Follow me follow me! Oh! Oh! Follow me!

... to my new blog!

www.just-somestuff.blogspot.com

I've decided to ditch the year-by-year format, and just try and commit to something more steadfast. Please join me! I'll stop messing you all around then, I promise!

Thanks xx

Proof. And an incurable knitting fever.

I have been being creative, though it hasn't involved much poetry. Maybe I am exploring knitting as a sort of poetry with objects. Very long, thin and flexible objects.

One in a month

is an unacceptable situation to have gotten myself into. Shucks.

I have learned to knit. I have been poorly. I miss swimming. My lungs still hurt if I cycle uphill in the chill nearly-winter wind.

A new poem, unrelated:



Spurn Head

The whip of dune grasses and cuts on the soles of my feet.
It alters, chances the river that feeds it. I race
to the tops and bottoms of dunes that no longer exist.

It is downwards that haunts me, giant slow-beat strides
in the shifting sand. My legs are salt-numbed and hefty; load-bearing
and practical, covered to the knee with every step.

I don’t remember the disappointment, the slowing down,
but lose myself in the towering impermanence
risen from the shining dark. Salt in my hair, cool sand between my toes.

I will return with you to this end of the end of the road
and lie myself down, my hair in my mouth and then your mouth there
with the wind whipping dune grass on us from the folding sands.

I will not tell you that there is permanence in its alteration,
that this is all I have dreamed of whether you are here or not:
that you could be anyone with sour-breath kisses in the dark.

Something new! Callooh! Callay!

Job’s worth

Occasional birds flash across the sterile white-out sky
and snap my eyes across the high-set windows.
This room is monotony too: rows of labelled content
and blank goggles reflecting strip-light white.
A clatter, and some sudden words—nothing we can look back on
from outside time. My memories are like the distant windows:
so far above the day-to-day that they seem experimental, avant-garde.
I remember days like these flayed bodies in exacting standards of sterility.
I am stripped back to colour and unapologetic.
I had thought perhaps I wanted the change of discovery,
but find myself missing the comfort of endless scrutiny.
There are no right-angles I can lean on now,
only dreams of white-walled rooms and so many little pieces
of thought, gathered in a bleak and chemical silence.

Another one I found that I'd forgotten..

The Inherited

Generations have died before they've had a chance
to tell me how I'll go. One sudden death after another.
How do I prepare? Perhaps they are themselves
the indication and I'll just go like they did: in the morning
unable to sit up for fear of pooling blood; in hospital,
a pink swab mopping saliva from sunken parts of face;
eight weeks from diagnosis.

I could carry round whole heaps of hows to stop it, but slings
and plasters are no prevention. Every pain I have could be
where things will loosen first, every limp and yawn
a last hurrah, a sign of things to come.

I am not calm, but my oblivious heart is tapping out the truth
on my love-torn ribs: b-bum, b-bum, b-bum—
I think hear correctly: all is well yet, all is well.

I just found this on my computer at work.

The blue and yellow roller-boots handed down to me from the 70s

I was in mid-air when I noticed the blackbird nest:
I soon felt the snap of flightlessness in my coccyx.

The cats would wait here at the bottom every summer,
tasting imaginary bones, re-enacting the catch

while the parents bred and fed like crazy
their fat, stranded children.

It's been a little while.

And in that time I have been on holiday. Also, a moth came to visit me that was as big as my palm. I'm not sure where it's gone now, but hopefully out and toward the real moon, wherever that leads, as my big broken paper lantern (as it just learned) is not the same thing and leads only to trouble. And a headache.

And so for a photo, first, and then maybe a poem later.

My hips are sore.

I have no cure, only stretching. And I have no particular reason except over-use. And I have no way to avoid over-use that doesn't involve sitting down for long, boring, periods of time. And I hope they feel better in the morning without me having to do anything about it.

And now, a poem.

This is the story of an urbanite

or so you say in that way you have
when it gets to that point in wine-consumption
that ignites a passion for the centre-stage.
Under the soft-focus light of an audience

I am nothing but polite.
You turn your gaze towards me,
indicate an appetite for a tale
revealing nothing but a crucial oversight. But we are not there yet.

The streetlights still orange the windows
and you have given nothing of me away.
I smile, wait
for the rest of the story to latch onto me like a parasite,

close my eyes. This is the story
of an urbanite, you start again, and her search
for a way to begin.

Science. Poetry.

I am not necessarily pleased with how my brain keeps these seemingly disparate subjects in different segments of itself that prefer to be cordoned off and virtually unaware of each other. I'm trying to get one side waving. I'm not sure which side has the longest arms.


Stem Cell Therapy Symposium, I


Trickery. Trickery and fiddling.
This is, we are told, the only way to heal the heart.

My heart overhears and it does not like this fact,
quotes back some facts that seem to offer counter-argument.

I tell it that its research is out of date, that it’s alone,
but console it with lies and emotion, hold it steady

from its fluttering. Do not falter, I tell it, just because of this.
And anyway, I say, breaking is a state of mind. Mostly.

I have been re-writing toads. So here it is again.

It's probably not that different now I think about it, but it's closer to how it was supposed to be when I got it down the first time.


Toads

At the thought of each toad, a shudder, and I
have my ears covered as the car pulls off.

My dad and I pick our way for the last three hundred metres
in the pitchest night through the slap-slap

of toad bellies on concrete. There is a flash of carcasses
with every sweep of torch, so it's turned off

and we are straining our eyes with our heads bent low,
afraid for our own weight on soft bodies.

The black closes in, so much so that it’s hard to imagine
a receding fear amidst the croaking and my hand

in my Dad’s hand. The search for the ground is pointless so
I close my eyes against the nature of the dark.

I'm really quite sad about not being able to see foliage any more.

I don't remember being consulted. And now I won't know which skirt to wear because there's nothing I can see that will indicate how windy it is in the morning.


In memory of the only tree I could see from my bedroom window.

Forgive me, but I am thinking of you again.
They were chopping down the tree in your old front garden
when I woke up this morning. The unknown bird
I hear sometimes will have no place to hide and sing.

I Googled you today; your online presence only lists
you at your old address, your other name that rare occurence
of ‘no results’ – you are lost. I watched the tree come down
in pieces and exclaimed to you, though I have no reason

to believe you care for birds. I will try just your first name,
maybe, and see where in the world you have flown.
I used to treasure my space in your life, the one last connection
to the past. But I understand, this is what makes me unknowable now.

The tree is gone and I am home, the bird unsteady somewhere and in flight.
If only I could put it back, crack trunk and green from air.
As it is, I am only waiting to happen across you – perhaps
face to face in some tree-lined avenue we don’t consider home.

..and another.

Lengths

I am underdog despite my 43 lengths
so far this morning and it seems my age
is holding me back. I cannot keep a straight line to myself

and no allowances are made for any mis-timing.
The only place I am alone is when I brave the front-crawler
whose arms boom at different pitches to each other

with every steady stroke. His journey is the bass-line of our orchestra,
straight and uncomfortable. The beats pound my heart
and I earn my first looks of acknowledgement

though it is hard to catch them with eyes
stinging from the backsplash.

Ok, so it's been longer.. but I've been writing new ones!

Toads

At the thought of each toad, a shudder, and I
have my ears covered as the car pulls off.

My dad and I pick our way, for fun,
in the pitchest night through the slap-slap

of toad bellies on concrete, their high-pitched
rumbles. I don’t picture a torch,

but I do remember the flash of carcass
in the passing of our own car ahead. The black

closed in, so much that it’s hard to imagine
the receding fear amidst the croaking and my hand

in my Dad’s hand and yes, I remember now,
my eyes closed against the nature of the dark.

That gap was too large, yes indeed. Won't happen again!

In the morning

I remember sneaking in at 5am
and hours on my feet replayed through my soles
with every beat of aching blood.

I remember how you slipped, gentle from sleep
and rubbed the life away back into them
with cooling hands, perched

at the end of the bed. My secret tears
faded to sleep except for the crystals

now I wake. And my feet, oh my feet,
on pillows; your head on the bed.

Let me know what you think of this one, if you're reading...

Be honest now!



At the sink, with La Traviata on the radio

The ink suspended mid-thought, dried
in the trappings of nib and well, succumbs

to gentle swooshing in hand-warm water
where she bathed me once too, small as I was then.

She stands for this uncommon ritual.
It will take as long as opera for the colours to loosen,

for the sink to deepen to lichen green or summer blue.
Only the red stains her wrinkling palms

as the stubborn brown gives way to her patient hands rocking
back and forth in a humming of arias.

A week's gone by so quickly, and this one is fast slipping too.

Resting your eyes

There was something about the way you were sitting,
startled, which made me ask. You told me your eyes
were closed as a sort of compromise
for the time its possible to waste in front of the TV,

wearing your eyes out needlessly, shortening their life.
I didn't ask, then, any more of your explanation
but often wonder if it works for other things.
Sometimes I stop myself from seeing you at all

in case what we have runs out. Other times I catch you
blinking back the sight of characters who've aged unrecognisably.

Mostly, though, I watch your closed-eyes vigil with my own eyes
open, wearing them out on you and your quiet, secret, snoozing.

A new one. And a nightmare in html.

Swimming

A polar bear pushes off with its left back foot
its fur a waving forest in the flow. It stands up,
shakes the wet from its ears,    walks back.

A pygmy marmoset is frightened
by the size of our faces; tries to feed while we peer
at its exquisite flash of tongue; plays hide and
hide with a quizzical look we treasure for days.

An oilslick raven buries twigs under dinosaur feet,
its beak a delicate tool in sand. The sun is out. Tapirs
surprise us with their heft on straw. The polar bear

   pushes off with its left back foot, its fur a waving forest in the flow.
It stands up, shakes the wet from its ears,     walks back.

A leopard looks straight at me through glass,
rubs its fur against the window pacing paw-shaped grooves
we do not notice for the speed at which it moves.

A raven, oilslick black against the sky, perches
watching twigs disappearing under sand.

             River hog bristles are still
                                           in hot air.

The polar bear pushes off with
its left back foot, its fur a waving forest
        in the flow                                              It stands up, shakes
the wet from its ears,
                                walks back.

Welcome back to the Black Clock Arms; every pub you've ever avoided.

The Black Clock Arms

IV. Babs

She knows she's only there as the inevitable
namesake but revels in attention lavished

on her by rough old queens. It's all natural,
duckie! rings sharp through karaoke notes.

She flashes her puce nails; works there
on the basis that she only pulls pints;

is wary of newcomers, who see through rouge
with clarity not befitting dim strip-lighting; prefers

the company of regular strangers, who don't see
her face, but never fail to compliment her nails.

The Black Clock Arms

III. Geoff

Geoff's shined velvet seat, black with polished dirt,
cools in the almost-night Black Clock Arms.
He'd lost touch with the flesh of himself until it started to brown.

He sits several feet from the people he recognises
but can't place the names of out here; their stories fade
in the light. His pint and his arse reach a unison of temperature:

one warming on the bar, the other cooling on a bollard,
while he realises how little he cares about the barstool
now the only place to chain smoke is here.

The only thing missing is a place for the smaller papers, spread
open and every sentence read and repeated over again
to kill the time he has more of, now, to himself.

I shall be starting yoga again very soon, so this is apt.

To be still.

Grandstanding with my knees on my elbows
and in one of my favourite outfits—a skirt
I bought two of, a black cardigan—
I am at tipping point when I come to the realisation

that it's not about strength, but balance. And here, now,
I feel a little silly for the times I've almost toppled,
straining in almost-position wearing jogging bottoms
and a Pennywise t-shirt, waiting for the muscles in my arms.

Weightlessness, like someone said, occurs
firstly in your toes. The only thing that stops me
breaking my nose is knitwear
friction on the backs of my arms.