her
swinging fists.
They wanted to
hold her down.

She knew this. It
engendered such rage
in her that she
thought her very
skin would burst,

like heavy fruit, hurled
against a wall, smashed
with the awful
hammer of the
unfairness of it all.

Her juice, or blood,
sticky and oversugared,
would spray their
white quiet and
that would be that.

But they would win
then; they would be
right if she let herself
explode before she
proved herself worthy.

They could clean up
the nasty, red mess
and forget the
whole sorry business
if she did that.

No, then.

She must breathe
deep and spread her
arms wide, from where her
wicked, wonderful wings
would unfold, and that
would be that.


Unfazed

The earth is black, where
the fire has got to it,
scorched and bruised
where match and lighter fluid
met.

A mess. Dead and barren,
smoking still, awful in the
English late summer sun. Sadness
hangs in the thick, pungent
air, for a livelihood laid waste.

A field once bright and rich with
life, rent asunder by careless youth,
lies lifeless now, outside the window,
behind his house. He sets a stony
face against his ruin, but he is
caught unawares by something
unexpected

A heron. There’s no reason for this
bird in an inland island of dashed hope,
standing one leggedly, out of place and
lost. He laughs, before he can stop
himself, and stares for a full silent
five minutes, at the misplaced animal

until its wings swing wide, and white
and surprising in their big, open span,
unfazed by the death beneath its
feet.

Karaoke night

Wednesday night
Is karaoke night
And I am here
With you
Among the half drunk
Pint nursers
And the sad, tired
Minimum wagers
And I have determined
That I will sing
You are surrounded
As always
By people
Who have no idea
But your face
Shines out in the
Hazy crowd
I am drunk too
Too drunk perhaps
Full of false courage
Standing there
Before the aged mic
I open my mouth
And shut my eyes
To shut out the faces
And I can see
Only you, half smiling
Speaking without speaking
And the voice
That comes out
Is not my voice
It is a secret siren call
For you alone
That you may be
Wrecked upon my shore
And I may believe
You are in my thrall
Here
Among the empty
Glasses, and half broken
Chairs. Wednesday night
Is karaoke night
And I have sung
A song to seal my ruin

This is how I imagined it might have gone, if there had been an ending

You suck on the end
of your cigarette
its red eye
winking at me
in the failing light

Look, darlin'

you say

Look

With studied insouciance

A pause

Another deep drag
You take in a breastful
of white, whispering smoke
and blow it out
in precise curls
(A little cough
threatens to ruin
the effect,
though)

It's not you
or more specifically
it is you
You're not the you for me
and that's the problem

There's nothing wrong with you
per se
It's just there's nothing right
not right for me
at any rate
You're too good
and that means
you're not good enough

You were a transgression
I'll give you that
But you
just weren't
transgressive enough

Don't get me wrong, love
Having you wasn't bad
Don't look like that
It's just
you just didn't
cut the mustard
That's all

Cigarette burning down
you look at me
really look at me for the first time
and for a tiny fraction of a fraction
of a second
I think you're sorry
and then it's gone
like the winking red eye
winking out

I want to hate you
I wish I were angry
or even surprised
but
here we are
ending it
over a cigarette butt
(you've sucked one dry
already
in silence, slouching
and shifting from foot
to foot, scratching
your three-day stubble)
outside the tube station
and I just
don't

No hard feelings, darlin'
you mutter
with a squeeze of my shoulder
and you suck on your cigarette
one last time
in the failing light
before you go

 

Sunday 15 February 2015

Renewal


Here's a little haiku for your Sunday afternoon:

I wish I could pull
Off the dead parts of you, like
Brown leaves from a plant