Driving

We used to go for drives in his car.
Driving for the sake of driving.
Just me, him, and music.
Miles and miles of full circles
leading us back to the start.

I remember the electricity of his hand on my leg.
The shiver of my arm slipped through his.
Nervous, comfortable, impatient.
Neon arrows guided us.
While sinking suns warmed our windows.
Words were sparse.
I was learning about his silence.

These days his car is my car.
We've traded speed for safety.
These days we have two precious passengers.
But sometimes, when it's dark inside,
too dark to see their sleeping, silent, shapes.
Sometimes, I look at the side of his face,
quiet, intense,
and we're us again.
Just me, him, and music.

Made of bricks

I'll miss the trains, 

the sprint to catch a glimpse 

of steam and steel just yards away. 

I'll miss the gnarly tree I see 

each morning when I wake, 

home to the crows. 

I'll miss the rain,

drumming on your roof light 

in the dead of night. 

I'll miss the birds in your bush,

the bees in your shed,

the two red trees. 

But now our size has doubled. 

We're bursting through your seams. 

We've crammed your cupboards,

filled your floors,

and still there's more. 

You've heard us talk

and so you know,

the time has come

to go. 

It makes me sad to think

they won't remember you;

their first home made of bricks. 

They've slept in every room of yours 

and laughed and cried. 

Their eyes first widened to the light

you let inside. 

And every night we carried them

up your creaky stairs to bed,

then tried to creep back down. 

When they're grown

we'll show them pictures of you,

the windows they first looked out,

the garden where they touched the plants

and the tree their daddy painted on

your wall to shelter them. 

It's hard to leave.

Each room a memory. 

A place we rested, healed and grew. 

But we'll take our pictures down

and pack our objects up

and take them somewhere new. 

And we'll have bigger rooms

and walls and windows

and there'll still be trees and rain. 

I'll miss the trains. 

Nap time

While the babies sleep. 

Tea, chocolate, notebook, pencil. 

Birthing new babies. 

Fixer

I found him in the garage
on a Sunday afternoon,
hands calloused, covered with oil,
copper grease, dirt.
He was hunched over an engine,
staring intently at valves, pistons,
assessing which part had gone wrong,
made it stop.

He's a fixer,
always repairing the broken things
that surround him,
trying to make them work.

I lay my head on his chest
and listen.
Deep inside, the clock ticks,
slow and strong.
I hear each second disappear
as we lie in the half-light
of another rainy day.
It never rains but it pours,
hits the windows,
floods the garden,
wets us through.

There are parts inside me
he cannot fix.
So he holds my hand
and he tells me
I'm not really broken.

Sacred Spirit

'I know a song that stops the rain'
she told him.
He smiled.
But she played it anyway,
stared into the water as it fell
in pools of grey that puddled round the door.

As the drums beat down
the deluge waned,
the birds and blue appeared again.
And the rain ended
before the song.

Make do and mend

Those were the darkest days. 
When love so long rationed, was coldly cast off, thrown away.

But she found him, falling apart,
and she loved his broken pieces,
and he saw her unravelling heart,
and he told her it was perfect.

And they wondered if two friends,
could make do and mend,
stitch back together,
make new again,
their worn out old lives.

So he caught her, coming undone,
tried to fix her fraying edges.
And she scrubbed his threadbare eyes, wiped the stains away,
made them bright enough to light their darkest days.

And they make do and mend,
stitch back together,
make new again,
their worn out old lives.

There’s something in the trees

There’s something in the trees,
that makes us whole again,
that makes us one again,
that makes us,
stop.

There’s something in the trees,
that moves my soul again,
that wakes the words inside
I thought I’d lost.

For I must cease my chatter
in the hush of ancient woods.
There’s no place here for noisy minds.
And as he holds my hand and
leads me further in,
I feel it fall,
I leave it all behind.

We pick our path through twisted roots
in shade that shelters us from more than sun.
And something in the breeze, the leaves, the fragrant air,
dispels the heaviness we carried here,
our chains undone.

There's something in the trees,
that makes things right again,
that makes me write again.

I trail my branches through the soil.
I carve my heart in moss.

Ripper

He brings me wild things,
wild things with wings.
He leaps into the still and silent sky,
to murder my metaphors.

He holds them in his mouth a while,
then lays them out before me on the floor.
Death is his gift.

Yet still I hope for the things with feathers.
Still I cradle them. Their tiny hearts beat rhythms in my hand.
Still I carry them outside, and stroke their heads and place them on the ground.

With whispered apologies I retreat,
to watch them from the window,
to pray they'll fly away.
Sometimes they do.

Sometimes we bury them.
As cold and stiff as cardboard boxes.
Crosses made from twigs pushed into soil
beneath the bushes they were born in.

And I scream at him and scold him,
lock him in and shut him out,
no longer welcome on my knee, my bed, his head pushed in my palm.
And I hate him but I love him though I hate what he has done.
And before too long he's back beside me, his face against my own.
And I forgive and he forgets
and balance is restored.

Then he brings me things,
wild things with wings,
and lays them on the floor.

Flight of Birds

She suffers in sibilance, always thinking out loud.
He just wants to share a silence.
She flaps and she falls,
in a downward spiral to shame the flight of birds.
She's always longing to be heard.
Her words pour once more into the air,
unnoticed. 'Sometimes the world is a deaf machine'.

She sings in her car as she drives to work,
'I wish I knew how, it would feel, to be free,
I wish I could break, all the chains holding me'.

She stares at the sky in a momentary daze,
her head filled with aviary conversations.

Then she switches off
the engine and the music
stops.

Tanka for Japan (partially inspired by Paper Beginnings, an installation at the University of York)

Silent corridor,
one thousand birds suspended,
paper beginnings
like ours, I write my secret
wish on the wings of a crane.

Tanka for Japan (partially inspired by Flood, an installation at St Marys by Susan Stockwell)

It pours through the roof,
raging river of remnants,
cascading currents
of metal and mud, this flood
drowns all sounds, but the earth’s roar.

HOME

Home is a mug of tea warming my hands
and a radiator burning my legs, as I stare
into the black square behind the curtain.
Home is your arms around me after another long day.

Home is you and me, talking about everything and nothing
as we flick through a thousand channels on the wall
and squash up on the small, tired sofa.

Home is a cat on a windowsill.

Home is the sound of you in the kitchen, cursing and laughing,
and me in a hot bath, soaking in the sound of Nina Simone.

Home is all the things we love, wrapped up safe.
Home is not a cage.
Home is a nest.

Home is you and me, cosy, cuddling, in our comfy bed
and the silence of words that don’t need to be said,
for they’re known.

You and me,
that’s home.

Christmas Spirit

I pluck the baubles from the tree that's living in our room.
I strip away the lights and watch the gloom creep back into the corner.
I'll miss the flickering glow that lit our winter afternoons.

I wish the light could linger longer, make the magic last.
But on the sixth, tradition says, the season ends, the spirit fades,
We pack the holiday away and put it in the loft.

And under the weight of a January sky
we carry our wilted tree outside.
The ghost of Christmas, passed.

Resistance

The trees that line the twisting road, 
lean in to drop their words in bright red flurries.
Silent sentences, unheard by speeding cars.
 
I watch one almost curtsey to me,
slender limbs in silhouette.
And I forget the fifty things that filled my head,
that chased me from my Sunday bed.
 
I need this distance.
Miles of asphalt moving me away from Monday.
Driving far enough to hide me from the glare
of screens and stares and acronyms.
Out here I can resist the grip of blackest boredom
burrowing through my brain to leave me numb.
 
I photograph each precious moment,
trees and sea and sky and him.
And when I must return to that dark shadow of existence,
I keep the pictures near enough to glimpse,
my bliss, my hope, my small resistance.
 

Look at me (Stockton Stigma Stories-Mind Me Project)

Look at him.

He sings in the street like the world is his stage and

his life is an opera.  Arms outstretched, head held high,

Pavarotti of the pedestrians.

It’s summertime and the living is easy.

Does he notice them laughing and shaking their heads?

Does her hear their cruel whispers?  She does.

She clings to him, guiding him forward.

He turns to her.  Have I told you lately that I love you?

They walk together through the ruins,

peering into rooms they cannot reach.

Touchstones crumble as they reminisce

in this, the house of the cosmic joker

who changed the rules and left him with

a thousand books he cannot read,

a million words he cannot write.

He paints instead, the colours of his mind,

the memories left behind,

and shouts across the vast North Sea,

look at me.

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman (Stockton Stigma Stories-Mind Me project)

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.

She sings the song as she scatters the flour

and traces the name her family gave her.

Words in white dust,

misery guts.

She kneads this therapy.

She bakes, and takes her gifts

to those who understand,

her group, her new-found family.

It’s here she laughs, and shares her stories

paints the pain away.

But when the door and curtains close,

she’s locked with loneliness inside,

abandoned with her memories.

She passes time with poetry

and picnics knitted just for bears.

She turns her music up and sings,

sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.

If all the world's a stage (Stockton Stigma Stories - Mind Me Project)

If all the world's a stage,

she'd rather stay behind the scenes.

She'd paint the sky with birds

and prompt the actors with

the words she dare not speak.

She'd rather watch from velvet seats

with chocolate treats,

all cosy in the dark,

invisible to eyes too blinded by the lights.

And at the end, the final act,

she'd hurry back to friends,

and tell them of the drama, romance, songs,

somewhere that's safe, and she belongs.

Stockton Stigma Stories

I was lucky enough to work with some truly inspiring people last week. 
Here's a link to the work I did with them.  
http://stocktonmindme.blogspot.com/

Snakes and Ladders

I trip,
and slip down secret snakes,
that wait for me
to miss a step,
to fall.

I lose my grip,
on scales as smooth as silver tongues,
that spit me out,
undone,
square one.

But when in hell, as Winston says,
you keep on going,
never knowing where each fateful step will lead.

And so I carry on, across the board,
ignored by ladder climbers, clutching, grabbing,
pushing, to the top.
I quietly endure the little boxes,
fingers crossed for lucky numbers
to release me from this trap.

And as I wait my turn,
I scrawl my words on empty spaces,
trying hard to find the meaning
in this place of fate and chance.

While I wander, wondering why and when,
I hear the serpents hiss again and
soon I’m sliding,
right back to the start.

 It always ends with this beginning.
Not quite losing, not quite winning.
Being a good girl makes no difference
in a game where chaos rules.

Guess I’ll face it with a grin, never giving in.
I close my eyes
and shake it twice.
I roll the dice.

It was a slow day down by the river

It was a slow day,
down by the river.
Slow was her only pace.
The sun warmed her face
and the top of her head
as she read back old poems
and hoped the words might tempt her muse.

She listened to birds
and watched wind blow through trees
as mothers rushed ducklings downstream.
Dog walkers passed her
and insects encroached
and old people stood on the bridge
staring silently, down.

She'd never stood still here before,
never paused to watch everything else move instead,
the shaking of jade blades,
the swaying of nettles,
the kaleidoscope rippling beside her,
and the rustling of white paper pages
that urged her to write something wonderful,
now.



and another attempt...


It was a slow day.
Down by the river he walked with his dog and his anger unleashed.
Two black beasts surged ahead.
His eyes didn't see the sun slowly setting.
His ears didn't hear the silence of dusk.
His skin didn't feel the stillness surround him.
Yet somehow they soothed him.
By the river's edge, he turned back.
One shadow rushed to his side,
the other dissolved in the dark.