This is a new piece, literally just finished it so it’s a bit wobbly like jelly but I think it’s set. I started the first notes on it about a month back – I had returned from a week-long retreat where I had been writing and meditating every day, Buddhist meditation including metta bhavana practise, which is the deliberate cultivation of compassion. All through the retreat I had experienced extreme pain across my upper back and arms when meditating, a very blocky feeling, and I knew it was all part of feeling a little shut down in my heart. Then on the last day our meditation leader started off a session by saying ‘remember, love is waiting to come through you’ and I immediately felt a bellow of love roar through me from back to front like a fire hose, opening up my chest until I cried helplessly. It left a kind of exit wound so that for days after coming home I was continually finding myself overcome with compassion, in the most unlikely (and inconvenient) places – in this case, late night shopping at Asda.

Love is waiting to come through you

brutal   a wolf wind at the automatic doors it will

shove you   a trolley through their parting and in

to the realm of nested baskets   buckets brimming

bright bouquets destined for vases or lampposts

stacks of flapjacks   black gossip pagodas where

turbine girls stride on the newsprint seas   arms

bent back white vanes semaphoring they too

are on special offer but to who?   love is waiting

to jackknife your sternum and make you see

the young man  twitching without rhythm or

symmetry  agonizing over Icebergs,  Romaines

the old man  palming his wife like a fresh egg

misbuttoned tweed hunched high in sympathy

for her lifelong rocking  cross a scoliotic spine

the biker   trachea shockingly stoppered white

plastic porthole in his windburned wattle   love

is waiting to escape from you   clawing a way

out of the shattered mineshaft   joining them

under inert gases  in closed cup mushroom faces

and the struggle with choices   crunchy or plain

shivering in the aisles of flayed shrink-wrapped

muscles   seeking comfort in the varnished apples

and beyond  the unmanned tills are singing please

please take please take please take your change

…and is it even finished? I suspect it isn’t, but I’m going to kick it out of the nest anyway while I try to make  room for some new ones. You may be interested to know that this started out as a very ‘poetic’ poem, all about early morning light on the silver arabesques of snail trails, until I rendered myself so fucking bored with my own work that this little gobbet of ugly spat out. Just like ‘How Many More?’ started as a hymn to jam-making and ended up a bitter half-spell against a boy long-gone incanted by a crone-in-the-making. I rock at the kitchen table, trying to focus on what is true, and currently it is all dark, dark, dark.

fucking snails / shitting babies

in the weeds again / mummy

it’s a little green one, I seed it /

how many times / do I have

to tell you / I’ve seen / or I

saw? / are you deaf or just /

stupid? / the pathetic dramas

when I snuff them with a pinch /

it’s best / to kill them before

they get too big / untameable /

her hair curls like parsley /

round and round the table

with the hairbrush / screaming /

I made porridge / like my mum

the right way / salt and water /

why won’t she sit still

and take it?

It’s an agony of sorts, passing by trees

Unharvested, sagging under the red load

I had a thought, to pick myself monthly

I had a thing in my head, to be made of wood

A wolf-eyed totem, hard lips a slice of memory

That boy I fucked, up in North Carolina

I stood under live oaks by the bank

In my scarlet dress, and he walked past

When he slid inside he moved through me

A river slowly achieving the delta

Hair hung rivulets against my neck

The sweating breeze in the Spanish moss

The shiver of him emptied and died

A whirlpool opened at the back of his heart

Elle n’est q’un trou

He said within earshot, not knowing me

That I understand more tongues than I speak

That I keep clotted things in kilner jars

That I would one day hack his face

Into a found log and smear it moon by moon

With all the children I will never love

Offerings to the god of one night only

Timewaster

 

‘Sorry’

the man on the train says

‘for asking, but

are you a writer?

I’m a writer.

Sci-fi fantasy.

I don’t believe in happy

endings, such a cliché.

In my book, everybody dies

after three

thousand pages.’

 

‘Sorry,

sorry to disturb you

I’ve been

writing my book for ten years

since I was sixteen.

Unfortunately

I’m off to work, insurance

for my sins.’

 

I ask him when he writes

and he says he hasn’t written anything

for five years.

His eyes roll

little wet pebbles

his eyes gape

little fish pleading

with me not to say the bleeding

obvious –

if you haven’t written for five years

you’re not a writer.

 

‘Sorry’

he says

‘I’ll let you get on’

He watches me make notes

for five minutes, and says

‘that seems like a lot

of work

for a poem.’

This is a re-worked version of a NaPoWriMo 2013 poem, I’m trying to get it ready to submit for publication somewhere, so all comments and feedback are especially welcome. The original version is here, if you’re interested…

The mall is full of dugong,

Basking gently in the atrium of filtered light,

This temperate zone, these grazing pastures.

Flippers on the handlebars of grand-nippers,

At whom they smile, bewildered, but kind,

Floating tenderness to the youngest

Of the Family Dugongidae.

 

Dugong spend much of their time alone,

Great, grey, chamois-soft, slump-shouldered bulks

Navigating zeppelin-slow through the aisles

Of the twenty-four hour Asda,

Pondering the mysteries of couscous,

Considering treats for little visitors.

 

Dugong spend much of their time in pairs,

Rootling with their bristled, sensitive snouts

For nice cups of tea and a scone,

Though they are sometimes seen

Gathered in large herds,

To do taichi at the community centre.

A synchronised dugang,

Fluked tails moving patiently

Through Needle On The Bottom Of The Sea.

 

Dugong dugon of the family Dugongidae!

Come and pass your undemanding eye

Over the paintings from the Gray Collection,

Here at our local gallery.

I know you will pause

At the Victorian child, pink muslin and ringlets,

Her giant St Bernard dog, its head huge on her lap.

I know in your great, grey, chamois-soft heart you understand,

The restful weight of trust,

The touch of small-fingered hands.

 

 

Summerlight flicks, the edges of London,

Sparks on glass-blades, city spires,

Smithereens of past, shards of future,

Gilt crust, glamourdusk , quick flash-fires.

Greenwich, we say. Thick in the waterbeds,

Maidenhair sinewaves, mechanized wash;

Old man river rolling shingle on a blue tongue,

Popping candy, lost slang, memories, tosh.

The pub we sit in, burnished planking,

Orchestrated mismatch, pristine scuff;

Raise a glass to owning it, scotch eggs a fiver,

Nowadays a feast is as good as enough.

Niggardly futons, in the flats of longago,

Fistholes in plaster, scrag-end of lust,

Bargain-bin fabric pinned against windows,

Rose light, clementines, fag ends, dust.