Poetry

Women of the night

 

We are women of the night

We sleep on a bed of nails

So we might feel something more than the dull ache in our chests

That turns, after hours of tossing

To numbness.

We are orphans of slumber

Chasing dreams behind our REMs

So our lives might be more than the endless repetition

Of longing.

 

 

Inheritance

 

Bed hair- more Yahoo Serious than Medussa

Looks back at me from the bathroom mirror

Normal for this hour

Spiked with not-so-normal dreams

It can wait till the coffee grounds

Switch the light on inside my head.

 

The long filament of my neck

Coils out from the pock-marked glass

The remembrance of frozen cream,

Petrified on the top of the milk cans

On the icy doorsteps of my childhood.

 

Inside me a feel a giggle rising

I want to run to the sandbox and play –

After another caffeine hit

After I knead the sinews in my shoulders

And stretch them out again

They used to snap in and out like rubber bands

Like day old chewing gum

 

 

Gummy-eyed in front of the glass

I run my finger along my jaw and under my chin

It feels like junket

But I see it’s composed of steel

Set and determined

I am a strong-willed youth.

 

I want to backpack across Europe

Guitar slung gung-ho over my right shoulder

Don’t mess with me

You’ll see what eighties girls are really made of

When I’ve taken my pills

I’ll put on my sneakers

And hike

 

Patting the bedside table

Sliding my fingers along the kitchen benches

I locate my glasses

Put them on

Look again in the bathroom mirror

seeing my true inheritance

 

I am an old woman

Lined

Jelly-like

Wobbling under the weight of morning

For a moment I’m sad

Defeated

Till I remember there are other things I’ve inherited

More important things

Things that last;

Grow stronger with the years

And I stride out of the house

Strong again

To meet the day head-on

 

I Knew You

 

Come take a walk with me and I will show you where I AM.

Listen.

Feel the beat of the earth – the insect thrum; the rush of the rivers;

The wind stirring the trees; a steady, slow beat,

Then faster in the storm. Can you hear it?

It is my heartbeat.

 

I remember when I carried my burden to Golgotha

And you wiped the blood and sweat from my eyes.

I could not see you, blinded by pain,

But I knew it was you.

And once in better times you bent to kiss my feet

And dry them with your hair.

In your humility you hid your face but I knew your name.

And I know it was you at the foot of my cross;

I heard you crying.

 

I see you on your knees in the dirt, your back breaking,

Your body clothed in pain.

I am whispering in your ear – can you hear me?

Do you not think I will recognize you when you cry out my name?

Do you not think I will be there to carry you home?

 

 

 

When I was young, around 25, I lost a baby. Its father didn’t want to know…I wrote this.

 

The Cost of Living

 

What price? What more can it take?

A dead child

Now the father lost?

What price more?

My heart sweats – my pores drip scarlet

I am not harlot, no whore,

I am innocent.

 

Your gall, my bile

They mix – you smile,

I pale in pain

Your punishment dealt

To render mute my needs, my senses.

You sentence me –

For cruelty handed out by other loves

But dealt no more. Not by me.

You go in peace.

I pay, you see.

 

 

Tomorrow I went to the park

 

A week ago I went to the park in a pink and grey checked dress

The one with built in bloomers (fancy that)

My parents took photos – knock-knees and chubby feet, kicking up the sand

Sometimes we watch them on the slide projector

Me, high on a swing, pleated skirt billowing out

And those knickers! It’s my favourite dress

And nearly as good as the slate my uncles gave me for Christmas

But I couldn’t write yet…not last week

I was too little

 

Yesterday I went to the park again – with two small girl-children

One a short, dark thing – with a round, padded bottom

The other fair and long, just starting school

They can write, that pair, both published in their teens – so clever

I wonder what happened to them?

Perhaps I left them at the park yesterday

I’ll ask those bossy women who come to fix up the house

They like a chat – one fair, one dark

They’ll know where the children are

 

They might have got impatient with me

I was always learning how to write – always

But there was never time

Their father got sick of it then, me in my books, learning,

So he left me to it

All in a flash…just like that

Leaving me with smudged books and a decade of tears

I stopped writing then

I had no heart for it

 

And then there was that beautiful young man –

With the lucky gap between his two front teeth –

Who always wanted to kiss me; very odd

He gave me more children I think; I don’t know how we did it

He might have married me once…perhaps that was it.

Did he take them to the park without me?

He shouldn’t have – but I don’t remember…

I only remember tomorrow.