Tag Archives: confessional poem

abbey national

my health, my health
your kingdom for my health.
I gritted my teeth for so long
that they have become sand,
and I am not a liar,
so I will not deny that I pray
for your body to be cystic,
anxious, cancerous, unappealing.
I don’t believe in god at all,
yet I clasp my hands to my face
like a raggedy Carmelite
cloistered in my living room.
at least I have a living room-
where do you imprison yourself?
you don’t believe in anything but
your own superiority.
hopefully that will be your
encrusted downfall,
an intellectual toaster
in the bath, as you scream
“this cannot happen to me!
I read Vonnegut!”
my anger has turned into a
hot spare tyre.
of course, I cannot
scream in Abbey National
or the Docklands arena
or the Blockbuster Video
like my Divine mother
once did.
I just swallow the burning.
the sand in my mouth helps.

cracks

some people think
I am a trodden-on sapling.
a pathetic thing
made up of fragile acronyms,
they think I should shake like
a tin full of thumbtacks.
should they feel afraid? 

I have seen rivets on
many wrists, on secret wrists;
heard the wailing
of secret mouths and
felt the fearful breath
of so many pairs of secret lungs
on my shoulder. 

not a trodden-on thing. no.
a swimmer in the naȉve sea –
a swallower of salty water,
I can’t deny.
but I never drowned
in the space between the cracks.
I am not afraid. are you? 

septic tank

inside my chest
there is a nuclear reactor.
so don’t forget,
you are made of water.

your torn pink flesh
cannot mask what you are,
cannot save you from
my burning core.

inside my chest
there is a dying star.
but I am still alive
and I can still destroy you.

you are not you anymore.
not a special strawberry
growing from a crack in the patio.
you are a shit inside a septic tank.

inside my chest
there is a great black hole
that only I have the key to.
you do not have it now.

apples

scarecrow,
you cruel bastard.
you never scared the birds away.
the little sparrows used to line up
on your tattered jacket sleeves
and they’d sing into your false ear.

they should have been frightened.

I had a field of fruit trees.
I put you in there, amongst
the bright green granny smiths.
they were mine. they were mine.
the birds weren’t interested, but
acid poured out of your rotting guts of straw

it burnt holes in my crops.

you did not do your job,
you cruel bastard.
you did not protect my apples at all.
apples are not supposed to bleed
but my neat orchard was broken
and awash with a clotted red river.

you were not the last, either.

I got better at making scarecrows
no thanks to cruel bastards
or bad fruit that stewed on my tongue.
I don’t need a cruel blue doll
like you around any more.
I have covered the orchard with electric nets.

the birds die, but they come anyway.

fingers

somehow I know, already
what you have inside your hand
safely kept in your gentle fist

two seeds of an amethyst flower
common, but still something so precious
they rattle inside your fingers

and leave their dust behind
saturating the lines in your skin,
turning your scars a little black and dirty

the clock has not been ticking long
dear, but I know that these seeds
of purple and white

are what you are going to give to me.
despite my prior protestations
and yours, I know that they are mine.

you cannot explain why you would
trust me to keep these valueless, precious things
of yours. neither can I,

but somehow you have the talent
to make me feel like I am a mother of the earth-
damarian queen, growing your seeds into crystals-

when I thought I was a sea of fire,
who turned forests into barren deserts of ash
and homes into burning rings of hell

anderson

I am like the east-end once was, too
not like you, in your old-world charms
more a smouldering widow, more like

whitechapel in the wartime. fieldgate street
burning, the collapsed fifty shilling shop and
gaping blank holes in the rows of houses.

visibly, you can see
that I am missing a few bricks.
I am a city, vibrant, of violent scars.

I still stand, despite iron girders
hanging off me like balloon strings
they are heavy, you know-

but she tells me that if I take them off
well, the whole damn thing will fall down.
and life is worth it, even if it is a siege.

I clatter and moan and whistle in the night.
I know you darling-
I know you forget your Anderson shelter

even exists, when you flutter your eyes and
get squelched tight in the peat bog.
you should go, you should go.

I don’t want you to die here
on my street-
I don’t want you to become a hole in the row.

I am a war
I am telling you. a total war-
and you will wish for peace

once you have seen past the
pretty pinny I wear, the dust-scarf
in my hair-

I know, I remind you
of something you know.
but I am not that-

just an itchy glow.

concussion

04 11 18. on fear

I must destroy my fear
to live in waking dreams.
I must discard my preoccupation
or I will never fly.
I must be bigger,
stronger, with freedom
or I will never win my
mind’s competition
I must destroy my fear
or it will destroy me.

I don’t live in a cage
anymore, not much.
I don’t want to be precious now
nor delicate
I don’t want to be that
child hiding in the airing cupboard
controlled by ancestral anger
that doesn’t belong to me.

I want this life to be mine
masteress of fear
no more men living in my head.
I don’t want my rallying cry
to be “I can’t”, not now.
I don’t want to be the girl
going gentle into that good night
withering and twisting in the dark.

I want to be like me
feeling it all,
getting better all the time.
how will I destroy my fear?
maybe I’ll have to cut my hair
burn my bra,
wear a bin bag
get a concussion
commit with reckless abandon.

and maybe once that’s done
maybe then
I’ll lie naked in the forest
so the soil can absorb my worries
and the spiders
can get in my clothes,
say yes say yes
say yes
darling do it
would you please.
just say yes and try
for the sake of our joy.

destroy your fear
and don’t let it be the
thing
that kills you
anymore.

daughter

2017. excerpt from a song 

my brother’s your other
I would have had your daughter
I’m not the tiny creature
you think I am
I’m the big bad wolf
incubus succubus
evil eagle pecking out your eyes

I could have stayed and laid
there forever with you
forever with you
you leak out of my eyes
like a traumatic head injury would
I could have stayed and laid
there forever with you

I don’t know what
I want from you
but I know I don’t
I don’t want you

diamond

27 10 17

I wonder what they think I am
do they think I am
a hard diamond orb of a woman?
it is what I try to
make them see
(it is a lie)

I line my shortcomings
up neatly on the mantelpiece
stacked on each side of the
ticking clock,
so I can see every one.

the orb you see is not real
but a perfectly crafted vision
a trick for your eyes
I am trying to be vulnerable
I am trying to be the best.
the two are
mutually exclusive

the clock keeps ticking
but it makes no sense to me
and I keep on in a story –
like I am the master of time –
but the numbers slide off
the face,
and maybe I really
understand what Dali meant

orbs are nothing but a ghost story.
I may as well speak in the voice of
a television medium.
watch this show with caution
as everything within it
exists only for your entertainment