Category: Poetry

I began writing poetry as a teenager and never stopped. I read poetry, my all-time favourites, are Marina Tsvetaeva from Russia and well, dozens of others.

I went into hospital

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I went into hospital
Where they inserted a catheter tube
I was on a bed of roses
My hand across the rose petals

Then blood began to flow like a river
Flowing back into the earth
Where bloodsuckers with black wings
Swarmed across the docks

I went into hospital
My legs felt like lightning bolts
Everyone there became fairground chimps
Running up and down the wards ringing bells
Sitting on reception, grooming for fleas

I went into hospital
In the examination room the light went out
A woman with a stone face and a stone hand
Was pushed in, standing on a pedestal
She felt around my insides
As if searching for keys

Eve said to Mary

Eve said to Mary
“How ironic it is
That our firstborn died the way they did”

Mary said
“And who are you”?
Eve did you say”?

“Once I was the trees and the mountain streams,
Once I was the flowers of the field;
The sparrows on the eaves of little villages,” said Eve.
“Once every man was born from me,
All of mankind, including you Mary”.

“Then it all came undone” Mary replied
She floated now in the blue skies
Shining like a star, invisible, invincible

“It all came undone.
The jar broke and the wine spilled out
And you were buried in the ground
With your shield and your chariot
Watching the ivy grow all over you
Now sleep, your time for judgement is coming”.

Obsessed with eyes

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You were getting obsessed with eyes
They never satisfied you
They were the eyes belonging nowhere
A melt-weld in the sky; a raincloud of tears for parched animals to drink

You were getting obsessed with eyes
They flew about in your waking dream like flying ants
You could pick them up with your fingertips like dust particles
They excited you like unopened parcels

You were getting obsessed with eyes
They were positioned as watching-eyes
Another imaginary friend from school
Or the eyes of frogs that tunnelled through your skin

Then one eye went missing, it left the celebration
The world outside was too big, you’ll never find it
So, you went to sleep as the storm took hold

In the morning it was all clear
You looked into your mirror and there it was
Side by side with your normal eye like a cuckoo

Man carrying his horse

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The river of time rushed by in the terracotta sun
The black tin house, with a tar roof, stands there alone

Constructed in the fields of construction
Ordered in the valley of order

My hands on the tarry wall in the bomb blast
My old age in a bucket of tar

Everything in its place like for an army on a schedule
Every life like a pin stuck in a calendar of war

Then this vision of a man carrying his horse
In silver and gold light along the tow path outside

Passing by like a spectre, like a revelation
Into the spiritual sun of existence

Biros

A long time ago pens were for people who could write
A countryside craft for his nibs

Now, Biro’s spill out of draws like twigs
From the great tree of knowledge, maybe

The biro was made for poetry by everyone and anyone
Poems were born from them like raindrops on a window

The biros, common as fingers on branches
Where people sit composing posies like apple blossoms

The biro in a packet of ten – red, blue, black and green
A glacier of biros slowly melting into the sea of humanity

Janice

Janice, it was told
Your lovesick boyfriend – became so bold
He could not live without you
He would love you forever

Janice, were you frightened?
Did you wish that he would go?
A little bit of detective work
Will tell you all you need to know

Perhaps he was a homeless man
Perhaps he was an orphan
Perhaps he lived in council care
Or worked as a shoreman

Never seeing any woman
Never feeling love before
Perhaps it came down all at once
And made him hit the floor

Janice did he fight you
Did your father make him leave?
Janice did you hear from him
And did your heart feel grief

I don’t know if you married
Elder cousin of mine
Maybe you lived a lonely life
Without a track on time

Dreaming of his bruises
Dreaming of his cries
The man who truly loved you
Until the end of time

Salesman

Your father was a salesman
He’s leaving home for ages
You’ll think of him a stranger
That sends home his wages

Now he’s on the road again
Looking for a village
But every door he knocks on
Already has been pillaged

Meanwhile you play hopscotch
Across the pavement days
You also admire the wristwatch
Of any man who stays

Your mother chases vagrants
She never gives them money
She calls them by your father’s name
But you like them cause they’re funny

The years pass by so empty
In your lonely chamber
You pray for his homecoming
But his love is like some danger

Your mother marries someone else
She sends you to your room
And sitting at your window
Like the darkened moon

Like a room – in a box of concrete
Like a ship – at the bottom of the sea
You go in search of the salesman
Who left you-to-be free
Who left you-to-be free

The Tardigrade

Samuel 1;13

Eli took her for a drunk

This experience of ancient lady Hannah has often come to mind. It is an early record of religious police almost, with Eli the priest critical of Hannah as she was praying to God for a son.

12 And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. 13 Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. 14 So Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!”

15 But Hannah answered and said, “No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. 16 Do not consider your maidservant a wicked[e] woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now.”

When in my place of worship, it was often said that when you pray to try to visualise what God is like. Visualise Him as a King on a throne or some other mental picture. But I realise this may not be the best thing to do. Prayer is made in spirit and in truth, that is, in your heart like Hannah and in your thoughts. This fits with the idea of what faith is, that we cannot see God because he is a spirit but we can communicate with Him, only it needs faith that, as a spirit, he is listening to our spirit, our thoughts and feelings, which we know we have but that cannot be seen by anyone else, except a spirit in the realm of the spirit world where God is.

Well I find this works easily for me, father than praying to a visualisation in my mind of what God looks like. Because he doesn’t really look like anything we can visualise.

Then I began to understand something else about God. The humble tardigrade. A microscopic animal taht can survive in extreme conditions. It is kind of cute in a microscopic way with its little caterpillar like legs and podgy body. Puzzling though. How can it even exist? As a part of God’s creation like in human artists who leave their own personality stamped in their work, God’s personality is also stamped into this work of His. It says that he can make something to exist anywhere and everywhere in any condition and environment. And animals in general can reveal his personality in how they live or in what they do.

The cat she feels so alone

The cat she feels so alone
It’s chilling right down to the bone
How she takes it out on me
My heart, my liver, my sea

The cat she feels so alone
It’s chilling right down to the bone
She can stop time with her eyes
and leave toothmark cuts in lies

The cat she feels so alone
It’s chilling, it chills to the bone
To see her enter the moon
And return like a big baboon

The cat she feels so alone
the chills are scratching my bone
how an animal wants to be in charge
listening to the beating of my heart

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