i am sick :-(

I am stuck halfway between two foreign countries... Sickness and Health. Had I a choice, I would happily inhabit the latter, gladly hand over my passport to be stamped, allow retinas to be scanned, fingerprints recorded. Í´m almost there, had my bags checked in, boarding card issued, obligatory cup of pre-flight coffee drunk, but every time I look up the flight has been delayed... Here I remain, in no man´s land.

deadness

This dead feeling inside me feels like a fold of muscle, which has been denied oxygen, starved of life and medicine. It hurts, enough to never quite let me forget its presence. I open the fold, reach inside the grieving flesh and place a pile of the dead sinew into outstretched palms. The owner of the hands is unsure what to do with the paling matter now dripping through fingers... There's no understanding, so the palms turn away, slide the pain onto the tarmac and wipe hands on crisp azure denim. The two trunks of blueness walk away, and I remain, insides pouring out from the dead place.

Chess chastised

I’m perched at a table in a café. The location is unimportant – you can imagine the scene. You’ve probably been there. It’s one of those buildings with a mezzanine floor, half hanging off the wall, fulfilling its peculiar destiny of providing a few extra tables, and luckily for me, a perfect vantage point from which to observe the busyness beneath. As I climbed up the stairs, eyeing up a small table with two chairs near the edge of the mezzanine, I had seen two men playing chess. I’m immediately reminded of Central Park on a warm summer’s evening, where old men play giant chess making the most of the cool air and the fading evening light. It’s not that warm here yet, I’m still wearing socks in bed, (though poor circulation runs in my family).

Once I’m seated in the chair, bike helmet ensconced in my lap, I look down towards the hub of movement and laughter and see smoke floating upwards to meet my face. I study the chess players… slowly they begin to hold a quiet fascination for me. They have what appears to be a cloth board filling most of the table and real wooden pieces. They look serious, a wooden timing clock frames the edge of the table precariously resting on its edge. The guy with his back to me is holding a small wooden piece in his hands, twisting it around in concentration. They move quickly, hitting the gold buttons on the timer without moving their gaze from the game. They don’t speak, it seems, but there’s an obvious rapport – a respect perhaps – between them. One man, facing me, is old, about 70 I’d say, though these days it’s getting harder to tell. He’s completely bald and wears gold Raybans with brown tinted lenses. He wouldn’t look out of place on a used car lot in the East End. His partner is younger (I can’t tell exactly as I can’t see his face from where I’m sitting), black and well-dressed in a blue shirt and dark grey suit jacket. I wonder how they met and if they have anything in common apart from the movement of carved wood on the chequered board.
---
I return to my newspaper and read about nothingness and debt and stabbings and blandness and ranting and the foreign secretary and trade and a lowcost airline going bust and I realise I’m afraid of the game ending in case they leave. I feel safe whilst they are playing out their Friday evening in the café. As for me, there’s no game in front of me, obscuring my vision, taking my attention, just cheap paper and coloured ink.

words

Words are powerful, yet they are dust. They mean everything and nothing. Binaries pervade. Writers write what other people think. The words don’t need anything from you, not even a reaction. They aren’t me, nor are they you.

Forever - Always - Everywhere

Remember truth,
She sits quietly, forever, always, everywhere, involved.
Remember her,
Not in half-measures, stories engineered with convenient falsity.
Remember truth,
And see love, friendship, honour and trust grow.
Remember her
With words meant with love, not mere self-protection.
Remember truth,
Welcome her quietly, forever, always, everywhere, involved.

Dark green ink

The pen in my hand is my entertainment. Creamy coloured sketchbook paper and dark green ink. The pen in my hand is my entertainment, a very small window into my soul, perhaps not even a window, more like a crack of light sneaking under a door polluting the ebony night. It’s now that I leave you. It’s unfair, I know, I’ve begun a story and you’re hungry for the end, intrigue has tickled your imagination and you’re slowly falling into the letters on the page, they’ve wrapped themselves around your thoughts. I’m sorry. I can’t be your muse, not today, not here.

Untitled

A friend told me recently that he tries not to spend too much time at his parents’ house because he finds it depressing. I agreed, out of gut reaction, and for a moment we shared a thin corridor in conscious thought. There’s a pause and we move on, chit-chatting about matters more pressing. On the tube on the way home, I sieve the day’s conversation through my mind, deciding what I deem profound, or funny, or beautiful enough to retain, the rest is headed for obscurity. I ponder his earlier statement and question why I agreed so easily… I sit for two stops, newspaper in hand going unread, and let my thoughts trickle through my consciousness. My parents love each other. They have friends and dinners out. Hobbies and foreign holidays. They eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and three bottles of red a week. They have no debts and a car each.;They love my sister and I like we’re newborn. So, I conclude at Gloucester Road, what’s so depressing about that?

Impact

You saw me,
And smiled.
I caught
Your gaze, and
Our lives
Collied -
For a moment.
Mine was moving
Faster.
The impact slammed
Into my chest.
You, stock-still
Were quieter.
Our carriages
Didn't quite
Fit together.
Not yet.
Not this time. And
We part, graciously
And smooth.
I look down and see
Flecks of your paintwork
Gracing my facade.
I raise my head, and
You are gone.
I pause, silently,
And walk on,
Into the day.

Untitled

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.