Christmas Poems

Sheep

Sheep totter, suggesting they will fall

Off the precipice and into the fire.

One ram stops them.

Shrewd, beside the gold poppy seeds.

No one moves a glassy eye.

Red Wine

Red wine, murky, muzzy-headed,

Pitch-purple-blackness.

Dive in,

Dive in,

An ocean is waiting,

A wave of tummy warming aromas

Hints of currants and oak wood sail by

As a smile forms, and storms fade,

Until a mudbank hits

And the bottle lies empty on the shore,

Its label torn, illegible.

Nothing,

But a lubber-legged, wobble-headed wine drinker

Fretting in a chair all at sea.

Cycling

Lungs breathing free,

Cycling, three hours, across the city.

No helmet, no fluorescent jacket,

A white light flicker-flushing at oncoming wheels.

Knees hurt at every revolution.

So tired that stale teenagers make me angry,

Stealing my water at the crossroads,

Laughing,

Joking that they stole fifty quid.

Not funny.

I don't have fifty quid.

That's why I'm biking all this way.

Biking in the dark without a back light.

Without a helmet, without a yellow jacket.

Lungs breathing red bus exhausts,

And late night orange London lustre.

Cycling, free, across the city.

Anitcipation

Waiting, throbbing in limbo,

No washing up done,

No daily tasks of brushing teeth,

Or taking clothes off before bed.

Perusing my unknown future,

A job, a party, a kitten.

Waiting, days spent imagining,

Horoscopes read,

I Ching consulted,

Sitting at Google considering

What destiny to type in.

An exciting future might be in store.

Can't wait to get there.

Damage

The damage that impairs our coupledom

Is not the sex and not us being cosy.

It's mercantile and mercenary loving,

A fondness of the dating side of us.

Except that now I'm feeling so observant,

Our wily ways of sparking fire just seem

A little conscious, silly bargaining.

Ode to Anti-Psychotic Drugs

Half moon yellow pill

Chopped with a bitter knife.

Without it I cannot perform,

Pacing with paranoid impressions,

Flying with notions of resplendence.

Half moon yellow pill,

Flavourless, I swallow.

Flavourless, I take it.

I crave the highs,

I crave the lows.

Half moon yellow pill.

Don't tip over the edge

Losing shared reality.

Take the pill.

Take the pill.

Take the pill.

secret

The brown-eyed girl spoke further,

Her grief a secret from the audience.

As if they couldn't tell.

Twenty years made me cry.

A secret man -

Unknown to family

Unknown to friends.

He exists to me alone and

Will leave me twenty years

In pain.

Luck

Forwarding on chain emails

Always brings me luck.

It's how I got my council flat

And all my unemployment money.

I saw a cat today and it was an omen.

My friend should go to university,

It'll make him rich.

I texted him to say.

Texting makes me happy.

I better hope for a sign,

The sound of birdsong like a ringtone,

It'll stave off losing my phone.

Ella Fitzgerald singing of luck,

Calmness before I finish dead.

The urgent miaow of a hungry cat

Sends shivers and three shakes.

Luck comes in triangles.

Luck is secret, even from God.

Announce it and unluck will follow,

Announce it and you will fall apart.

Bonfire Night

The rumble of the preacher on Rye Lane ends.

Dusk is close.

I put my radio up high and

Knit misshapen mice.

A warm rainy night, umbrellas smoky,

Drenched to the knees in cut grass.

Strange children with sticky teeth,

Polite conversation about the weather.

A night to be crazy to go out in.

A boom takes off,

A fizzle.

My windows may smash.

I sit and intermittently listen,

Over the gunpowder,

To my radio show.

I knit misshapen mice.

Adrian Henri poem

Poem based on Adrian Henri cut up - written Dec 09 - need help editing!

In the morning I drove home

without windscreen wipers

in the rain.

It didn't matter,

I knew that motorway.

It's where I hid from you.

It got boring then,

you didn't look.

I chased you all round London

on red buses with thick gloves that slid

into my handbag

one by one.

I asked for you in that tight outdoors

where smokers squeeze, clubbing.

There was a girl at school who walked

with her neck high

and I used to walk behind her

to see her shoulder blades beat, a metronome.

Green cardigan, white collar blouse, and the

grace of old eras.

How dare you make eyes at me

with your girlfriend sitting by you.

My heart can't quite believe you're real.

All the chasing, chasing, and then I threw you

to the ground and you giggled and I held you.

A Christmas Cactus almost in bloom.

A coffee cup held like a lady.

Fingers move firmly on strings.

American lady falls.

Birds fly in thick dark formation

Entertaining weary eco-troops.

I eat the chocolate Father Christmas one

tooth-bite at a time, making you last.

Loneliness

Love is loneliness, his tone is bitter.

Love is frying chips forsaken in a bedsit.

I sit alone, longing to be needed.

I sit alone, angry that he didn't call.

Because I text him midway through a pomegranate

Thinking of his scratchy mullet growing without me.

When he phone rings I'm smug

And he backs off in fear.

Love is being sucked into my company forever.

Love is holding hands with everything already said.

chestnut tree

chestnut tree, so adolescent,

so soon knotted and knarred.

leaves tinged with brown,

even in the summer.

no fruit this year,

or the next.

barren, without clone to grow.

who will care as it creeps crisping toward death?

not me.

I have my own death to think of,

cared for by shrinks and social workers,

nurses, consultants and g.p.'s.

transfer

Sweetness moves from one place to another.

To placate the lack of a plate, hunger waits for dinner with a cup of coffee.

From field to field and back again, sheep eat the low leaves of the oak.

In certainty.

Haiku Again

Willow Tree Poem

The willow leaves are

still intact, this cold bright day,

nutant beauty brief.

Sage

The sage, contorted and curled,

Life dried steadily out of its sweet furry leaves

A corpse with a staggering smell

Lies hanging from its stems

Topsy-turvy, airing in cupboard space

This death, this mummification, arid.

All for my officinal needs, a gargle of

This cadaver will cure me, surely.

French Horn

I'm learning the French horn and I love it.

Walking up the semi-detached street and

Knocking on his middle class door.

He smiles a coy smile as young lads do,

When faced with a woman like me.

I've dressed to impress, my tits on show,

They jiggle as I play the US Anthem.

'Was that OK?' I ask, taking the

Horn from my lips with a kiss.

'Oh yes,' he says, 'Very good, very good.'

I smile and put the horn back to my lips.

He's a very good teacher.

I like his style.

And I like the house full of books and antique rugs.

I could live here with my horn tutor one day,

Once we bumped his parents off.

And I can hear his mother in the kitchen,

Banging pans and chatting to their pet.

She sniffs when she sees me.

I sniff back.

And horn tutor blushes to his blond roots,

When I tell him I want to learn love songs.

'How's my embouchure this evening?' I ask.

When I leave I'm frozen in my shortest skirt,

But thoughts of French kisses warm me,

As I carry my case back to the high rise and

Put on my nightie and play Frere Jacques very loud.

The Band Day

more iambic pentameter! Why I bother I don't know. Kind of hoping I'll get better at it at some point but not yet...

The weight I've put on lately makes me mad.

I cry my tears of rage and stamp my feet,

And pray for fever causing me to waste.

The shape I'm in will stop my career prospects,

As if I care: my stage fright ended that.

... By the way the title refers to the song titles I used as inspiration which were from the band, The Band. I'm getting into using song titles as inspiration. Got sick of objects in my bedroom.

haikus

some better than others but i'll post them all:

Came last in football

They won't pick me for the team.

Teenage angst allayed.

Just one second time

Or was it the third moment?

Pregnancy fear gone.

Haiku girl is in

Fear of everything, loud, small,

She's never sanguine.

Life is smaller than

The tapestry likes to say.

Squeeze in what you can.

Intimate means close.

Doesn't mean you gotta shag all

Night long, or does it?

patagonia

If not for you

I wouldn't think twice

About my voyage to Patagonia.

I'd be excited, so excited

Jumping up and over and over

Shouting

Something vague

About falling in love on holiday

Something vague

About salt plains, cacti, hot and cold.

Something vague

Sunrise, sunset

On a bus in Argentina

I'll think mainly of you.

Look at this, I'll think.

And in my frazzled mind

You'll agree to its beauty

Its strange colours and you'll

Lie on my neck.

Do something - quick.

Find the money

Find the passport

Do something drastic

Like I am

I'm going,

I'm going to Patagonia

You can join me I know.

Blue in green

I'll smile at the passing

Countryside

With its frightening

Difference and sameness.

You'll lie on my neck.

If you came, we'd probably argue anyway.

another plant poem

slight break but i'm back, hopefully every day... Here's another plant poem

Underneath the plant,

Surrounding the plant,

Laying about around my plant

Are various objects which add to

The beauty of the plant:

A tin whistle with a red mouthpiece,

A pretty much empty bottle of lavender,

A bracelet gemmed up in blue and white.

And of course Glitterman himself,

Who sits on a polystyrene bridge

His pink wool body leaning,

Legs wide open, arms outstretched,

In worship to the

Green and white, towering,

Strong and darned healthy plant.

Paris

Stripy mohair jumpers

The lot of us, yellows, greens, reds.

In 1980s Paris.

Climbing the Eiffel Tower

And looking down on Daddy and Hen.

The boys were too scared to come up,

So just the girls went.

Girls are better than boys,

Enjoying the view from up high.

We wave down at them,

And at the beach that holiday,

Henry fell over and cut his foot.

I didn't.

I was careful, I was good.

I didn't mind the sympathy,

He could get all he liked.

I didn't cry because I was strong and big.

yesterday's musings

I think I write about being mad far too much. I know its good to write from experience but I've experienced things other than madness. Anyway, I slipped into it again. Here's yesterday's poems:

Polar-fleece, such unnatural material,

Fire-resistant, made for all weathers,

Cosy-warm and evil.

I lie on my polar-fleece red blanket.

And wonder why one person's dislike

Could colour my view so entirely.

Everything is magnified,

Every facial expression,

Every stranger's conversation.

I draw sharp breath.

I must stop this,

This over-observation,

Especially when I take

Every word to heart.

The word of every stranger,

Expression on strange face.

I must learn to take off my

Paranoia-tinted glasses

And re-join happy-ville.

I've not been to prison yet,

But it is probably like Prisoner Cell Block H.

And mental hospitals.

I don't think I could cope.

The madhouse was bad enough.

The urine on the floor and

The bath that had no plug.

And no lock.

Prisons have locks,

Hospitals have no locks, no privacy,

A curtain around a bed.

For far too long.

The tracks of my tears run down my face

No tears though.

Just a feeling.

Are they someone else's tears?

The rational view is a sinus problem.

I think Jesus is crying for me.

Perhaps because I won't do what I'm told.

Save the world, they say.

But I don't know how.

Ponce cat fluffs out his chest

Towards me.

'I know better than you.'

And he does,

Looking in the air at

Things I can't see.

He can see my voices,

my hallucinations, my Jesus,

Who comes when I am sick in the head.

He can see them now,

Understand them,

In a way my over-conscious mind cannot.

What's God anyway, Cat?

Such contentment in licking your paw.

schmaltzy

I'm not happy with this poem because I don't feel I've captured my feelings about my bedside table, it feels a bit schmaltzy. But I'll post up my first draft and see if I can re-draft another time.

Smells like candles,

The darkly varnished wood.

A face scratched in at night

Keeps me company when sleeping

In my pale cold blue room.

The veneer cracks at the edges,

Show chipboard underneath.

My bedside table.

Books on top, a yellow lamp.

It doesn't creak like scary wicker.

I scratch my name in the deep brown wood,

Of my bedside table.

spider plant

Spider plant just keeps having babies.

I cut off another two and,

loathe to kill them, place them

In a terracotta pot.

Spider plant throws forth

a long umbilical cord.

More babies on the way.

But I worry about my two charges,

Limply pale in their new pot.

They're watered and fed.

And then I find a woodlouse

Climbing on the saucer.

There's more and more, tiny tiny

Baby woodlice eating at the roots.

They curl into balls.

To kill the baby woodlice would

Surely be unfair.

But I owe it to my spider plant

To care for her young.

I spray my pesticide.

There's more woodlice in the garden I suppose.

Another iambic pentameter attempt

Masculinity

The lord of self control and virtue stands,

In square on pose, well versed in fight,

For wholeness of his masculinity.

I throw a dart of love, a dart of pain.

Then run for safety of my ignorance.

haikus

Fuchsia is in bloom

Alone on the grey pavement

Purple stamens proud.

Cut sage smells strongly

In my shopping bag, lovely

Friend forgiven, hug.

Blue plastic chair, shy

Of authority, broken.

Leaves feeling control.

postcards

My words for you resemble tiny little seeds.

Big round cheeks and a purple dress.

Blooming in the foreground,

My heart is carnations.

The ducks are floating and flying round the overflown river.

The medieval city holds crumbling buildings together.

Tourists come and bring their money

In return for a grand hotel at night time and Disney's Poland.

A splodge of orange beer stain

En-captures a man

Small and funny legged

In shadow to me.

Will I see his truth?

My struggle is accepting my lies.

holiday

It is sunny in London

And raining at my holiday destination.

The beautiful city I am aching to see

Will be under the cover of thick grey cloud.

Photographs of the basilica will be blurred.

Photographs of me will be bedraggled.

It is sunny in London

And raining at my holiday destination.

But by the time I get there, the sun may

Peek through the blanket above,

And shine particularly on me

And my holiday.

handbag

The handbag lay

Face down

On the yellow bed.

The dirty fawn strap

Curling like the path of a

Rollercoaster carriage.

Quiet.

No passengers to scream aloud,

Help!

The handbag lay

Face down

On the yellow bed.

monster

I've replaced the voices now.

It used to be I'd speak to them

At every opportunity,

About what I did and what I said and

How to improve my character.

Ha.

I've replaced the voices now.

I've got a monster here instead.

He stands, big and tall and

Bright cobalt blue.

On a cliff top

Just like the good Lord's eagle.

But instead of having wings,

He only has a rope

To climb across the ocean.

I watch him as he stamps his feet,

I watch him as he calls me names,

I watch him plead with me and plead,

To grab that rope and pull,

Pull him across to my world

To make him blue reality.

I'm almost fond of that monster now,

Out on the cliff top all alone,

He'll pine away and die.

Thinner and thinner,

His voice soft and weak,

Until one day, I'll look over,

And my blue monster will be gone.

argos catalogue game 2

The Power Toothbrush, Vitality Dual Clean

Larger head

with

Oscillating

Rotating

Titillating

Technology

and side to side

Bristle pad

for a

Fresh

Clean

Fun

Afternoon,

When everyone

is out

and exams are

Coming,

And stress

Needs relieving.

Ah, Oh,

That's better.

Legs open,

Toothbrush

Held

Triumphant

In the hand.

argos catalogue game 1

Silver combination microwave oven and grill

Like a fortress,

This microwave

Has no window.

The only way to tell

If your beans have

Blown

Through and

Shot

Across the ceiling

Is to open the

Door

Making sure the

Child safety lock

Has not clicked on

And look,

To see your plastic

grill rack

Baking plate

Drip tray,

Covered in

Blood

Red

Beans.

stars

So far away

that I can only see you

from the countryside.

In the city I long for

The Plough.

In the city I long for

lying on damp grass

palms upward

looking at the stars.

Have your palms been read?

They should be.

Their calloused tips would aid

the most amateur fortune teller.

And the good ones would wonder

Why on earth you bite them till they bleed.

My hands have never been bitten.

The nails grow long and I pick out

the dirt and eat it.

Tube dust and salt from old peanuts.

I munch until my nails are clean enough

to advertise fairy liquid.

stormy day away

Standing tall and feeling small

Beside the graceful building,

Can't see the top

She's just too near

To the grand firm bricks.

But the ice cream van is here.

Tight and nervous in the queue.

The brass band background,

The dancers in black suits.

The waiting.

Her legs ask her to run

Families ask for ice cream and ice cream

For kiddies and grannies.

The tourism tires her

With a visit herself.

It starts to spit.

At the front of the line,

She asks for a 99.

Syrup drips,

Thunder rumbles,

Shivers as she licks.

The shelter of the looming building.

The peace of a stormy day away.

Disappointed dead roses, yellow and pink.

The big fat flower plastered on the summer hat,

Goading with its orchid shape.

Upside down feet wait for their velcro home,

Well-balanced woman faces outside world.

Spider plants sharp and regimented wait for light of morning,

And green angel is not helping at all.

I put up pictures,

I'll cover and cover till the cupboard door

Holds no trace of magnolia paint.

Just colours and colours of passionate postcards,

Sad woman looms.

haircut

I'm going to be late.

I'll miss my appointment.

A haircut not to be.

But if I leave now,

I'll be hopelessly early, and,

I'll have to shelter in an expensive coffee shop.

Oh God, I need to pay.

That means going to the cashpoint.

Add 10 minutes onto journey.

I hope I'm not late.

I'd be so ashamed to arrive and

Claudio is serving someone else,

Cutting beautiful stylish hair,

And I arrive sweaty and bedraggled.

Too late, they say, too late.

I stand in the salon, no free coffee,

No smiles at reception now.

And I'll travel back to Peckham

With my frightful hair sitting on

Unplucked eyebrows

Wishing Claudio had waited.

Or maybe Claudio will wait.

Maybe he'll gruffly shake his oily curls

And I'll sit in the chair, terrified,

That he'll cut my hair horrible

On purpose.

And I'll sip my free coffee and worry,

And when I get back to Peckham,

No amount of Looks Lovely will persuade me

That he didn't cut it wrong.

So now I'd better go

I'd better go.

But then, what if I arrive on time,

And he sees the state of me,

If only I knew what to wear,

If only I knew what Claudio wants,

Then I could have the most marvellous hair.

haiku

Decided on haikus today for my daily practice. Here we are -

penny plant wavers

in breeze from kitchen window.

new flatmate brings life.

schizophrenic girl

stands on kitchen table, and

wonders if she's cured.

Character Sketch

Something different today. I decided iambic pentameter could wait because the more pressing problem of characterisation has come up. I wrote a play with four characters and it was rubbish. After discussion with Melvin I decided it was because I didn't spend long enough on characterisation. So here's a wee character sketch written in 15 minutes.

Inside his new front door, the dark green curtain was drawn and the bedsit was dimly lit. Richard felt a tear prick and blinked fiercely. It was good he'd got his own place at last. Here he could play his music too loud and there would be no Sarah moaning. He could stain his mugs and spill his milk safely now. Mice were welcome. He walked to the window, edging sideways between the single bed and the musty great armchair, and opened the curtain. The weak light of three o'clock in Winter was enough to see the dust. So much for the landlord's promise of a cleaner. He'd probably lied about the new mattress too. Richard sat on the bed. Seemed alright. Better than his last bed. From here, he could reach and touch his fridge. He laughed. He could invite his mates over to see how many people he could fit in. It would be like that advert where they fit everyone in a telephone box, what was that for again? Tango? He couldn't dance a tango in here, that's for sure. At least the telly was big. He could crawl out of bed and sit in the armchair to watch Jeremy Kyle in the morning. He'd have his breakfast on his lap, all without touching the carpet. Richard began jumping from bed to armchair to fridge to kitchen cupboard. Good way of avoiding the last tenant's dry skin on the carpet. Good way of settling in.

Ban

I think with iambic pentameter I need to give my images more space and explain them more otherwise it is too dense. I've written a poem about my good friend who died a couple of weeks ago. He would laugh at me for it because he hates poetry but he's a passionate subject to write about so here is my first draft:

Up late at night we talked of God and cigs.

He often made me tea, I gave him figs.

He's gone from this world now with no goodbye

I don't begrudge him that despite my cry

Of pain at losing Ban the Buddhist monk

Whose friendship knew no bounds, my dharma punk.

He came to A and E because I bled,

E'en though we never went to the same bed.

Our friendship was so great, not gender-based.

Before girls notice that boys smell of poo,

Before boys think that girls are silly too,

And long before they think of any touch.

And so we talked of Mooji and gurus much

He talked me out of being the Chosen One,

And so goodbye I say now he has run.

This poem ends too soon, and so did Ban.

Been Helped

Chris helped me write an iambic pentameter poem in the pub last night. Here is what we came up with together:

I was a-walking down the streets at night.

I came across a very scary sight,

The sun had disappeared from the sky

I thought I saw a tiger who could fly

A man with four big heads came jumping out

And all that I could do was scream and shout

A heavy blow came down upon my head

I wish the tiger wasn't so well fed

But soon I will be gone and then no more

My body parts are spread across the floor

I wish that I could have them back again

Instead I watch them eat in tiger's den

My eyes are last to go and so dear friends

With a crunch and slurp I come to my dear end.

running against time

This is another struggle with iambic pentameter.

Running Against Time

The smell of cold against nostril hairs,

Ice cream headache when it hits the brain.

Who holds the stopwatch, tick, tick, tick?

Without fourth dimension, no stress, no fast heartbeat.

The taste of adrenaline, to run against time.

The cold cross country run that took my love

Of sport away, and shut out competition.

terrible poem

blog

My world meets your world,

Smiling serenity.

Yuck.

This world is full of sadness and pain.

I don't feel this.

I don't feel anyone's pain.

I smile a peaceful smile,

Because we are all one.

Piano music,

Fast, urgent.

Sad songs

Sad songs

Songs that make me weep.

The only ones I play.

The daily grind of thoughts and feelings

Written for my eyes only.

No censorship.

Honesty runs through me

Like a dripping tap.

I hate to hear it dripping

onto people I don't know.

Exposed.

I'm exposed.

A wound to be poked.

Nothing to fear,

Comfortable in horrid humanity.

I don't feel this.

I fear pain.

Because we are all one.