Thursday, December 3, 2009

Today

Is a fair cut-out- copy of a day
A day worn out and scuffed
A day covered with ointment and plasters
Blistered and bleeding being,
This day,
Unlike and akin to all others
Scooped out of its shell
Floundering in quicksand
Stuck and strung to inevitability
I am reminded of Sisyphus pushing that boulder up a hill
Reminded of the stuttering silence
Peeled back like orange skin
Sweet and insensitive
Today
Remembers itself
Mimicking the years before it
It is a fair carbon copy
An attempt at normality and prudence
At living through
Though standing still
At moving on a wheel
Caught in place and space
At pushing through its edges
Bleeding out
Without boundary or conscience
Like water that is leaking through a hole in the wall.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Dénouement

I am not made for sadness
Or playing my typewriter like a piano
I don’t want to lose myself in the cave of words
I want the light to shine down
I am not the girl you imagine
My heart is sore
I drown for days on the kitchen floor
One day lost in the mirror
Another caught up in the wind
Like some frail and flimsy thing
I broke before they could fix me
Fucking darkness from the soiled stem of my soul
Scratching at the margins
Colouring myself into corners
There is nothing beautiful here
You can move along
The show is done
The song is sung

Being

Love
I walk gently on these egg shells
the labyrinth of your fingers
weave me together in a knot
and I am lost to you
quietly and gently
I sail the loss in your eyes, my oars dipping deep
in that still night with the stars like fireflies
twinkling in the sky
and tomorrow a promise kept
I would rather not hold you to it
In this I ask for nothing
demand no more or less of you
expectation cannot exist
It is what it is
I wish I'd learned that I long time ago
all those cuts and bruises
all those sad goodbyes
I fold myself into the pit of your dis(arm)ing smile
this is the life
this is

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Stowaway

We would meet
In a hundred year old cottage
Framed with roses
Beyond the prying eyes of the city
That cottage with its wooden beams
And lost histories
Bore witness to our great passions
Wrote us hero’s in her chipped paint skin
Nestled in the creases of ourselves
I tore from you a fine form of flesh
And with my teeth carved out the future
Paved as I had hoped in gold
Dick Whittington’s London streets had nothing on my own
For our indiscretion we were rewarded the bitter fruits of
Love lost
And through our painted intimacies
Art lost herself to scrutiny.
We were our imagined selves come undone in that stone home
Lost to the bed
Like stowaways on a shipwrecked boat
We maneuvered rocks with deft hands
And fought silence back into her shell.
Raised again complete
You restored yourself in clothes
While I lay adrift
Lost in the water
with no hope of rescue.

Fisherman

You framed your guilt so finely
Pressed against your reflection
It became a weapon
A tool of wrath
Which you executed with ease over me.
You had nothing to hide
Your dalliances with me were out in the open
Polished like that first red apple
Eden was a long way from here
As was God.
We reveled in this sanctum
Caught on the cusp of a new beginning
With a woman/child who looked up to you with questioning eyes
Who captured your best side
In portraits of poetry and pent-up passion
I reminded you of your one true love
You let her go
Catch and release your favourite game
Till I became that glassy-eyed gagging fish
Whom you pulled from the recess
Of that black ocean
The hook of your love lost to my skin
Blood made transparent
In salt water
Sharks circling just off the reef.

Dumbstruck

It was your custom to be angry.
When all else failed you left me a piece of silence
Silence that tore itself open
Silence that buried into me
Maggot infested, festering silence
Punishment meted out.
A month would pass and I would hear no word from you
Scrawling your name in cigarette stubs
I imagined you
Somehow better off without me
My scabby heart a tarnished jewel amongst all your treasure caskets
In silence I was rendered mute
Slave to the dial tone
Waiting for release,
You cast me off in that wasteland
Forgot my hiding place
Without apology or reason
This dumb wreck at your bidding.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Return

Bring back the day
I found you
Wrapped in my own smile
The sheets nothing but cloth
The words cut from light and love
None of these sickly, sweet sentiments
None of those
I told you so’s
That crunch like broken teeth under my feet
Bring back the day
I loved you
Through the rock of my heart
That splintered like glass
At the hope of your touch
At the frailty of your mouth
Pressed to the open wound of my own
Whispering without word
To the heart of my bone.

Love

It is a small reprieve
- a benediction
when kindness is lost
You had merely to say the words
and then those gauze butterflies
could fly away -
burning like bits of paper
in the chalky sky

You had only to ask
and it would come -
like the greedy tide
making love to the shore
swallowing stones for kisses
spitting out shells like teeth

It would be what it had to be
because the decision was made
like snow, like sun

It is a small reprieve
absolution not for the asking
we die by our own hands
small deaths that go unseen
that fold in and look back at themselves
like old lovers
rendered pillars of salt.

Grief

The knot of grief comes undone
like shoe laces
on his scuffed, school shoes
and the wound tightening, throbs
through scabbed knees
and summers long since gone
-and beyond the river beds
the lost dew of morning's tears
still remain in this undoing undone.

Grief
Pebbles drumming in tin buckets that cannot contain
the world in his smile
his hopeful heart
his paper thin skin
Unravels itself through sinew
speaks of Northern lights and frozen tundra
with the mouth
- a wound unhealed
and
the heart -
a crumpled sheet of paper
writing itself letters no-one can read
words etched through blood
From cuts that can’t bleed.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Undoing

Today a new page
And all that old rage
Left to rot
Masked by jasmine and forget- me- nots
The Robin sings
A tuneless tune
And roses blossom for the moon
We’ve been here before
Your head bent at my front door
And nothing makes it feel the same
And there is no one left to blame
I find myself wishing for something beyond myself
This is how autumn must feel
Longing for spring
This is the start of suffering.

In pursuit of Peace

Give me peace
I’ll trade my heart in
For a breath of air
Lose myself out there
Venture boldly with a song
If you could tell me
What went wrong?

Reflection

This place is half-light
And you’re a slice of moon
Beyond the shore line
The waves roll into the rocks
Like old lovers
With all those barbs and hurts
The silver fish
Sing lullabies to the sky
And you are too far away
I don’t know how to quell the loss
How to start again
Beyond tomorrow hope comes like tears
Washing anew these old eyes
And I am birthed again into your arms.
Old cuts sting in salt water still
And dreams recall themselves like long lost friends
I can’t get back to paths without stones and slippery moss
I stumble and fall
I know the light will find me
It always does.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Lover

The lover you love no longer knows how to be a lover
Unschooled and misused
He sits like a rag doll
Overstuffed on his own waste
His hands withered away
His mouth some wound
His tongue lost in memories of kisses
And salt water
The lover no longer recognizes herself
In the bandaged afterthought of his smile
Games played deliver more loss than wins
And she can do nothing but split herself in two
And wait
The lover they loved no longer knows how to be a lover to them
Fragmented and dejected
He shoots paper arrows from a broken bow
Cursing Cupid that foolish winged boy
Cutting valentines out of skin – colouring out of the lines
Words like hallmark greeting cards
Inspire such tiny flames
Hardly worth the underwear
The lover I love will learn to be a lover
I will untie her
Set her about your heart like a noose
Whispering secrets in your mouth
Filling up your god shaped hole
She’ll come forth like a siren from the rocks
Undone by lust
And then the lover that I love will know that she never really forgot
Her own undoing.

Reminder

Today
I’m so dark
I make night look bright
Luminous even
Lost in the loop of Dante’s inferno
I stretch supine and feline
Over the ache of myself
Trying to clip those old cling ons
That seek to make me their own
Twice I found myself on the precipice
Looking down on people like ants
And felt the drone of the city and myself too much to bear
Yet here I sit
With my cigarette lit
Watching daylight make a mockery of my out-of-time self
I tell a good joke
I’ll have you smiling like a child at Santa
But beyond today
I’ll be on the floor
In pseudo-artistic pieces of myself
Sucking up filth like a sponge
Hovering over the lie of myself
Bleeding into the soap suds
Like Plath on acid
And then you’ll see the core of me
And the broke down sum of my parts
Maggot infested decay
Of one sorry life
And then who’ll be laughing?
Tell me then
Who will then be the butt of your jokes?
The ambulance sirens hypnotize me
And the green of my soul numbs the red of my brain
And I felt like snow would clean me out
That pure cold longing
That wintry blight
Yet silence stamps on my temples
And calls out my name
And I’d rather be dry then out there in the rain
And I’d rather be dark
So I’ll recognize light
And I’d rather be wrong
Than pretend to be right
I’d rather be loud
Then never speak out
I’d rather believe
Than live in self-doubt
At least in the sorrow I know who I am
Fretting against myself and the world
Spewing up pieces of old reveries
Pretending is feeling without sympathy
The words are small bullets
I load in my gun
The killing is over
When the last joy is gone
They’ll splatter and splutter
And fall to the ground
We have to be lost in order to be found.
You’ll remember the blood on your linoleum floor
You’ll remember the blackbird who can’t sing anymore
You’ll remember the sensation of your heart going numb
The obliteration of self and what you’ve become
You’ll remind them all
That it’s never too late
To call up the universe and say
“Fuck you fate”.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I will be the Poet

I will be the poet
When words fall short
Not that I
I
In my smallness
Could ever express it
Just as it should be
(Could be)
Impossibly so.
I will be the poet
When words lost
To themselves
And you
Hoisted up on other flags
The peace of their pieces
Stitched to your silence
Bring neither hope nor surrender.

I will be the poet
When words escape us
And speaking the speak
No longer
Means this or that
Instead is just static between us.
I will be the poet
Because
In times like these
There are not nearly enough
Words
Not nearly enough
Truth
Because grey
Sometimes won’t do
And I can’t be profound
With a mouth full of teeth
Ink
Will seal the deal
Poetry
Will free us all.

Mermaid

They shot a mermaid on 42nd street,
Between the moon and the corner
They found her swimming in the gutter
With her sea secrets and glistening green promise,
But her beauty was a cutout from a Cosmopolitan magazine
And her tail was a story no-one could read.

So the taxidermist took her away in a net
And mounted her on a passive- aggressive wall,
Scarlett and beetroot baked she coloured the silence with her blood
And children paid to touch her skin and wished for spun sugar and peppermints
Some even kissed her cold sea mouth and dreamt of places they’d never go.

They shot a mermaid on 42nd street
Between the subway and the museum
They wrapped her in a white sheet and watched her ocean blood
Colour it, like tears from a whale.

For Fiona

I remember you
In your uniform
As if I watched you through a hole in the wall
Even when they told us you were missing
I would remember your colt-like gait
Wispy blonde – almost white hair
Something fragile about you

Years later stories would unfold like bandages
Had he sold you for drug trafficking?
Were being prostituted in Saudi Arabia trying to make your way home?
Were you alive?
Were you dead?
And then the psychics came
Some said you were overseas
Others said you were locked in a house
Some believed you were dead

Years passed, your parents thin and desperate
Shrunk with the memory of you
Now, today you have come to haunt me –
Your face captured age twelve forever

This psychic says you are dead
Dragged and bound
You were offered to satan for the solstice
Your body incinerated

And the thoughts are so ugly and so despairing
And I can’t associate your pain and suffering
With your face
As if captured through a hole in the wall
Smiling, walking
The blueness of the sky behind you
And the future
A closing door.

Swallow

You didn’t want my love
Although I begged you to take it
I put an IV tube in your mouth and fed you bite size pieces of myself
Until you, my cannibal lover
Were overfed

I wrote messages on your eyelids
So when you slept you’d think of me
Stapled whispers to your earlobes
And promises to your spine
I hooked up a cable from your heart to mine
And sent you impulses that shocked and resonated
All my heartbreaks
All my loves
So that you could read them like a map
And take me home

I tried to wrap myself in your skin
At night copied your breathing pattern
My love was as vast as the Atlantic
And with every touch
I chartered your planes
From your brain I excavated every bad memory
And extinguished old flames with my spit
And at the end I stood before you with my heart
In my hands - proffered like some sacrifice, bleeding
All over the carpet

And you were leaking me
Like a dripping tap
My name rolling off your tongue, pissing me out against the wind
And for all myself
There was so little of you left
That I switched off the machine
Should you vanish completely.

A Beautiful Place

It is really only half of something beautiful
Without you in it
It is somewhat incomplete
It lacks depth, colour, it hangs skew on the wall
It has no life
It captures cool green waters and autumn sunlight but now they look grey
Now they look odd

I want to give you a beautiful place
Somewhere only greater than the light you bring
Today dark and grey the clouds write your name
And I’m hanging word hooks on my clothes
Post-its on my pockets
Attachments to my hands
The office clown
Someone remarks on the time
A million pigeons crash into the window
The world is covered in feathers
We float to the middle of Trafalgar Square
On a black winged umbrella
You cup my optimism like a bell in your great hand
Swallow my silence like a sweet
Make it all so pretty with your medication

I search your eyes for my reflection
A glimpse of something real
I become Narcissus
I swim into your deep cool waters
My limbs as smooth as pebbles
My voice bubbles

Back in half time
At the ¼ bar
Back at something with my stockings on
Losing my self respect – hanging on with a broken nail
Less of me for more of you

Monday I’m back at the refrigerator door
With my magnetic poetry
Writing you words you’ll never read
Drawing you pictures you’ll never see
Finding the light under your door
Strangely comforting.

Letters of Loss: 1

Dear Ted
Spring is upon us. I step outside the door and jasmine is on the breeze. Despite myself I feel optimistic – caught up in this season’s air of hope and renewal. I had made a vow the day you left us to not be happy – it is after all a state of mind and my resistance to it was my own personal attack on losing you. I felt that I could somehow spite whoever saw fit to take you from me – but instead I did myself in. It hasn’t been easy to laugh – sometimes joy creeps up on me and I feel guilty and then I feel angry because I want to share it with you and you are gone. I have become obsessed with this mortality business – I would far rather pretend that I will live forever but we know the lie in that than grapple with the reality of it all. One day you are here and the next you are gone. Kudos to you if you make it to eighty at least then you had a good innings but if it’s sooner than that…well then life is just cruel. People told me everything happens for a reason – I sat in the bath thinking about what possible reason there was in losing the love of my life – how your death could ever be justified, reduced, legitimized by a reason. It would have to be a bloody good reason – it would have to be apocalyptic stuff – beyond my comprehension even. Nope. Try as I might there was no reason to it and believing that there is doesn’t really help because I am here and you are not and I can’t get you back. It’s somewhat surreal – death? If you think about it? That people are lost to us – that they depart the living – discard it like an old (or new) shoe. That we cease to BE – that we vanish and all that is left of us is the memories we created in other peoples minds. Unhinged fragments drifting about brain matter – dream like synopsis of our time recounted by those who knew us or who thought they knew us – because does anyone really ever know someone?
Teddy – I still have this longing for you that won’t go away. This perpetual ache in my solar plexus. I have these vivid dreams of us and the last holiday we took. London in the winter – the tickets were cheap! We stayed in that swanky hotel in Earls Court. It was right after the second tube bombings and people were afraid to stay in the heart of the city. Hence the rates were ridiculously low. We bought new coats and scarves and splashed out in ways we never had before. My coat was scarlet and I felt like a princess in it. You said that you loved to see me in red and I delighted in the way your eyes danced when I wore it. I felt like someone else in that coat – someone more beautiful and intelligent. I felt like an artist or a muse – or some west end actress with a brilliant career and stars in her eyes. I was everything I longed to be in that coat. And you? My gorgeous Ted? You were a poet in black. You wore those glasses that made you look well –read and dignified and your eyes were as blue as sapphires and I fell in love with you all over again. I loved the way your dark hair had become tinged by grey way too early – I loved the way you delighted in this premature aging – you always lived a decade beyond where you actually were. We joked remember? That you must have had many past lives – the strange kinship you had to people and places you had never seen or visited – the dreams you had of Eastern European buildings and steam trains carting Jews to Dachau. Those were your lives – converging upon you – burning within you their sad embers of memory.
I loved you late Ted. I wasted so much time on other men – men who were unkind but read philosophy, men who were obsessed with frivolity and hedonism, men who spoke French, men who danced the tango, men who molded me into their own desires and then tiring of it discarded me like yesterdays news…but not you my darling. You were the exception. Your love was without limit or reason; your love was an open window. Your love was the deepest end of the ocean, the eighth wonder of the world, the respite I craved, the home I belonged, the alpha and the omega. Your love was mythical. You did not read Kafka or Tolstoy and you could not speak French. You dropped out of school when you were sixteen to care for your mom and you learnt a trade. Your hands were rough and you smelt clean, like rain or snow. You were not an intellectual – you didn’t read Sartre but you loved poetry. Poetry was your heart. Poetry was the wings of your soul. Poetry was some intrinsic piece of you that surprised and delighted me. You read Browning and Donne, Keats and Yeats, Heaney and Hughes. You devoured the words with an insatiable hunger and recited them back to me in the bath. I loved your poet soul. I loved the way you read them and rejoiced in them. I loved your contradictions and most of all I loved you. Past tense. Present tense. Future tense the flicking cursor on this screen…I love you still. I love you because you loved me. The most charitable thing you ever did was to love me despite myself. Despite my tantrums and tears, despite my depression, despite my dreams and failings, despite my double chin, despite my mistakes, despite my pessimism and silence, despite my love of the darkness, internal depths you tried to follow but could never go. All my life I waited for that love. I was born for this purpose Ted and then you found me and loved me because. Because you could. And that was enough. Your love was bigger than us both – your love was the soothing balm on all my wounds, the blessing that found me – how lucky was I – in this great world, amongst billions of people – all waiting and all deserving and you gave it to me. That gift was the greatest – I know that is a cliché – but it’s true. We found ourselves in London. We found ourselves in Covent Garden and Leicester square. In London we were who we were meant to be – anonymous and recognized. We were tourists in the prime of our lives in a foreign country. We were making the memories we would tell our children. These photographs our unspoken history – the lithograph of our longing and love captured on celluloid and skin. We abandoned our petty neurosis in London; we went to art galleries and saw Rodin’s ‘Kiss’ in the flesh. We went to museums and looked at ancient Egyptian artifacts; we visited old cathedrals and pressed our hands against moss-covered stone. We were dreamers and the dream was real. We stood overlooking the Thames – even the grey could not defeat our inherent blue. The sun shone down on us – behind that veil of cloud – she found us. We. The blessed union. We. The meant to be. The everything.
In Covent Garden I spotted an antique ring – its heart an emerald. It was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen and you decided I should have it. I would not let you buy it. It was too expensive. It was a luxury beyond our means. So we left. That night was as wonderful as it could be. We went to the theatre and dinner – we drank too much wine and we laughed all the way back to our hotel. Oh Teddy, I miss your humour. I miss the way it lit up a room. Your laugh was contagious. Thinking back I wondered if I had known it was to be our last night together would I have changed anything? Truth be told – not at all. We nestled into each other in that bed with its Egyptian cotton and down duvet. We found ourselves a refuge and island far from the city and our lives. We were newlyweds abroad and impossibly in love. Drifting to sleep your arms wrapped tight around me you whispered Thank you. The last words you spoke to me. I heard you in that place between. When I woke the room felt strange. Like someone had left it. Like it was empty. There was a lack. You lay on your stomach. I watched you and loved you more than I could tell you. Wake up Teddy bear. IT’s our last day in London. You were still. I thought you were playing so I sat astride you and kissed your cheek. Your skin was cold. I will never recover from that moment. I will never be able to forget the way it felt. The way my heart pounded like a sledgehammer in my chest. The blinding panic. The cold sweat. The grief. The grief like a knife, or an axe stabbing into me.

They called the paramedics. It was too late. I must have looked a sight, half-naked in the cold grey light. It’s funny the things you notice in those moments. The hotel manager had a scar on his right hand and he smelt of ginger. They covered you with the sheet. I was wailing like a banshee. He is going to be ok I yelled. Don’t touch him. Your right foot was exposed. It looked vulnerable. The foot of a tiny boy. They came to fetch you. They wheeled you out of that room and down the elevator. I couldn’t catch my breath. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to push a rewind button. I wanted to wake up from the nightmare. I lay on the bed for a time. I lay with my head on your pillow and tried to find comfort in your smell. I wanted sleep to take me away – but it would not come. So I folded your clothes and there in your pocket a small brown box and in it that Emerald ring. Teddy, how did you get it without me knowing you magician you?

There was no reason to your dying just as there is no reason for the living. This terminal disease. This big fat lie. You were 34. You were vibrant and funny, tender and kind. You loved animals and children and you gave to the poor. You wore your heart on your sleeve like a glowing red beacon; you asked for little but gave a lot. You were truthful to a fault. You cried openly. You told me you loved me every single day. You loved your life and cherished each day. You communed with nature and you went to mass. You were faithful and glorious. You were the best thing in my whole life. When you died Teddy – the lights went out in my heart. They drew the curtains on us. Took away my happy ending. The Power failure, eternal black out from that day on. My heart a life support system. I function on autopilot. I live. Beyond that my pledge to give up joy – for Lent and for life. Funny thing is – it doesn’t quite work like that. It finds you. Like some ridiculous heat seeking missile.
Joy found me. Despite it all, she is a persistent visitor to this reluctant host. She is the stray cat meowing at the door to come in from the rain. She is the beggar at the stop street who makes your heart ache. She is respite. Sanity. Hope. Small but necessary things. It is my first spring without you. It is just one more thing on the list of endless firsts without you. I went for a walk today. I traced the route we walked so often. I imagined that your footprints were etched in the dirt and that somehow made me feel closer to you. I fed the ducks at the pond and I scratched your initials out in the bark of an old jacaranda in a heart alongside mine. I breathed in and out deeply. I swallowed the lump in my throat and I looked to the sky. IF you are watching me Teddy send me a sign – and you did. A pigeon crapped on my shoulder. And I laughed. For the first time in a very long time I laughed.
I gave that red coat to the Salvation Army. Along with yours too. I thought it would be harder to part with it – but it wasn’t - because I realized something. I didn’t need that coat to feel special – I just needed you. Everyday something new will find me. The laughter comes in warm crashing waves and my heart feels somehow lighter. I reckon it’s what you would want. I hope wherever you are you are happy my Ted. I hope that poetry surrounds you and people you missed and I hope you don’t miss me too much. I hope we meet again. I hope we get another shot at being a ‘we’. In the mean time – I’m going to see this thing out. I’m going to try to do some of the things we never got round to and in doing it I am going to celebrate you.

I think of you every day. I long for you most of the time. I am always going to love and want you. But for now all I can do is this – to quote my favourite writer A.L Kennedy - “all I can do is write you words you cannot read and feel them between us”.
Yours
Anna

Friday, August 7, 2009

Prelude


Before this
Hope was an upside down teacup with nothing spilt
And words were the talisman that bound your heart to mine
And love was the night
And eternity was possible as was living
And dying was for the swallows
And the salmon who swim up stream
And the poets who ran out of words
And the artists who painted themselves out of the picture.

Before this
Promise was the sword in the stone
Immortality a hop skip and a jump from tomorrow
And war the failure of love
Light was the truth
Eternal light
Cast on every living thing
No place for shade or shadow
I had clipped the wings of those impossible butterflies

Before this
Day was the prelude to night
And the eternal moon gives birth to her hosts
As they twinkle for all eternity in the forgotten sky
Even the seasons pining for one another- forced to come as another one goes
And the rapture that is you
Knots in my heart

A daisy chain at the lion’s door
A key in the latch of our contentment
A birthday song for a loved one lost
The letters I wrote but never sent
Lessons learned through the aftermath
The elegy of time

Before this
The song was sung
And I knew every word
And the leaves on the doorstep carried the breath of autumn
And every riddle was understood
And every dream came true
And every night promised day
And every year promised June
And every part of myself
Promised you
An open palm
A sip of water
A grand overture
An apology
A declaration
A shelter
A rose
A tear
Myself

Bystander

I catch myself on the stair
At your door
On the 5pm bus
Outside the City Hall
Beside the park
In the cathedral
Upon the stone bridge
Amongst the brambles
Impossibly afraid that
I have lost you
And you will never be found

The Greater Good

It was atonement
And peace we were after
It was a thousand times the distance to the furthest sun
And the planets spun off their axis and crashed into the sea
And the world forgot herself in a mirror
And I wore a red dress and drank my coffee black
And spoke Spanish to the pigeons in Trafalgar Square
And shook Gandhi’s hand at the station
Tally Ho – down that long train track
And made love to Sartre behind Simone’s back
Forging fast beyond the forests
I promised Goldilocks a spoon
And ripe pomegranates stained my dress black
And you were an afterthought
Like Tuesday
Or the stranger on the corner
Or the last rose in the bunch that lives and burns still brightly while all the others have died
Yet still ends up on the rubbish heap
This was our last grand gesture
Before falling fast
Like Dirty Harry
Like Sylvia Plath
Like Frieda Kahlo
And her broken back
Vanity and prosperity
No space for light or truth
God forbid
The collapse of the World Bank
Or the silent passing of another dictator
History's constant loop
Same story different day
Genocide
The rivers run with blood
And oil
The stinking, sludge of our contempt
We were looking for Elysium
But it wasn’t what we’d hoped
Or it wasn’t in the right place – too third world
Or it failed us
Or we failed it
Or it didn’t exist
Or we were barred entry and ended up in purgatory
Or didn’t find absolution
Or found it too late
Or tried to steal it from the devil
Or offered Jesus a bribe
Or took the wrong train, bus, car, plane
Or didn’t believe
Or believed too much
Or
What?
It was atonement and peace we were after
And the glory and the fame
And the wealth and the knowledge
And the truth
But how it cut is
Clean in two
I became myself
And lost you
And then we were just strangers
Who look for recognition
But never find it
Or find it and hate it
Because it would mean
We were cut from that same brilliant cloth
And that would mean
I’d have to respect you
Because I would demand nothing less for myself
And so I wouldn’t tie you up in some sweatshop
Stitching labels to bags you could never afford
And I would never crucify you for your convictions
Or debase your superstitions
Or trade your ammunition
Or buy into those suspicions
That suggest so eloquently
The opposition
The them
The we
Us and them
You and me
I would have walked on eggshells
For all eternity to find the beginning
The big bang
Or Eden
Or that snake that tempted Eve
Or that magic word
Or that first prayer
Or seed
Planted and forged on organic soil
Or in the bones of dinosaurs
Evolution
Retribution
The notion
That set it all in motion
This, my devotion
And then I would do the kind thing
The humane thing
And switch
It
Off.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Poem for a Big Ape

Where to now?
You have not left a map – the compass is broken and the moon switched off,
And the car’s gone, and I am barefoot
Walking a road of thorns.

Where would you have me be?
The gate shut – the doors locked, the stars sold or bartered for stones that fall –
Small meteorites that bruise
When I speak your name.

There’s no forwarding address,
No hope. No promise.
You took your toothbrush and my heart
And ruined the fairytale ending – my Casablanca, my Hollywood. My One time love.

So where to now?
When I can’t sleep for want of you
When time calls on ghosts that spin the reels that tell the story of us a thousand times.
When the gaps become holes and then craters and then quarries,
That ache for stones or water or you to fill them up-
Make them new,
Make them do.

Since when did my world become so destructible?
And when did you become King Kong?

Passage

On his deathbed my uncle saw his long lost brother
Beyond the visible before our fading faces
Some collector from the underworld came with pennies to bribe the ferryman
Safe passage past faithful Cerberus
A calling
We did not question his visions although they seemed beyond what we deemed possible
Instead we prayed for light and love and mercy.
Against the pillows his face a pale visage of a former self
Laughter long since silenced by morphine and pain
We waited and watched for death
Ill-equipped and unprepared
There is no manual for the passing
Nor the living
No guide that says this is a job well done
Mortality and its cloying sick note hang on every door
The inevitable collector will come.
Beyond the hospital and it’s sterile walls
Clouds gather and the rain beats down
A smile lights his face – his hand growing cold,
Skin parchment thin
A gust of wind bristles the autumn leaves rattlesnake below
And he makes his exit
Softly and silently
Our hearts heavy with the letting go

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Dancing girls

The dancing girls have come undone Henry said
Upon the stage the unraveled knot of all their beauty
Wound itself around the auditorium and strangled the empty chairs
Glitter rained down like blood and clung to every thing
A choke of feather boas lay naked
The carnage of some ancient and extinct bird
Blowing about the theatre – ironic flight – phoenix rising
A forlorn shoe with a broken heel points to the light
And outside, the box office manager sweats and struts and demands the return of those wayward dancing girls
While patrons call for refunds
On tickets that were half price
Skirting the silent stairs the sound of footsteps out onto the street
Somehow the moon is kind and the streetlights dim
Their blistered feet take respite from the cold pavement and their stockings long since laddered are left behind
The dancing girls are plain – their sequined skins remain
Tonight a feast, perhaps some wine
The music will play
But the dance is done

Unspoken

This will be the death of us you said
100km out of the city
Riding in your car with the windows open
My cigarette lit
I’d kill for a whiskey round about now
But I am dry as the desert
The countryside is a postcard from a tourist counter
Green hills that roll on and on to the skyline
Clouds that throb the whitest white
If it wasn’t so perfect I could live here
I count the stripes on the road
As the black tar slips beneath us
Every metre takes me further away from what I know
And the day is a mystery
Locked in my head
I think of things I’ve lost
A million miles away I float above the world
A missing satellite
A broken star
These silent thoughts like swallowing glass
You squeeze my hand
I wish I was an electrical cable
Able to transfer this knowledge straight to your heart
Like a phone line or an x ray
They would serve me better now than silence
Then my ability to talk
You are without doubt the best thing that ever came into my life
My sadness is not yours
You did not bring it
It lived before you
It lives without you
It’s a beautiful day I say
The clouds roll away and I squint in the sunlight
This will be the death of me.

Friday, June 12, 2009

For K

We will not always be this
Things will change
The moving parts, the tap root heart
Time will cement or tear apart
This will be the you I think of
Young and free
When stepping back through age
I recall that you, that me
Sitting on those cold stone steps
Smoking menthol's and drinking tea
These times will be the best of times
The things we wish for when we’re old
The cuts and bruises of our youth will be
tempered by the gradual loss of time
We’ll forget the angst and lovesick tears
And the boys who hurt us we’ll remember with smiles
And wonder ‘what if’ and ‘where’
Those words that smack of regret
I will recall your red hair
And the way you drank your coffee black
It will always be that girl I see
When I travel back
We will not always be this
We’ll change and grow and learn and be
But I think looking back through time
This is how I will remember you
To feel more like me.

For the Girls

For the girls born upside down
Fair of face, regal, yet without a crown
For those girls who just don’t care
Who wear sweet lilacs in their hair
For girls who bury secrets deep
Closer still their hearts do keep
Who knit their foreheads and limbs in knots
Who worship spring and forget-me-nots
For girls who dance to silly songs
And lie awake wondering what went wrong
Who stitch the silence to their skirts
Who fall and rise from the dirt
For the girls I never met
The ones the world will forget
For their voices soft and light
For their prayers that go unanswered through the night
For the girls I hoped to be
For the demons they set free
For their aching, gaping wounds
For the wishes that did come true
For the girls who wash the floor
Feed the babies and lock their doors
For the violation of their skin
For the hope that lives with in
For girls like me who come undone
Who worship shadows – avoid the sun
For girls who think they have no worth
The girls we raise to give birth
For the girls born upside down
Alone and wondering about town
I raise a toast and put it down
You girls
You bright inspired queens
I wish for you at night in dreams
I hope that life beyond the veil
Is a boat that will set sail
And take you where you want to be
The place that sets your sorrows free
For girls like me born upside down
Who never get to wear a crown
Who pierce the shadows of their fears
Who cry those dark and silent tears
I know you well though we haven’t met
You’re not alone, I won’t forget
Like you and all those girls before
Who mop the floors and lock the door
Who build the walls and pray for light
Who long since gave up on delight
I send a blessing on the wing
That someday your hearts will sing
That buried in your suffering
That one eternal, glowing thing
More valuable than diamond rings
The wish that at your blessed birth
You’re nourished on your own self worth.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Of Gods and Mortals

Apollo could speak no lie
He drew the sun across the sky
God of medicine, God of light
The dark winged crow in full flight
He left Diana the huntress fair
His sister beautiful and full of grace
Her arrow drawn to kill the stag
Goddess destroyer
Righteous hag
While Ceres
Runs the seasons down
And weeps for Persephone underground
All nature wild is her domain
Goddess of corn and grain
And Juno the queen
Of the Roman state
Protects her people and guides their fate
And Venus fair deity of love
Breaking hearts from up above
While lesser mortals down below
Pray for mercy, light, health, wealth and crops to grow
For rain and sunshine
For prosperity and hope
These little things that help us cope
For something greater than ourselves
For proof of heaven or to avoid hell
How fragile then we must seem
In our quest to glean
Some understanding of our plight
Knowledge to destroy the blight
That rids us of our ability
To discover immortality
Much time has passed
The years have flown
The winds of change so swiftly blow
GM crops we’ve learnt to grow
We rape the earth
We reap we sow
We plunder both land and sea
We forget our own humanity
Wars are waged at what greater cost
Than the precious lives we’ve lost
What great minds have we destroyed?
Making men out of boys
Armed with guns and MTV
We’re here for oil – and to set you free
Nuclear weapons do us proud
The worlds demise in a mushroom cloud
Enough however of doom and gloom
We’ve chartered rockets and walked the moon
We heal the sick
We council the mad
We dish out Prozac to cure the sad
We strive for peace
Freedom from pain
We endure suffering again and again
And if all else fails
There’s always Oprah
Who needs an oracle?
When there’s Deepak Chopra
And for a dose of sober humour
We have our own Jacob Zuma
Our lives are small in the grand scheme
But we live and love and hope and dream
And though we may battle or feel sad
We try to cherish what we have
We try to live without regret
We try to forgive and forget
We search for meaning
We long for truth
We hanker after elusive youth
So on your Birthday dear friend
I wish you joy that knows no end
I wish you comfort
I wish you light
I wish you the moral high ground in every fight
I wish you resilience
I wish you wine
I wish you prosperity
I wish you time
I wish you Apollo’s chariot to chase the sun
Diana’s prize when the hunt is done
Ceres fruits when life is bare
Juno’s protection everywhere
And finally I do implore
The aid of Venus from above
To generously and abundantly
Bless your life with love.

Empire

It is these moments
That make this terminal life worth its aches and joys
Together in your flat
Candles lit
We laugh and eat and reminisce
Our collective Joy lifts the roof
A hot air balloon bursting forth
It flies through the ceiling and over the city
Its colours bright as a circus tent
In this gathering
People
Who have laughed and cried with me
Whose lives knit to my own
Make sense out of my existence
People
Who make up the community in my heart
Whose walls surround me
Whose love absorbs me
Whose Joy implores me
Together in this room
We celebrate a passing year
And drink to Gods and Goddesses long since gone
The candles burn down to their wicks
Too much wine and song
And scanning the room my heart a warm beating pomegranate torn apart
Is filled with love and warmth and light
For a moment, brief spell of time
The world and you
Are one
All is as it should be
The dance goes on

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Terminal


I still recall the day
As if perhaps time had frozen
The arctic tundra in my mind
A negative
A photograph
We had laughed oh how we had laughed
As if the world was not unkind
And you had held my hand
For old times’ sake
I was thankful for your kindness
It filled a hollow unmarked place
And the joy so acute after weeks of grief
Brought respite to my broken heart
How had we let the years pass us by?
Why had it taken so long to call?
You were much the same
And so was I
We had marked out a space for ourselves
Fallen into routine
We were suitably encumbered by houses and pets
We seldom thought of the past
We lived beyond regret
As the firework petals painted the sky in neon anthems to the moon
We let ourselves imagine time a slow and fluid kindly thing
And knitted in that hour glass
The dream of our collective dream
I wish I could have frozen time
That sad, sweet moment when you were mine
And transient joy gone all too fast
Was bound to our fickle hearts
And that the world required nothing more
Than laughter
To stitch the years
We parted on the Circle line
Returning to another time
Where I’m not yours and you’re not mine
But still the stars throb and throb
And brighter still the winter moon
Beckons to the falling stars
Please stay
But they are young and free
And falling fast and far away.

Full Flight

From the sky
The silent wreckage
Heaven bound
Below the sea
Eternal want of safe passage
Destroyed with all those dreams
The disaster is all we have
It makes us great in our small lives
How quickly spent this mortal coil
How oblivious to all its charms
Just last week
Our bridges burned
We crossed the dead sea of ourselves
And fate her silent progression mapped
Delivered us apart
So hopeful in the aftermath
We lived to tell the tale
While the Boeing lost without a trace soared its story pre-ordained
To fragment and evaporate
Its crumpled metal wings
Nothing more than this
In the end
A paper rocket
The epiphany
The apology
The answer
A day in June

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Promise


The girl comes undone
An unraveling thread spins out her grateful demise
Just last week stars bloomed in every eye
Today is done
Tomorrow too far to contemplate
On the horizon
Distant smoke
Heralds the obliteration of another week
And the fanciful dreams
Of the whole and well
Render her silence at once acute
Perhaps in this tundra
Spring will come
And summers kiss won’t be too late
As she hangs her flag upon a mast
In surrender
In remembrance
It’s worth the wait

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

So long Moby Dick

I have resigned myself to the fact that you are not coming back. I have tired of clutching the phone like the last lifeline and have relinquished my grip on it and gained a tighter grip on myself. At least I hope I have. I said I’d give you one thousand days – today and counting one thousand and one. Patience is a virtue – that is the biggest lie anyone ever told. It’s overrated. It’s a ploy – to make you wait in despair for something not really worth waiting for in the first place. I am sorry it took me this long to figure it out. Well good luck buddy – your loss. I say it like a mantra – I am going to say it until I believe it…I consider recording it and playing it while I sleep and then I think what would the point be? I don’t sleep. And I believe the loss is mine and that I would wait another thousand days if it meant you would return.

I have played it out a hundred times in my head – the Cassablanca-esque reunion. I’m slimmer, prettier and wiser – I’m cool and aloof – I smoke menthols from a cigarette holder and drink single malt even though I hate the taste of it. I am the better part of myself – the person I imagine I’m holding hostage somewhere beneath the skin and fat – don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about – we all have one. Anyway that’s me at the bar – I’m wearing something classic and tailored – suddenly I can afford Chanel. I smell good. I walk in stilettos. I am funny and ironic and mysterious…essentially I am perfect. You appear at the door…you look tired…older and a little bit rugged. You’re wearing a hat – I always wanted a man who wore hats. It suits you. You scan the room – I watch you – enjoying the distress on your face when you can’t pick me out amongst the wannabes around us. You’re about to give up and then you catch sight of me and I’m looking at you from over my shoulder – a little smug and sultry – you catch your breath – in one instant I’ve you floored. You’re surprised – you’re impressed – you can’t believe it’s me – you want to pinch yourself like this is all some dream – the hat is scratchy. You smile. Your eyes crease – I am coy – I pray to god I don’t have lipstick on my teeth – I want to run to you and jump in your arms and tell you that I have missed you…I don’t. I wait for you to come over. You buy me a drink – white wine spritzer for the lady you say to the bartender – I interrupt actually it’s single malt now – you look at me trying to recognize me again – the woman you knew is gone – you killed her remember? She drowned in the wash cycle of your filth. The years of your discontent evaporate. You are enamored. You want me. You want me. You want me. I get stuck – the record won’t skip past this point. You want anyone but me. You want me but someone else. You want me to be what you want. Your want. This is a bad idea. I am stuck – I need to get out more. I need to go for a run – I need to be one of those women who run. When did being what you want become so difficult? Why am I so afraid?

Enough. Enough. I open another box of wine. It’s dry and cold and I drink it like an alcoholic off the wagon for the first time. I put on some music – something loud and sassy. I move like a stripper – or like one of those girls who know how to dance – who look cool on the dance floor – I am at one with the rhythm – I am gorgeous and I am free. I am young and unattached. I am going out. I drink another glass of wine. My mouth is numb and my tongue is thick and my cheeks are hot. I stumble to the bedroom and open my cupboard – a pair of tracksuit pants fall on me from the top shelf – they’re the charcoal grey ones I thought I’d lost – I rejoice at the sight of their comforting softness and fake fibres – I begin to pull them on then remember the mission. I search the back of the cupboard throwing out the wreckage of poor taste that greets me. When was spandex ever a good idea? Velour? Sweet Jesus I need a drink. I bring the box and spill half of it on the floor – by this stage there is a moment where I debate licking it up – I stop myself – Have you no respect? I look at a pair of green polyester tights…the answer to that is a resounding NO. Eventually I find it – a purple apparition of loveliness. It was the dress I wore on our first date – You took me to a Cuban restaurant – we drank mojitos and danced the salsa. It was the best night of my life. I was in that moment the most beautiful girl – not in the room – to you. Your eyes never left me. You smiled your gorgeous smile and dipped me. I laughed and laughed. I was happy – so very happy. And other couples wanted to be us and we knew that and it felt good to be the poster children for something other than one night stands and dirty bars. The dress smells of dust and damp – another life form has commandeered the left shoulder – it doesn’t look lethal. I grab a cloth and begin to scrub it off – eventually it yields but one patch is now considerably lighter than the rest of the dress. I swig some more wine; I can’t find my glass so I pour it straight into my mouth. The box feels lighter – I could have sworn I’d opened it recently. I pull off my clothes and stumble as I try to pull the dress on. It’s proving to be quite a mission – I don’t remember it being this difficult back then – but then again I hadn’t drunk three quarters of a box of wine…or put on 15 kgs! The dress is tight. On. But tight. I feel like I’m suffocating – like a sausage in its casing bursting out. I hobble to the full-length mirror, it’s difficult to walk – I feel like a geisha girl. I try to breathe and feel like I’ve cracked a rib – I suck it up. The mirror is a cruel, cruel invention. I am stunned by its unfeeling reflection. I greet myself in all my splendor – the dress is out dated, the shoulder pads are misplaced and the zip is broken – the hem has come out and it fits like a glove…on a giant. I have never looked this bad. You wonder how this is possible with aforementioned track pants…but really, I have never looked this terrible. It doesn’t take much for the tears to come – they spill out onto my red cheeks – I look like the Goodyear blimp – a giant purple Oros man – my legs are pale and I forgot to shave for three weeks. My nose is running, I blow it on the dress. I am beyond self-respect. I debate smashing the mirror or carrying it out onto the street as punishment. Leave it on the garbage to torture someone else – but that would mean I’d have to walk – in this dress – out there. Expose myself to shame and ridicule. I think better of it. I try to pull the dress off but it won’t budge – I swear in frustration – stumbling about the room in this monstrosity. I am beginning to itch – I imagine the unknown life form hatching and penetrating my skin – I try harder to free myself. A final tug and I trip over my wine glass – it cracks sickeningly under the heel of my foot and I go down. The pain is blinding – worse than childbirth I imagine. I’m still trapped in the dress and I’m gasping for air.

I feel like a giant, beached, purple whale – volunteers rally around me – pouring seawater down my blowhole. I feel naked and heavy. They stroke my blubbery grey skin – a guy with brown hair smiles at me You’re going to be alright – we’re going to get you back out there in no time. A shark circles in the distance. I try to talk – but can’t. I cry but my tears are lost in the water. Just then the six o clock news crew appear. A blonde with perfect skin stands in front of me with a microphone – the cameraman counts her in and she’s talking about the unusual purple whale that beached itself behind her – she comments on the phenomenon and the mystery of why I am there – I try to call her over – because I am fat and stuck in a dress you stupid bitch! She doesn’t hear me and then she says there is no hope – that the kindest thing is to euthenase – and I find myself nodding in agreement. Yes, put me down. It is the kindest thing to do. Within five minutes I am surrounded by men with rifles aimed at my head – onlookers are crying and I am gasping for air. So long cruel world I whisper as they fire. I wake up in the dark – my mouth is dry and carpet fur is stuck on my lips – my head hurts and a searing pain from my foot throbs in reminder. I roll onto my back – A strange sense of déjà vu creeps over me – I have done this before. The horror of the last two hours washes over me – I am too sick and sore to cry – I crawl towards the dressing table, a giant purple caterpillar – I fumble around for my scissors – this is the most shameful moment of my life. No wonder you won’t come back. Look at me. Please don’t look at me. I cut myself out. My body relaxes with every inch freed. I breathe easier – the air is cold on my bare skin. The carpet soft on my naked back – recovering I sit up – a ruby gash across my heel throbs congealed blood and glass and the carpet looks like the star in a slasher flick. The sight of it all turns my already churning stomach and it takes a will of iron not to throw up right then and there. I reach for the remaining sip of wine – it is warm and not nearly enough. With every ounce of courage I possess I pull a shard of glass the size of Italy out of my heel – I have never been one prone to exaggeration – not once in my whole life ever. It hurts like a bitch – I never understood what that saying meant but I get it now. I release a primal scream and the neighbour’s dog howls a response – fresh blood gushes out onto the carpet – I apply pressure to the wound with the shreds of my dress – God please don’t let me die this way. I feel angry – this is really all your fault – if you had come back none of this would have happened. The fat, the drinking, the accident. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Huh! I wave my fist at the wall like a French revolutionary – I debate breaking into the chorus of Do you hear the people sing from Les Miserable’s but can’t remember the words, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirrors poker face and somewhere deep inside me a sob swims to the surface – bubbles of spit foam from the corners of my mouth and my nose is red – the sob is deep and raw and convulses my whole body in its power – the grief comes in waves – a rolling tide of all my regret – it offers no respite, I cannot stem the tide. The tears flow, pelting down my naked skin, in this moment I imagine that I could really cry forever – fill an ocean with them and then? I’d swim. I wouldn’t suffocate on the sand with a bullet in my head – I’d just swim – and the waves would carry me further and further out to sea and the crowds would cheer and shout she’s alive! She’s alive! And I’d flick my tail and swim until the tears dried up. The more I swim the thinner I become. The blubber evaporates and I shed my purple whale hyde – and instead of fins I have arms and legs and I am fit and strong and beautiful. This comforts me – all things considered we take comfort from whence it comes. I wipe the tears away and confront the mirror girl – she stares at me, a puzzled look on her face – I stare back until she blinks and then a smile breaks from the cloud of her face and we laugh. We laugh.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Because the DSM wasn't enough

You will never understand this until you experience it.
You will think that you can imagine it
You can’t.
You will blame my mood on ego and you will tell me at least once ‘to snap out of it’
You will question me relentlessly as to the source of my pain
I cannot get over it and I have no answers and if I had the answers I would feel better because then at least I could rationalize this impenetrable sadness that floors me every time.
You will advise me
You will say in frustration ‘Take a damn pill’
I will tell you that the drugs only take the edge off, that they leave me functioning on autopilot, that I may as well be a zombie because there is nothing in me that feels on them and I need to feel
There are days where I find it hard to get out of bed
I don’t feel sick
Just sad
Sad to the point that nothing helps
The joke you heard at work is not going to cut it – it wasn't that funny then and it sure as hell isn't funny now
And if I was functioning I would laugh for you
I would laugh for you
But today I can’t
I am beyond the laughter – it eludes me
I know you are trying
I appreciate that you try
I want to care
I want to be better for you
I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t
I am consumed by thoughts that leave me cold
I will consider suicide at least three times today
I don’t want you to worry because I won’t do it
There is still enough reason in me that suicide has not become a viable option
Instead I will sit in my pajamas and pretend to watch TV
If I can muster the will perhaps I will clean the floor obsessively – it’s what I do when I feel like the world is spinning out of control
I can’t stop war but I can clean up
Go figure.
There is no bandage for this
You cannot put a plaster on it or stitch it up
The wound is not open
I know that is frustrating
I know that to you it does not make sense
Maybe it’s not meant to
Maybe this is just how I am wired
I’m not weak.
I’m not stupid.
I’m not narcissistic.
Most days I’m pretty average – funny even
I’ve hit a low point.
I felt it coming with the change of season
I know it’s here when I start waking up early
I lie in bed and listen to the first birds chirping
And I will myself to sleep
But I can’t
And I can’t get up either
And I want to be sick
And I want to be someone else who doesn’t wake up in tears

And making the bed is so final
Such a commitment t
o get up and make the bed because once it’s done then what?
Who am I fooling?
With that perfectly made bed
When I feel so incredibly empty
So I have skimmed the surface
I will spare you the really dark stuff
You will read this and maybe you’ll give up on me
And maybe I want you to
Because it’s easier than having to answer you every time you say
What can I do?
Who has upset you?
It will be okay.
And sometimes I lie to you and I tell you I’m fine and that I will be okay
Because the look on your face breaks my heart
And the truth is
I’m just trying to get through it myself
And I don’t have the answers
I’m still here aren’t I?

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Suddenly

Suddenly
I had the words to say it all
And you understood every word
And I wrote my soul
For a thousand days
And journeyed out of myself
Like something free and unencumbered
And
Suddenly
I was unafraid
Of failing myself and failing you
And the world it’s impossible beauty
Was a photograph before me
A vast landscape of hope and promise
And I could do it all
Suddenly
I was no longer sad
And you loved me
And every day I woke hopeful
And there were no tears on my pillow
And I threw out my pain medication
And I no longer was numb
Or afraid to feel
Suddenly
You understood me
Like you understood yourself
And we were no longer strangers
Holding hands in the dark
And tripping the light fantastic

Over your shoulder

Over your shoulder
you carried me
Through the timeline of myself
small weight on your back
Swaddled to you
something fragile and unsure
over your shoulder
gaining ground
Years later I watch the world
It's endless cycles
stuck on repeat
new mistakes follow old ones
the postmodern plod
of the born again
and over my shoulder
the years have passed
in an instant moments lost in the rear view mirror
gaining ground
running hard
towards all those improbable destinies
wishing for the comfort of you
carrying me forward
The compass of you that would keep me on the right path
the calm assurance of your sureness
Over my shoulder
I carry you to bed
Your joints ache and you're afraid you may fall
some fragile thing
swaddled to me
the timeline of your days approaching their end
Over my shoulder
I see my shadow
it follows me relentlessly and will not let up
If only I could go back
or stand so very still
that time unnoticed will slip past me, forget me,
keep me
to you
gaining ground.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Obituary


In the newspaper of my life
You were headline news
And the reports that followed
Were the stories we told
Of daily routine
And swims in the sea
And promises kept
Laughter shared
Tears we wept
They made the front page
And pictures of you
All over town
A billion copies, every one sold
You were not tossed out the next day
Crumpled and worn
To line a birdcage or wrapped around some delicate glass
Some person bought on sale
Instead framed
Archived
In a precious vault
In the newspaper of my life


Instead
We got two lines
Under
‘Deaths’
Alongside classified ads
For used cars
And money for sex
And missing pets
Two lines
For which we paid
To tell the world
That you were loved
That we, your family
Filled with grief
Would miss you so
Two lines
To some up
Your life well spent
No mention of the mountains you moved with your little finger
The way you laughed at all our jokes
Your passion for old cars and collecting junk
Your dreams of sailing around the world
Your love of theatre and old books
Your impossible temper
Your endless capacity for forgiveness
In two lines half way through
The stories of politicians and violent crime
Our small obituary
Inadequately expressed
Nothing more
And nothing less

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Ma


Your illness gnaws at me
Its perpetual voice
Chews through the muscle
The sinew, the hope
I call to God – whatever that is,
I berate myself –
I fill myself with silence
I pour the darkness
Through a sieve
I decline phone calls
I gag on words
On sentiment
The radio is switched off
Your illness my Achilles Heel
I bleed resistance and purge platitudes
How is your mother?
What a deafening blow
I soften in my cynicism
Harden at my lack of faith
Quick to anger –
I cover bruises with masking tape
I have emerged something else from this fire
I clutch bandages and disinfectant
I laugh at my gallows humour
Religious icons
Smile and fret
I surprise myself with this vulnerable girl who retreats
To dance in shadows, who burns in the sun
I fill your cup with water
Offer up pills and potions
Shame at the inadequacy
Of words
My voice small across the glacier
How are you feeling?
Tiny offerings skim the water,
Sinking ripples in their wake
I marvel at the clumsy thought
There is no exile in imagination
Instead I watch you from the door way
Peer in to the half-dark room
I send silent assurance
I weep at complication
For on this journey I cannot go
I weave the light like spider webs
I am reminded of Odysseus
Daedalus and Icarus full flight
You alone, sent to kill the Minotaur
While we watch
While we break
While we wait.

Tunnel Vision


I think of tunnels
Of late,
Spiraling darkness
Stumbling
Through space
Spitting mad like a snake
Cold sweat
Heart in my ears
Blood thick
Blind faith
This tunnel quest
This slow spiral through hell
Fumbling for a torch light
Matches snuffed by gusts of wind
Searching, just searching
For the smallest slice of light
Burning through
Some crack
But then I catch myself
This misplaced hope
This tunnel vision
It is so dark in here
Even the light must be defeated.

Yesterday

Yesterday
Before you left
I had the sense that the world was about to spin off its axis and crash into darkness
I felt something fall through me
Heavy like lead
This dread
Before you left


Before you left
I remembered you the way you were when we first met
In your mother’s flat
In your green cardigan
Your glasses broken
Offering me tea
I remembered you
A smiling face in photos on mantelpieces
Forever eight and twelve and fourteen
And I hurt for that small boy
And all the wonderful dreams he would dream
Before you left
I snapped at you for leaving footprints on the bathroom mat
I was angry and I shouted at you
And your face was suddenly that of another
And I wondered how we became strangers to each other so quickly
Before you left
I dreamt that we were back in Covent Garden the rain in our hair
And we were laughing and smiling
And you wanted me
And I felt like the most beautiful girl in the world
And your hand was warm in my own
And the world was our oyster


Yesterday
Before you left
I caught a glimpse of your chair empty in the afternoon sun
And this wave of longing
Struck me so deeply I could not stand
And an emptiness so deep and despairing washed over me
And I ran out onto the road
And I called your name
And you turned back
And you smiled like you used to smile
And
I loved you
But the words were stuck
And so I said nothing
On the day you left

Untitled

Today in the autumn light
I caught a star and held it tight
I made a wish and set it free
I prayed it would come back to me

The wish was big yet very small
very short yet very tall
it had all the answers
but was dumb
it felt all pleasures
despite being numb
it was joyful and joyous
and so very sad
this wish that I clung to
this wish that I had

I borrowed a compass
I sought out a map
my heart sprung a leak
like a broken tap
for the wishes worth wishing
seldom come true
for the pitiful masses
for me or for you
and the stars that we cling to
shatter to dust
and the the brightest veneer
will start to rust
and the world knows no better
the stories we made
and the very best memories
eventually fade
and you're left looking out
when you should be looking in
and the credits are already rolling
when you're set to begin

Japanese Song

You have the East in your eyes
returning again to unearth all your secrets
The Geisha girls come undone
unravelling from their kimono's, those silk Kimono's
and they pour you a drink
and they grant you a wish
and their painted red lips run away with them
And We're big in Japan tonight
And we're dancing a whirling dirvish
furiously free
and accross the runway
the engines roar
and the birds fly South
and the world stands still
and you capture yourself in the pictures you make
silent replica's trapped in ink
much like these words
these bruises we leave
This week
what a terrible week
I watch you cry on your bed like a small child
again death breathes its rancid breath
the weight of the world too heavy
the days too dark
And Albert, poor, dear Albert
on a ventilator
released
his mother and sister wishing him back
but Albert has left the building
and in your dream
he is as he was
and you're walking with him up the stairs to the place where he lived
how strange
when you think on it
here one day, gone the next
But Alphaville keep singing
and the words are so sad
We're big in Japan tonight
and the Geisha girls are laughing
and we don't understand

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

For Albert

Everything and nothing
Oh how could I say it all?
If all I had left was this
Paper and ink
And a heart full of promise
And a world full of dreams
And so many things unlived
And so many things lived raw
Everything and nothing
Condensed
Distilled
Into some vital essence of who I was, who I am and could have been
Had I all the time in the universe
It still would not be enough
To say that I love you
To say that you have left some indelible mark on my heart
My tattoo lover
My blessed wing
At night upon you I float over the city
Dreamless, smokey landscape of light and dark
The traffic a far off distant lullaby
And the steady beat and promise that is your heart.
Everything and nothing
For nothing could be enough
And half of it would be nothing at all
Perfect light
Sun of my sun
How the days wake with you
And the stars watch you sleep
How the world aches for the love you have shared with me
How the nameless masses find hope in your smile
How the seasons promise to return
This swan song not nearly beautiful enough
Not nearly enough
For all the unlived hopes I cupped in my hand and passed to you
Drink it
Drink my sweet love
Tonight paper-thin skin of my resolve crumples under the sheet of our years together
A dove coos outside my window
And a late summer breeze breathes hello
The tulips you sent continue to wilt
Their pallid pink mouths droop open gasping for air like fish out of water
I tried to revive them
But found some beauty in their demise
Some silent requiem
Of our mortality
Everything and nothing my love
This elegy for you and the loves we loved
And the dreams we dreamed on your Turkish carpet
And the laughter that overfilled my cup
And drowned my sadness
Oh how you shone a light amongst my shadows
How you gave me everything
Made me everything
Showed me everything
Restored
Again
Something nourished
And alive
Something
Everything
Out of
Nothing.
This is for you.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Intruder

An intruder
Tonight
Through the unlocked door
Came in
From sleep I heard the screaming
Woken
Blood runs cold as ice
Running
Blind panic down the passage
To find safety
To get help
To get out
To survive
And there a seventeen year old boy
On the ground
The villain child
Caught
Trapped
From across the way help
Drunk from festivities
An April wedding
Cold champagne
Flowers and cake
Four men
Groomsmen
Beers in hand
Without speaking
The blows are delivered
I hear the boy moan in pain
I hear one of the men
cunt
I am in a parallel universe
This is a dream
My family, my son, my loved ones, my friends
In the house
What were you doing?
I am hungry; I am starving his explanation – his apology?
What ifs run like wild fire through my mind
Violent crime brought home
What if I had disturbed him?
Did he have a weapon?
A gun?
What would he take from me?
Me and him
Us and them
Another blow and the boy restrained lies on the ground
A kick is delivered to his head and ribs
The viciousness sickens me
Yet
He is a threat to my and our safety – he is wrong – he deserves this
He deserves this?
The police arrive
They bring dogs and flashlights
The beating continues in their hands
They hit him with truncheons – they will make him talk
They take a statement
Bleary eyed and shocked we bear witness as he is loaded into the van
He does not talk as men leer at him through the bars
He is silent
It is dark and I can’t even see his face
I don’t think I can see his face
We assimilate
We break down
We exchange information and newspaper headlines
Crime
This is Africa
Thank God no one was hurt
Really?
A statement is written down – charges laid
Our defender is tearful
He apologises to the officer
This is my first time he says
Like it’s a rite of passage
Like it was inevitable the day would come
He reveals the bite marks on his shoulder
Is the boy another Statistic of Poverty stricken Africa?
We need to get him to the hospital
We need to get him ARV’s
Just in case
The skin may be broken
There is no blood
The skin
Surface
Oh no my dear
So much more
A groomsman bears a bump on his forehead from head butting the boy to submission
He is drunk
It’s the only language they understand he says
I am sorry if the violence offended you
It’s not fair to generalize
They shot my family
I was on the deck of a sports bar overlooking the sea
First cold beer in hand
Got the call
My mother, father, sister, brother, aunt shot
They survived
They were liberals
They fought in the struggle
My father convinced us it would be alright to stay
It’s not
It’s not
I think of my aunt murdered in front of her children for a cell phone
I think of the value of life
I think of the boy and his life
I think of what he could have done to me
My brother
How his intrusion at a celebration shattered something so deep in me I don’t know if it can be fixed
They did not find a weapon
We searched
Nothing
But what if he had?
Would he have shown us mercy?Why does he deserve to get away with it?
Who will he hurt next?
In some ways I hoped they’d find something
So I could have the easy answer
His beating
Was greater than him and his intrusion
His beating
Was about something older and deeper than him
In one night he became the vessel for our distrust and anger
He became our regret
And our vengeance
He became the face of every rapist and gun-toting criminal
This man boy
Who when my heavily pregnant friend held onto his arm looked at her and said
It is going to be ok…It will be ok
Why should I fucking care?
Why?
Huh
Huh
They drove away with him
This beaten kid
This despicable
I watch my Friends face – he has tears in his eyes
He was our protector
Without him something so much worse could have happened
This is South Africa
This is what happens here
We are lucky…
They drive him off to a government hospital to get the drugs
We sit waiting for the light
Waiting to leave
We are high on adrenalin
We are amped
We are fearful
We have breakfast together overlooking the Indian Ocean
My friend flies a kite with his four-year-old son who slept clutching his teddy bear through the whole ordeal
He does not know his father and mother defended him
He does not know the danger they faced
He is fine.
We laugh
We make jokes
We save face
We try to make sense
Package the experience in a palatable pill
We scratch the surface of the wound
Our laughter is loud and unruly
The jokes inappropriate
My brother recounts his experience of violence
At least you felt humanity someone says
Humanity…
What can I say?
I cried for my aunt today
I did not cry back then
I cried for the countless victims of violence
I cried for some part of me that died in that beach cottage
I cried in relief
I cried in anger
I cried in empathy
And I still do not know how to reconcile
That some of those tears
Were for the boy in the police van
Who would be locked in a cell for the night and released in the morning
Who will probably return to a life of crime
Who will probably become more violent
Who will probably be another statistic
Because there is nothing else
Because this is Africa

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Adventures of Starfish Woman

I like the supermarket.
The Supermarket is like chicken soup for the soul.
The great escape.
Place of peace and safety if you don’t think too hard about it.
The supermarket is a basket of contradictions.
Sometimes it can be the loneliest place on earth – nothing can affirm this more than shopping for one.
The fluorescent light offers no refuge – its’ showy cold gleam lays everything bare, unashamedly flaunting the goods, in a supermarket there is no thing such as false modesty.
The supermarket does not need ambience
Everything is laid out to appear its most inviting
It would be naïve to think there is not some sort of serious strategy in positioning chocolate bars so close to the check out.
The supermarket veneer is everything a consumer would hope for it to be,
Shelves just high enough to reach for that box of maldon salt
Produce washed and perfect flowing out of barrels of abundance
Everything is in season all the time in the supermarket
Generic music filters through hidden speakers – songs just familiar enough to recognize but not distracting enough to veer from the task at hand
The supermarket is a grand manipulator and I am putty in its hands.
In the supermarket you can be anyone you want
The delicious anonymity of worshipping in the church of convenience
I sashay down the aisles
My shoulders pinned back and my head held high
I walk the catwalk like the next best thing
Confident and carefree I pick up a pack of pads with wings – I imagine myself in white pants running through a field of daisies
Fresh and confident, always dry
I don’t buy the no-name brand ones which are a good deal cheaper, no; today is about the branding, living the highlife and paying with plastic
Smiling models on boxes of hair dye urge me on
Come on, you’re worth it.
I smile, “you guys – you’re just so kind! Well why the hell not! I try to decide between a flaming red or an ashy blonde, my dark hair hangs limp as a dishcloth.
I decide on red and the box model smiles approvingly
Good choice. Just wait until he sees you with hair like that!
I smile like the cat that got the cream ‘It’s for me – I don’t need to impress anybody.
The endormorphines flow like warmed honey with every item
I place in my basket
I imagine myself lithe and sun kissed, my delicate ankles bare in a pair of Black Capri pants,
My blouse is from some overpriced boutique in Venice, cream suddenly looks very good on me, my JP Todd’s are as comfortable as slippers, and I smell like Pure Joy, other women harassed by small children with grubby hands stare as I go by – I smile at them. I smile like I believe it. I smile like I have never known a day’s sorrow in my entire life. They look at me and wish they could be me instead of returning to their dull domestic lives and like the supermarket I con them with my mega watt smile and my designer bag, I convince them in one moment that they’re missing out on the time of their lives – and they buy it…yes, they buy it.
I choose the most perfect red pepper, a bottle of Moet and Chandon I wince at the price but egg myself on – who cares if next week I live on air and water – today I am someone else, someone who drinks French champagne like box wine, who eats antipasto and wild mushroom risotto, fois gras and a reduction of balsamic vinegar.
I move aisle by aisle my hips swinging seductively – I get to the cleaning products and remember that I need a bottle of Handy Andy – I stop myself mid movement – Don’t be ridiculous – Handy Andy? Are you kidding? Women like you don’t clean! Send the maid next week – but I don’t have a maid – you do today – The internal argument is broken by the sound of a man’s voice – I whirl around smiling like the beauty I am – “Yes” I say as if I were to the manner born.
I’m sorry he says – it’s just that I think you dropped this – I look from his kind eyes to his outstretched hands and gasp in horror
There in his pink palm a wad of coupons – stapled together. I’d cut them out of various magazines – it had taken me hours – I had prided myself on being so thrifty and shrewd
You must be mistaken I find myself saying – I don’t use coupons – I tilt my basket in his direction – he looks at the champagne and then he looks at me.
Shit. Shit he’s not buying it- he’s not buying.
There is an awkward moment and then he says I’m sorry, it’s just that one is stuck to your shoe, my mistake, poor sod who lost them, some good savings here, and then he walks away and I feel like the boat has sailed and I consider running after him but I am too far gone…
I look down and in one instant, crash back into sad and sorry reality
I am wearing sheepskin slippers. I am wearing sheepskin slippers and I am mortified.
Ahead of me I catch my reflection in the gleaming glass refrigerators
The figure I draw is less lithe, less tanned, less manicured and refined, less beautiful – my hair is stringy, my shirt is stained, my pants are faded and hang as limp as my hair and again I am wearing sheepskin slippers.
I am nauseous; I gag at my reflection looking back at me against a backdrop of frozen chickens and fish fingers
The lie of my basket hangs heavy in my hands
The reflection waves at me – begging recognition – begging to wake up…
Please tell me this is just some awful dream.
The exit feels like the other side of the world – I need to get out of here.
My breath comes in short sharp gulps – I am hyperventilating
Dizzy with lack of oxygen I stumble towards the fridge doors, grabbing the handle for support I sink down against the smooth cold glass
It is like diving; deep down into aqua blue, bubbles float out of my mouth their rainbow prisms gleaming
Schools of brightly coloured fish fingers swim past leaving trails of their breadcrumb coating with 98% less fat
A decapitated chicken does a tap dance and a string of sausages applaud
The horror and delight I feel mingles like some horrible nightmare and I catch myself laughing hysterically
A frozen trout stares at me with its glassy eyes – its stomach hangs open – gutted and bare – pink flesh peeps through – he smiles at me and swims away
Neon lights begin to flicker – some strobe that will not cease – it is bright – too bright to open my eyes
I think of Heaven
I think of Jesus
“Have you found Jesus?”
I laugh at the familiar joke! I didn’t know he was lost to begin with!
Oh God
Oh God no
Please if you are listening to me do not let me die in the supermarket
I can see the headlines
WOMAN DIES AT LOCAL SUPERSPAR
Accompanying it a picture of me sprawled out – my eyes glassy and vacant – my tongue lolling out of my mouth, my legs spread – a hole in the crotch of my pants – a sheepskin slipper lying a few feet away –
A box of I&J Fish fingers in my hands
Oh my god
I cannot suffer the humiliation.
All at once a voice swims through my reverie penetrating the horrific vision
I am here to help you the voice says
Is it? Is it… James Earl Jones?
Just relax. I am going to get you out of here as soon as possible. You are going to be ok.
I squint in the glare of the light – searching for the face that belongs to the voice – for a fraction of a second I believe that the voice has emanated from the box of fish fingers thawing on my lap –
I lift the box to my ear like a telephone
Hello God – Is that you?
The voice sounds tinny – I can hear the sea as if I’d cupped a shell to my ear – It soothes me, I feel calm
I am floating on a white wave – I ride the crest – I sprawl like a starfish my body a sponge soaking up warmth and light
The flashing pulse of red light draws me in – suddenly voices coming at me from all angles – the familiar sting of a needle shoots into my arm – it smells like…it smells like hospital.
I concentrate
I concentrate on trying to focus
The world in Technicolor brilliance like a bad acid trip is distilled in all its glory
James Earl Jones is not James Earl Jones but a twenty year old with a badge that reads “I AM HERE TO HELP YOU” below the supermarket logo.
He smiles at me
He looks s like an angel – if angels were Goths and had pimples
You’re back he says
Where am I?
He smiles again – he has food stuck between his teeth
Silence
More silence
I swim down again
Deep dark depths of amniotic fluid
I am pure
I am unborn
I sound out a few final words to the angel
“Did I pee myself?”

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Beautiful You

Beautiful you
My heart is still as a butterfly wing tonight
The starry thorns of our contentment bristling in a January breeze
Oh how I long for the calm so that I may once again know the storm.
I realize today and paper thin the fragility of my life and that becomes the pen, the words, the light.
Half of me for all of you
Rapturous promise of all hope and glory. I just had to tell you
I don’t know who I am anymore
Before
I felt like someone and now what?
Please know
All of everything tonight.
The person you loved lies buried under the sea.
I am the relic of your desire and my own self loathing.
Tonight
Broken
I come silent and bare
To the place where words are the only voice
And time my only foe.
I have loved you through an hourglass.

Valentine

You ask for proof
Of love
As if you could sift through a vat of salt
And source that grain
That remarkable grain
That says
I do
You ask for promises
For honesty
You open me like some first print book
Rifle through the pages
Skip to the end
Read between the lines to find the story
I don’t tell
The story you believe to be – the grand mythology
You ask for years
Pulled from my breast like long yellow ribbons
You fly kites with them
On sunny days
You say ‘perhaps then’, ‘one day’, ‘next year’
You plan time
The days commanded by fingertips
Wind themselves into folding zig zags of maps
Tributaries and time lines
The geography of our love
You make promises
Statements, four letter words
You say ‘never’, ‘hurt’,
You say ‘always’
I know better
You open yourself
Your own pages, you scrawl and entwine me in the chapters of your soul
You say ‘read me’
You say ‘You’ll miss the best part’
I ask you where the twist in the plot is – the dénouement
You say ‘this is how much I love you’
Impossibly measured doses of you
Said with such sincerity
They strike my heart like blows from a hammer
When did I become so cynical?
When did I stop measuring, planning, reading?
We hold hands
Our fingers laced
The knot of love
Tight, strong
So easily pulled undone.

Friday, April 3, 2009

The Story of Starfish Woman who could not go to sleep (Part Four)

For most of my life I have apologized
Whether it was valid or not
If there was someone saying sorry it was me.
You name it and I have apologized for it
Earthquakes, Tsunamis, broken hearts and broken dishes
Spilt milk, dead goldfish, trolley collisions, death, the holocaust, apartheid
I am sorry.
I am an apologist.
I’m sorry, I beg your pardon, sorry, sorry, I am truly sorry.
Am I sorry?
Mostly I am
Mostly I believe that the apology is highly overrated
I am sorry your entire family was wiped out in a genocide – could you pass the peas?
I’m sorry that my forefathers were colonial fuckers who screwed you over
I am sorry that I am emotionally unavailable
I am sorry that I fell asleep
I am sorry that I forgot your birthday
I am sorry that I am not more like him
I am sorry that I am sorry.
Enough already.
The thing about sorry is that it doesn’t really make it better does it? The word just falls flat, it’s inadequate.
Sorry. Sorry.
Sorry is its own form of blasphemy
The word is overused and I am guilty of it.
Do we even know what we are apologizing for?Do we care?Should we?
In my life I have apologized whether it was warranted or not.
I did it to keep the peace
I did it because I didn’t know what else to say.
I said it because it was the only acceptable thing to say.
I apologized for myself
My bad mood, my weight, my love, my drunkenness, my work, my thoughts, my feelings.
Tonight I tore up the last of our pictures.
I relished destroying the ones that you wanted, the keepsakes you’d take and put in some box – the ones you’d show to your grandkids’, the ones you’d look at when you’re old and reminisce and wish you could go back
But it’s too late.
I am not a spiteful person.
Reading this I am sure you would think otherwise
I have been driven to spiteful action but I am not a spiteful person.
I am also out of ‘sorry’
I filled out my quotient of apologies
I am out of sorry like the neighbors are out of sugar or milk.
I will make peace with it.
I will.
And I will not apologize for not apologizing for being spiteful and sullen and sad.
Sorry is passive.
Sorry is for sissies.
Sorry doesn’t give a shit about sorry
Sorry is the nation’s pacifier
Sorry is not a salve or balm to heal the wounds
Just some word that had a great spin-doctor.
Sorry is obligatory.
“Say Sorry to Sally darling – Say sorry for drowning her Barbie in the toilet”
“But I’m not sorry! She pinched me!”
“It doesn’t matter – Just say it!”
Why?
Sorry is selfish – sorry is the antithesis of an apology, Sorry is said to soothe the conscience of the one saying it
Sorry should come with a warning
I have waited for sorry a long time from many people. School bullies who teased me relentlessly, Friends who were unkind, sorry for wounds that run deeper than any cut or bruise, sorry for making you feel worthless, sorry for leaving you alone, sorry for not protecting you when all you needed was to be protected, sorry for not being your friend because sometimes it was just too hard, sorry for calling you those names, sorry I don’t love you. Sorry I never have, sorry but you are not the one I want to be with. Sorry… Sorry…
For so long I have believed that Sorry is a magic word, that in having you say it everything will be ok. That somehow I will be at peace with myself and you. That the past will be erased or at least washed over in watercolour, made palatable.
Tonight I put sorry to rest.
The apologies I never received and the apologies I made that made me feel less of me, for what I thought was more of you.
It’s easy to be honest at 2am
It’s easy to be anything or anyone other than yourself.
I am not sorry for meeting you on a Wednesday in the frozen food section with a box of tampons in my left hand.
I am not sorry for calling you everyday just to say hi and to tell you I miss you.
I am not sorry that I hoped and prayed for you for most of my life.
I am not sorry that I cried like a baby when Princess Diana died and Nelson Mandela walked free.
I am not sorry that I said I loved you often and unashamedly to friends, to family, to pets, to you.
I am not sorry that I am an idealist
I am not sorry that I am me
And perhaps that really doesn’t quite cut it, and perhaps you would rather I regret because it will make you feel better
Either way the apology you leave will never be enough and I was a fool for thinking it, and even if it carried as much weight as I had hoped it would it won’t make you love me the way I ought to be loved, It won’t stop the ache that I have at times like these when the house is silent and I am alone, It won’t right the wrongs or bring world peace
It will just be a wordthat we wish meant more than it did
So next time you’re about to apologize
Please spare it
It isn’t going to save the starving in Ethiopia or Zimbabwe
It isn’t going to stop the war in the Middle East or bring back the lives of loved ones we’ve lost
It’s not going to stop the creation of bombs or guns
It’s not going to stop the criminals, the thieves, the sad, and the lonely from being what they are.
It’s not going to make up for the past and without action it will never pave the way for a future.
I have learnt enough to know that either way it fucks out in the end.
It’s not going to stop the sadness and misery
It’s not going to shelter the homeless or clothe the poor
And when you wind up your window to the street kid at the stop street and dismiss the beggar with a sorry
It does what only an apology can do
Fuck all.