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What joy! You’re here!
Town or country,
In a park, or a lift,
On a train if I’m lucky,
In my bed, near the witching hour.
Your voice!
Always available
At the ‘press and hold’ of a button.
Your message – now old –
Speaks of arrangements, long passed.
You laugh.
I know every intonation
By heart,
But I smile nonetheless,
Waiting for the ending: your
Signature sign-off
Voice like a six-year-old boy’s
Uncertain and high-pitched
For an audience of one.
Words blend together and
Reach the one I like best:
‘Bye!’

investing in obscurity?

Life's too short to invest in obscurity - words with no meanings, actions with a plethora of possible interpretations... I posess neither the patience nor the inclination to interpret thoughts projected through confusing eyes, words half-uttered, gestures multi-layered with a thousand meanings. Tell me the truth and I'll reach into my soul and give you a slice of it. For posterity.

Tar

This morning I awoke to the (rather unfamiliar) smell of tar. Yes, tar. You read correctly. Tar is rat backwards, and to be honest I'd rather wake up to the smell of tar than to the sight of a rat. But anyway, this morning. The council have taken the charitable decision to spend our outrageously high council tax on the painfully boring task of resurfacing the road outside my flat. Ok, roads do need resurfacing ocassionally, but as I don't drive and am perfectly happy on my bike even on the bumpiest gravel track, I'm a bit put out. Humph. I'd rather have the rubbish collected more often, or the park cleared of graffiti and syringes so that local children can play without reading rude words or stabbing themselves. Maybe I'm just a romantic. For now though, the whole flat smells of tar. Lovely.

the sky tonight

It's early evening on the day before the clocks go forward and the air is warm. I'm a little too cosy in my three layers - t-shirt, jumper, cardigan - but not cosy enough to peel any of them off my weary frame. It's Good Friday and I'm exhausted, and to add to the dull confusion surrounding my skull, the sky isn't real, I mean it doesn't look real. Don't get me wrong, it's the sky alright - I'm not upside down, or looking at a pair of pale blue curtains or a movie screen instead - it just looks wrong, erroneous. The clouds seem to belong to an Italian Renaissance painting. I'm looking for cupid and smug cherubs.
This obsessing about the space above our heads began when I glimpsed a poster earlier today (not that much earlier, I only got up at 2pm). A haze of lilac (my least favourite colour), peach, white and cornflower blue disected - not quite in the middle - by three words. At least I think they're words. My eyes are tired, contact lenses suctioned onto each eyeball like it's a life raft and they're heading for some undefined rapids. Anyway, I digress. I peer closer and a small child thinks I'm staring at him, oh yeah, I've seen this before: "TURNER, WHISTLER, MONET". Hmmm. I realise that part of the image on the painting is supposed to be London sky... I don't believe it. I know there was more polution in those days, but I can't translate the dappled lilac and peach palamino pattern into the sky I see every day whilst cycling through the city. That's what got me looking today. And you know what? The sky really IS like the poster. I'm indignant. Ashamed. I've lived in this city for years and until today I never really saw the sky for what it is. I was only looking. Terrible.

Did you ever eat the marmalade?

Did you ever eat the marmalade?
A thousand pieces of my self sealed inside a recycled jar
Each sliver of zest a slice of my affection
Irrevocably preserved, pectin-set.
The jar with its red lid, given to you in faith,
A peace offering, a gift
Forever unasked for, received with an open heart.
You smiled.Bashful, amused at the apparition –
Ebony ‘80s curls, aqua MAC eyelids, and
Preserves – in one tidy package.
You couldn’t work me out.
But tell me one thing –Did you ever eat the marmalade?

you hugged me

You hugged me at the tube station, pressed your lips against my right cheek and held me there for an in-between amount of time – neither short and casual, nor lingering and profound. We part and I look into your face with my confused eyes. All at once I want to run. I want to unvelcro myself from your presence and not look back as I sprint, breathless, down the Westbound platform. All at once I need you to remain. I need to hold my gaze firmly on your face, take hold of your left hand and entwine my fingers in yours and squeeze. No dialogue. No jinxed words. Just a touch. You can say more in one hand gesture than in an entire novel. I do none of these things. Instead I bow to convention, legs and hands immobile as the Northern line. My hair lifts up from the bottom of my skull and I feel the rush of air chasing down the platform. The squeaking of mouse on metal and a rumbling. Vibration tickling my feet like a foot spa.
‘I’m going to run to get this train,’ I say.
You nod. I turn and walk towards the irony that is loneliness on an overcrowded train.
I don’t look back.
Instead I hold onto the roof strap, and bite my lip like my great aunt Maggie drinks tea, steadily.

latté

I taste the latté in the earthenware cup in front of me and realise, to my amusement, that I’ve inadvertently ordered regular instead of small. No big deal, but there will soon be two shots of espresso rushing into my bloodstream. For someone with a dairy intolerance who gave up caffeine four years ago, it’s the equivalent of Russian roulette with my insides. I try to put the thought out of my head and break off a piece of concrete biscotti. The combination of sweet almonds and bitter coffee is almost too much to take. I shouldn’t have come back here, to our café, so soon... Mario had been pleased to see me, leaning over the counter to kiss my china-doll cheek. He said I looked good, and I feigned a smile, grateful for his lie but fading under the spotlight of his attention. I wondered how he knew, perhaps one of the regulars, or Marina the Saturday girl who knows my neighbours, or he might have seen the story about the accident in the newspaper.

[this is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on about a girl whose boyfriend has died two months before - watch this space!]

can't get you out of my head

I’m listening to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, headphones clamped over my ears in defiance of the chattering worker-bees in the office. ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ is supposed to be helping me to concentrate, but have you ever tried to work when a 80s duet are declaring their undying love for each other in the centre of your skull? I can’t get you both out of my head… Maybe that’s the idea.

poetry

I think all this writing poetry might send me slightly bonkers. So I'm going to ration myself as of today...

my jigsaw-piece life [draft - to be reviewed!]

Come flirt with my jigsaw-piece life.
Ignore the ragged sides, the coffee stains
Edges soggy from a toddler’s mouth
I’ve been trodden on, lost
Down the back of a sofa,
Under a bookshelf,
Sucked down the hoover pipe – fopp!
Chewed by a dog named Charlie.

Come dance with my jigsaw-piece life.
Admire the solid board of
The flat base, smooth and steady,
It’s been relied on, found
Comforting a heartbroken friend,
Holding the fort
For many a crisis – help!
I’ll let you hide in this soft embrace.

Come fit with my jigsaw-piece life.
Match up with the soggy edges, the solid foundation,
Gaze on the mottled colours.
Slot your cardboard edges into mine –
We don’t quite match up,
But the dog and the sofa, the forts we’ve held
Have softened our edges.
We’ll match up soon enough.

Tana

Your ballerina eyes - blue
Except for a tiny horse-chestnut speck under each pupil
Speckles on a duck egg
Focus point for truth -
Meet mine.

Light emanates
From your twilight visage.
Cheeks ever-so-slightly tinged with
Russian pointe-shoe pink –
Gracing your poised exterior,
Full of beauty and truth.

Your presence a poultice, a sticking plaster for pain.
You walk through this snowy February afternoon
Unaware that as you go, you scatter warmth.
The snow melts on your cheeks.
Each flake unique as the purpose in each step.
We part,
And I turn to watch as you dart homeward,
You glance over your shoulder and your eyes are shining
Free, now.

i felt sick on the train

I felt sick on the train
Again
Today.
Nausea creeping up past my diaphragm
Choking my view of a borrowed Metro.

Why on the train?
Why
Not
While breathing, eating, sleeping, speaking
On the incessant ‘phone?

Full fathom five
My theory lies
In a suspicion (held for years)
That only when I’m truly alone –
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough” –
Does reality jolt
Squarely
Home.