ex-offender

Tags

alienation, michael hennessy, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, red rock, violence

 

his heart has forgotten how to feel.
it is desiccated, a dry streambed
at the foot of a deep canyon
in a years’ long drought.
fear opened a chasm inside him
and a cold wind blew through it.

he suppresses the aggression
that rises through him, as if
his whole frame were cabled
and plugged into a wall
socket of violence.

it curls his hands into fists
and twists his insides so
that he can hardly breathe,
and his smile tastes bitter with malice.

while they watch him through
locked windows, tremble and brace
for the onset of his wrath,
he longs only to be as empty as
a beach swept clean by the tide.

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entreaty

Tags

childhood, jesus, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, religion, sacred heart

kneeling by our 2ft6 twin beds,
matching red tartan bedspreads
hemmed with neat scarlet fringes,
we said our prayers inside our heads
and felt the darkness in the bedroom breathing,
gathering density and texture
like a giant ball of wool rolling itself up
into something substantial.

we half fell in love with the jesus on our wall,
wavy auburn locks and kind blue eyes,
always with that smile, a touch reproachful,
whose sacred heart still somehow forgave us all.
meanwhile, swimming up from dreams
into the shouted voices of the night,
the recurrent intermittent clamour of the fight,
our eyes try to hold on to each shadowy form
as if awareness can still it or keep it at bay.

abduction

Tags

abduction, poem

panic in the ragged edges
of her voice, calling
a child’s name into
the twilight.

guilt rising hot and acrid,
instant heartburn,
churning her stomach
with a wooden paddle
of speculation.

her breathing serrated
by apprehension,
imagination supplying
every gruesome
possible outcome.

the inevitable
parental press appeal
cliché of TV dramas
dries her throat
and drains her will.

she all the time,
against her will,
visualises the pathos,
the poignancy
of a tiny white coffin
lowered into the earth.

unreconstructed

Tags

70s, blanket box, blog, kodak instamatic, memory, NaPoWriMo, nostalgia, poem, schreiber

we put our past together
imperfectly,
from fragments we find
in envelopes with yellowed paste,
on the tops of wardrobes
and at the backs of drawers.

overloaded drawers that only open
if yanked at a certain angle,
and taken by surprise, whose bottoms
billow out into the cupboard below.

or in a schreiber blanket box,
with its unsatupon black vinyl seat,
long-term resident of the landing,
a sanctuary for half-finished garments
sewn for small children long grown up.

washed out 110 instamatic colour snaps,
faded as if by the hot 70s summer sun
they captured in blurry matte oblongs.
or square monochrome over-exposed
polaroids, the nearest we came to magic,
as we posed awkwardly,
clutching our own elbows,
in front of the french windows.

letters from our neighbours,
witnesses who took an interest
in our welfare, postcards
from our younger selves,
cheery messages from foreign parts,
birthday cards from long-lost friends.

we reassemble our lives as they once were.
but they are jigsaws with missing pieces –
the edges of a cloud, the arrowhead tip
of a church spire, the verdant heart of a tree.
they will always be insoluble and incomplete,
vital clues absent or jumbled,
astray in the thickets of memory.

 

Incidentally found out the camera on the left is still halfway through a film …

death and the musician

Tags

blog, death, grant hart, grief, husker du, nostalgia, poem, rip

hearing a certain song now
resonates inside your heart
as if it really held strings;
and your eyes begin to leak the grief
that is drowning you by degrees.
your record collection
a roll call of the dead.

it carries the same unexpected pathos
as the accidental discovery
of something banal or mundane
– a note to the milkman,
for ‘one extra pint, please’,
 a recipe or an address –
in the handwriting of
a deceased parent, so
 familiar and now so seldom   seen.
they will never put pen to paper again.

31 upland road no.2

Tags

70s, blog, dulwich, family, last of the mohicans, poem, upland road

you endure bad black
and white sunday night TV,
impenetrable action adventures,
feigning immersion
in someone else’s bleak
unimaginable past,
to postpone the wrench
of home-going.

while the row incubates,
a bickering beginning
simmering like the anglo indian
curry, fragrant, on the stove.
then rages, sulks and headaches
precipitate a door-slamming
leave-taking.

you are bundled into the back
of the beloved fiat 2300 estate –
a beautiful mushroom machine
sleek and stylish,
straight out of a 1960s
monaco heist movie.

ill will and intransigence
reign supreme
and rain down a plague
of prejudice and hate.
the recriminations rise
like bubbles to the surface
and the argument sweeps over you,
a storm you cannot outrun.
and the top 40 radio show
is never turned on.

 

Photo of Fiat 2300 Familiare from Charles.

31 upland road no.1

Tags

blog, dulwich, family, NaPoWriMo, parma violets, peckham rye park, poem, upland road

31 upland road,
a hop and a skip,
from peckham rye park,
where tiny hooped fences
guard the grass to be kept off
and the dogs, let off the leash,
explode into action,
speeding bullets shot from a gun
in an invisible holster
on your aunt’s hip,
rebounding just as fast
as if on elastic.

a parma violet
grandmother,
all bustle and bluff
and big-bosomed hellos,
clutching you with kindness
in a hard soft embrace.
her house is dogs-barking
excitement, a cheerful chaos
and cacophony, unruly,
disordered but for
loo rolls stashed discreetly
beneath crocheted flamenco dancers.

a welcome world away
from that finger along the mantel
evening check for dust,
when we all held our breath
in unison, existing
in the shadow of a volcano
that might erupt at any second.

 

daytripper

Tags

bashfulbadgersblog, blog, bob marley, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, reggae

walking on a chalk hillside.

the going is deceptively

treacherous.

oasthouses in the valley

tip their tipsy hats to us,

a village dozes, mistily

picturesque in the distance.

picnic on a scarred slope

between stands of hawthorn.

 

everything you set down

slides and rolls away,

prompting swearing and

a general loss of temper.

reach out sodden cheese and

tomato sandwiches from

crumpled packs of tin foil,

flasks of tea, thin and lukewarm

with the instant plastic flavour

of a summer day’s outing.

 

arguments and alliances,

reggae on a cheap transistor

radio swinging on our hips,

sunshine through a speaker,

rescuing the day from a bad mood.

Song is ‘Zimbabwe’ by Bob Marley.

harm

Tags

bashfulbadgersblog, blog, mental health, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, self-harm

her head a hollow

scrubbed clean,

the inside of her skull

brillo-pad-scoured,

empty as the wind

on a milwaukee corner

in midwinter.

 

sometimes she writes

her pain with blades

as sharp as the scorn

she suffers,

trapped in her own

cyber inferno

of antisocial media.

 

the scars she pulls

long sleeves down over

at the breakfast table,

where normality can

suddenly slap her in the face.

 

broken inside,

a toy whose mechanism

has wound down

for the last time.

 

the family crunch toast

and pour tea

while the whole of her

is seething,

wrenched apart.

 

alone at night,

she covets their clarity,

the marks on her skin.

they are brisk,

no nonsense ,

well defined,

while she is a vague mass

of anxiety and indecision.

 

somehow they make

her clean and whole

single her out for notice.

they are the signs

of her in action,

a strategy for change.

The Well, chapter 22

Tags

milk tray, terrys chocolate orange

22 A visit

But now she remembered what her aunt had said that summer. Some days this holiday had made her feel the same, when she was waiting for her friends to get back. She’d been wishing days were over when they’d only just begun. Now she wished things would slow down a little so she had time to think. It seemed you could never get it just right.

Her aunt in the end had moved to the residential home, much nearer the family, sacrificing the independence that had by then become more of a burden than a boon.

She thought about things that had happened to her aunt, and now started to wonder if they’d been the results of wishes or just chance circumstance. Had she run out of wishes? Was Elisha going to run out? Perhaps she had already. Why hadn’t her aunt told her more about the well? If only her parents hadn’t come in when they did or her aunt had lived a little longer …

Her train of thought was disrupted by her mum opening the car door in the hospital car park and saying, ‘Come on now, darling, we’re here.’

It turned out Jasmine couldn’t come as she had a flute lesson that evening. The whole thing had been a real rush as they’d had to leave early to drop her father off at the factory for his shift, then join the queue to get back to the roundabout to head out for the hospital. She knew her mother hated driving in the rush hour or busy times so was conscious that she should be grateful she’d agreed to take her to visit Steph.

‘Thanks, Mum.’ The car park was quite crowded. They had to pay and display, which made her mum grumble something about taxing the sick and needy.

‘I hope we’ve got the right entrance.’ Her mother led her towards some swing double doors into the massive redbrick building. ‘Mr Saunders said she was in Alice Ward and I think that’s in this block.’

Elisha felt overawed by the huge place and the hustle and bustle of all the people inside. Everyone seemed to be rushing around urgently and she hurried forward to grab her mum’s hand before she got swept away. It was like they were all part of some really complicated dance that she didn’t know her part in yet.

Her mum was reading signs and led them to the lifts towards the back of the big reception area. ‘We want the fifth floor,’ she nodded to Elisha as the metal doors slid apart and they got in.

Obediently, Elisha pushed the 5 button, and the circle behind it lit up red. Before the lift could leave, however, a small orange-faced man in an ill-fitting brown suit appeared in the doorway.

‘Going up?’ he asked, his voice thin and wavery as the doors began to close.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Goodman said and reached past Elisha to push a button marked with two triangles facing out from each other. The doors stopped, kind of hesitated, then opened again.

‘Thank you,’ the man got in and pressed the no. 4 before standing with his back to the side of the lift looking at the top of the doors. Elisha followed his gaze and saw that there were the buttons again, this time arranged horizontally in a line above the doors, lighting up as they reached each floor.

The orange man got off at floor 4.

‘That man’s face was orange,’ Elisha announced and her mother shushed her as the doors hadn’t quite shut, then laughed.

‘In that brown suit he was like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange,’ her mum joked and they were both laughing by the time they got to Alice Ward.

Here, Elisha was surprised to find it was an adult ward, with men on one side and women on the other, lying or sitting in high iron beds or beside them in chintzy fabric-upholstered, uncomfortable-looking upright chairs. Steph was in the bed at the end on the women’s side, near the windows. The big bed made her look very small and somehow made her being in hospital very serious and real.

Her mum and dad were sitting on canvas chairs with metal frames that reminded Elisha of her nursery school. They got up to say hello when the Goodmans arrived, the chair legs scraping back on the tiled floor. Some of them had lost their rubber tips and it was the ends of the hollow metal tubes making the noise.

Elisha climbed clumsily onto the bed next to Steph (it was higher than she expected so she nearly crashed heads with her friend) and gave her a hug before handing over a box of Milk Tray (Steph’s favourites and Elisha’s). She’d had to run in and buy them at the newsagents while her mum was parked nervously on a double yellow line outside the shop.

‘You shouldn’t get on the bed, darling,’ Mrs Goodman whispered.

‘Nonsense,’ said Steph’s mum. ‘She’ll cheer Steph up no end. Why don’t we leave them to it and go and get some coffee?’

The adults left them. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there when it happened, Steph. Did it hurt a lot? Were you scared?’

Steph nodded as she popped chocolates into her mouth and proffered the box to Elisha. ‘Actually, the sting didn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would … it was the not being able to breathe that was scary. It was like …’ she paused to deliberate. ‘Like the inside of my throat was swelling up so no air could get through … I really thought I was going to die.’

Elisha put her arms round her friend and squeezed her. She couldn’t bear to think of her dying.

‘And I could see Jasmine staring at me with these wild eyes, like she was watching me die … you know, like in a movie or something?’

‘It sounds like it was really horrible.’

‘Yes. Thank goodness Veronica made them dial 999. She came to see me earlier too.’

Elisha nearly choked on her green barrel chocolate. ‘Verucca Attacking came to see you? In hospital? Why?’

Steph thumped her hard on the back. ‘I guess she wanted to see if I was all right. She brought me some pretty daisies. See over there?’ Steph pointed to a vase of giant daisy-type flowers, yellow middles and white petals.

‘Uh-huh. Very nice. But it’s not like we’re friends with her or anything…’

‘You know, I don’t think she’s all that bad.’

Elisha wanted to argue, to convince Steph that Veronica was thoroughly evil and nasty, but it did seem as if her sworn enemy had behaved well, on this one occasion. She found herself conceding, ‘Well, maybe not.’

Steph actually looked fine though it was a bit strange to see her in her candy-striped cotton pyjamas out of the house, especially when everyone else was dressed. She explained that there’d been a bit of a measles epidemic, which was why she wasn’t in one of the children’s wards. ‘They’re all full to the rafters, mum says. And I wouldn’t want to go in one in case I got it … except I think I had the inoculation when I was a baby.’ Steph pushed the box of chocolates away from her towards the edge of the bed. ‘I will be truly sick if I eat many more chocolates!’

Elisha laughed and it was just like Steph wasn’t ill at all and they were talking in her room at home or something. They gossiped and giggled until Elisha’s throat was sore from laughing and her throat quite hoarse. Steph only had to stay in overnight but had to go back in after a week for a check-up. Elisha didn’t want to ask about the injection thing or anything. She was hoping Luke was wrong about all that.