Seeing Beasts

Seeing Beasts

Wolves – that’s what you see.
Crowding you. Circling closer.
Sniffing you out. Spiteful teeth.
Hungry to hunt you. Hurt you.

Pelts camouflaged innocent.
Tails and tongues all tucked.
Dressed up in cuddly fleece.
Zipped-lips shield wet incisors.

Grandmother’s lace nighties.
Candle-dripped beddie-byes.
Not daft: you know their game.
Red-riding-hoodie unwinked.

But they might be just sheep.
You don’t like sheep either.
Despise all that stoic grazing.
Their stubborn lanolined calm.

Raddled envy fields you green.
What do they count to sleep?
Too stupid to knit new dreams.
Flocked off. Lumpen and happy.

Maybe, just possibly, they’re
neither. People. Only human.
People who like cosy woollens.
And a hearty meal at full-moon.

The Whisper

The Whisper

There’s a whisper in her head.
In the zipper of her anorak, the wind
yanking at her hood, cold ears ringing.
It’s there, stinging an acid tic in her eye.

It’s following her in the dark afternoon.
The insinuating creak of hanging trees.
Fast tyres free on wet tarmac, overtaking.
Headlights, never dipped, blinding.

It’s the skinny dog, stray or lost, tripping
round the park bins. It’s the cramping
in her calves and the holes in her socks.
Damp feet in shoes she now knows leak.

There’s this whisper in her head.
Every day on her sleepwalk back home.
Every day when she’s losing, scared to go.
And the whisper tempts her: “Don’t.”

 

Faith In The Waiting Room

Faith In The Waiting Room

She’s doing the Rosary again. Sat next to me.
Steady beads click gentle through her hands.
I grew up with The X Files – “I want to believe.”
False stigmata sweat breaks out on my palms.

The automatic doors grumble like toothache.
Silent words grind my sinuses with antiseptic.
She whispers her God doesn’t make mistakes.
Ghost-shrouded trolleys levitate on disinfectant,

disappear past more doors, the blank space
where you are: where we’re not allowed to go.
I grip the plastic chair, need escape, a place
to scream obscenities. She says she knows

you will be ok, faith-sure. My tongue is all fear.
Steady beads click on gently, a pulse, a beat.
I grew up with The X Files – “I want to believe.”
Draw my breaths in her rhythm. In, out, repeat.

This is a character poem – my own beliefs, whatever they may or may not be, are not up for discussion here as these things are very private. However, I respect that everyone makes their own choices which work for them as individuals. We all take our own path. Anyway, here is a song that seems fitting for this particular poem and which I am very fond of…

A Phone Ringing At 2.37a.m.

A Phone Ringing At 2.37a.m.

There’s an unbalanced hour of night
when every ringtone is a siren’s panic.
Instant sick-stomach. Nerves knifed alert.
Dreams sliced abrupt: a hand swipes
the hairs on a cat’s spine the wrong way.
There’s metal in my saliva.

There’s an unbalanced hour of night
when it might be you. Calling last orders
on your empty bottle, last try on your empty
bed. Old time’s sake, one last go.
Finger-fumbling your phone in the dark.
Clutching for something more.

This unbalanced hour of night
shuddered awake by fears of accidents,
ambulances, blue lights flashing, A&E.
And you. The giving in, the going back.
Sleepwalking, taxi-delivered to your door.
Not knowing what’s fear or happy ending.

 

Waiting

Waiting

She waits. Grey plastic chair with wobbly leg.
Corridor. Static-y carpet sparks at her soles.
Scratches her nerves from feet up. New shoes.
Not good enough. “It’s all about presentation,”

they’d said. “First impressions are everything.”
Her nails carve into old crescent scars, seeking
comfort in palms slimed sickly by experience.
Last time, last time, every time. Queasiness

of forced down breakfast threatens, rising fast,
no questions asked. Her guts wrestling chance.
Not good enough. Line of sweat knife-drawing
her spine. Acidity in armpits. “First impressions.”

Dumb with mucus, she locks her jaws, clamps
her eyes wide. A door opens a long way down.
Some hair gel wisps a name that could be hers.
Fake flowers and real live fear. Everything blurs.

Either Way

Either Way

Balanced: pulp-head, spine-tense,
hips, thighs and shins, angling knees
and ankles to toe-gripping feet.

Arms tucked and hands cram fists
to pits. Lips bite firm to a straight line.
Blank face. Balance. A challenge

to breathe slow through the nose.
To barely stretch jumpy lungs too close
to snagged surfaces, air and empty skin.

Balance: on the edge. Corduroy sofa
crevasse. Shaking eyes-shut brink.
Fifty-fifty fall either way. Teetering tilt.

Floor to break on cold bruising laminate.
Or worn cushion suffocation, comfort rolled
to a place she would never move from again.

New Eyes

New Eyes

It’s new, bright, fast.
A door blasted off a buckled hinge.
She’s splattered with all these images,
like horror film blood. Only real.
They slap her flat to the far wall.
She closes her eyes.
Feels them cling
slick to her eyelashes,
her lips.

Before now, she’s not seen.
She’s not felt these hot, wet things.
How they razor in, saturate,
leave a permanent stain.
She can’t un-see them.
In glorious technicolour.
In hyper-real pixellated detail.
Especially when she closes her eyes.

The looming pores in their skin.
The broken veins and sweat
weeping at the hairline.
The dirt under torn fingernails,
the lumpy bruise-fade on
fight-shadowed knuckles,
old-split with scar tissue tattoos.
She never saw all that before.
Never knew she’d want to.

Their eyes prowl for hers.
Their eyes, so big, pulsing
red lines cracking the whites
like unwashed public porcelain.
Pupils dilated to black oil.
Now she can see right in.
See what’s going on:
dark corner pleas and bargaining,
grimy stairwells and illegal fireworks.
She never knew she’d want this.

She looks away.
Before they can see into her.

Rope

Rope

We weave our own rope:
twined with words and
bound with tricksy spittle.

We coil it through our days:
make a drawstring bag,
a silkworm’s purse
to suffocate.

We lay skeins round our beds
at night. It’s flammable.
It keeps mosquitoes away.
Defining boundaries.
An outline more raised
than police chalk.

Some lengths are sealed with spite.
Some treated to be non-slip
in sure hands. Strands of
new-born baby hair
knitted in for tears
and reminders.

Some lengths are harsh
for rougher palms.
Old men’s beard scratches.
Drunken closing-time lullabies.
Wrists wound together
for praying.

We tie knots for ourselves
and loop slow unknown
pulls for oneanother.
Some for safety harnesses.
Others for kicking out stools.
Drawing tight, tight.
Flailing. No.
Feet kicking.

We make our own ropes.

Violet

Violet

Vodka hits with vixen’s kick,
spreads warm through guts
like a new bruise blooming

violet. Vitriol’s angry acidity,
chemical reaction raising veins.
Something gone wrong, curdling

a deviant tongue. Antidote vials
a soiled daydream away. Cold
bathroom tiles. Velour turned

to razorblades. Ovation of one,
she sways virgin-toed to cracked
mirrors. She’d vote for death’s

sticky veil for her head. Spiteful
valuation and found out. She is
the vilest things. Inevitable vomit:

force it all back, back, back.
Back down, back off, back out.
Sour evergreen, never varies.

 

What Happened

Over at dVerse Poets’ Pub tonight (http://dversepoets.com/2012/08/04/poetics-history-herstory-time-machines/) the lovely Brian Miller has set the challenge to write something about history – any kind of history and from any angle… so here’s a poem about perspectives on past events…

 

What Happened

What happened?
What happened?

A change. A thought.
Best not acted on but…
A dare. A cruel lip. A wink.
Unkind words overheard.
A snub. A blink. A slip.
An embarrassment.
A crossed line.

At the wrong moment.
At the right time.
An uncomfortable silence.
Were you there?
Did you see?

What happened?
What happened?

And your story is
completely different
to mine.

Found objects may tell…
Personal archaeology
that time can’t rot.
A clichéd match struck
to confessional letters.
Punch delete on emails.
Answerphones to purge.
(“I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry…
I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t…”)
Digital echoes don’t gather dust.

What happened?
What happened?

You write it down.
Use every available resource.
Propaganda and careful PR.
You vouchsafe via witnesses,
sought out, flattered and bought.
You politicise and preen them.
You write it all down.
We suck it all up.
Prove who you are.

What happened?
What happened?

You wrote history.
I know your truth.

 

And here’s song… It’s totally unrelated but was the first thing that popped into my head at the word “History”… And I love Dame Shirley.