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Even the trees

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I remember the first time I saw it. He was desperate, you could see he was desperate, that bit wasn’t unusual. It was the stomach that was odd. The branch wrapped around the middle of his body, the bulge above it, distended, hanging over it, his stomach. He was held fast, his feet long since lost and a branch loose around his neck, another coming out of his mouth, sprouting leaves. It looked like he was vomiting foliage.

You could see the desperation in his eyes. He was hungry, but the branch had grown to fill his mouth and so there was no way of feeding him. What point would feeding him serve anyway, it would it only prolong the inevitable. He was being absorbed into the tree and there was nothing that could stop it. You could see his hands had melded into the trunk and didn’t exist anymore and if you came back tomorrow, a little more of his arm would be tree.

If there was an escape, we had not found it. The trees had proven impervious to the axe, they had withstood our flames, we had even tried talking to them, just stood there opening and closing our mouth with words but there was no evidence they heard and it did not stop.

It was mostly men at first, because we needed wood and they got the wood, and the trees had always been so passive, so agreeable to what we did. Or so we thought. It was not all trees, the majority of them just stood mutely, as trees do, but these active attack timbers were new. You couldn’t tell the passive trees from the aggressive ones and worse when you cut into one that had absorbed someone, sometimes there was an outline in the tree, other times blood would pour out, or there were organs just sitting within the trunk and you would wonder if there hadn’t been some semblance of humanity left, some sentience that you had swung your axe against.

Not long after it started, it was alleged they adapted new tactics, letting themselves be cut, became the joists of some house and in the night crept down from their roof top space or their wall and took children. You simply woke up to find your child being absorbed into a beam, of course they were static, the beam couldn’t up and run away but your child was still gone. That was rumour and I never saw any evidence of it.

We were becoming a world of fewer and fewer people. There was nothing we could do, there was no cure, if anything the number of trees doing it was increasing. It was a hard thing to observe, a sort of rapid growth around someone as they went near a tree, a kind of snarling ensnarement that was strong and then a slow absorption over a period of days.

The woods were alive with the howling of victims until the inevitable branch filled the mouth, some trees seemed to revel in the idea of the screaming and the branch to fill the mouth was the last thing they did. Others seemed bothered by the noise and did it quickly.

I had a son of twelve, I did not let him go out often. The house had stood so long and I knew its beams, they would not transform in the night. Still I was careful with the wood for the fire, but I knew it is inevitable. I watched him grow, watched many die and knew the inevitable must happen. There were fewer of us and the trees were taking victims younger and younger. What to do?

Then came the day he simply did not come home and I ran to the road and searched like so many others and there he was and he was so far gone. I could not hold his hand or feed him. I could only see the terror in his eyes and stroke his arm and tell him it would soon be over. It was mercifully short.

The trees began in earnest on the women then and sometimes the animals. It was as if the trees had turned against all forms of life that moved. I had seen so much, so many suffer, I did not want to die that way. At the end I did not even think I could trust the trusses that held up my own house, I could not bring myself to light a fire out of fear. Many simply gave in, just walked up and placed themselves before a tree. It did not always work, the trees were whimsical, they knew they had won.

I could not bring myself to do that, I could not imagine how I could live through the agony of absorption, the slow solidification of my body into something firm and hard, the creeping stillness, the days of hunger until your blood merged into sap, your final taste just wood and leaves, the joy of sound silenced by a think branch on your tongue. I knew I could not bear such things, feet, hands merged into trunk, limbs melted into bark, torso melded into wood, none of it worked for me.

Instead I went to the river. The river is forbidden, was forbidden once. I dipped my toes in the water. I waded out into the depths. I lay down in the water and I let the river dissolve me. I felt myself come apart, each molecule of my body drifting apart from the other, the parts that held me together overwhelmed by the sheer amount of liquid I was drowning in. I felt the water seeping into me and I felt myself merging into it. I was at peace with the world, there was nothing left of me. I became water instead of wood. I joined with the drops of the river and floated out to sea.

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An ode to my lists

Posted on by tuesdaylatte 
I sometimes wonder, 
In the dead of night,
If all of my to-do lists,
Don't up and come to life.?

Do they dance around,
around my sleeping head?
Competing for attention,
All wanting to be read.

Do they talk amongst themselves,
Whilst I lie asleep?
Do they decry my lack of action,
my lack of progress, do they weep?

Do they wonder what might happen,
When each item is crossed off?
Do they know that never happens,
All written by the queen of sloth.

Do they wait patiently for New Year?
For a sense of a start anew,
Does one of them run a betting shop,
taking bets on what I'll do?

Do they fight to be the top list,
The one I'm currently adding to?
Or is it safer at the bottom,
where they know they'll never move?

I should stop making lists at all.
I should sort out my life.
But now I'm really worried,
That I'd be condemning them to die.

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Hover

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The hand hovers there in the darkness above me. Not just once, but all night. I pretend to sleep but I’m awake. Every time I open my eyes, its there. I know what its waiting for, its waiting for me to reach out. I am not going to reach out.

Its there every night, not above my face but close to my arm, where my fingers could easily reach up and grab on. What does it want? Its just an inch above me. Hovering. In the darkness, just a hand and nothing else. There’s no arm, it ends as the palm reaches the wrist.

Its luminous, I can see through it without really seeing inside it. Its long fingers stretching towards me in the darkness as if it can’t quite reach me. I think it could reach me really, but its waiting for me to choose. But what will happen if I touch that hand, if I reach out and clasp it? It looks as if I could move my hand through it. What if I slap it away?

I close my eyes. I open them again. Its still there. Night after night, I don’t sleep. I pretend sleep. It hovers, waiting for me. I know it wants me to reach out. Even if I snuggle right down under the covers, I know its still there. Hovering. Waiting. Sometimes I want to reach out in the darkness and touch it but I resist, I must resist. I sleep under the kitchen table after breakfast, in the daylight and it does not appear.

But the night is a wholly other matter, wherever I am in the house in the darkness, it appears. I tried leaving the lights on all night, but the switch tripped, the lights went out and there it was in front of me. Hovering, the same as always. Waiting for me, just waiting. I tried candles and I could still see it there, just at the edge of the light waiting for me. It is a thing of darkness and I cannot bring myself to touch it but I am so tired.

There is some kind of inevitability to it, it has waited so patiently. I start to feel as if it deserves it, as if I am at fault, as if I am punishing it. One night I almost give in, reach out my spindly fingers towards it in the darkness. I see it reach ever so slowly closer in response but at the last minute I pull back quickly. I curl up into a ball in the darkness. I feel guilty. When I look again, it is still there hovering. Patient. When I do that a second time, almost and then not, a third time, on the fourth time, when I look at the hand one finger is moving, tapping annoyed on a soundless invisible desk. I feel guilt, I feel like I am failing.

And then December, and suddenly it is gloved. Hovering. Gloved. And there is a hint of red reflected in the whiteness of the glove as if this might be the hand of Father Christmas. But I know it is not the hand of Father Christmas. It is December, the season to be jolly but I can’t sleep, haven’t slept, won’t sleep. And Christmas Eve is getting closer and I know its still going to be there, waiting, patient. Hovering. Because its going nowhere until I reach out and touch those fingers.

And Christmas eve arrives and I can’t focus. I sit under the kitchen table all day. I will the darkness to arrive. I accept the inevitable. I wait for the sun to sink, for the dimness of dusk before the fall of night. I don’t switch on any of the lights. I wait patiently and then there it is. I see it there in front of me, reaching out and I reach forward, out and our fingers touch, I clasp on and…

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Breathe

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I woke up, as in my eyes were open, but I was acutely aware I could not feel myself breathe. It was as if my lungs had somehow moved on, my ribs seemed to have decamped to some other part of my body I could not feel. I grabbed my phone and flicked to the meditation app. There it was, her cool calming voice giving me instruction, breathe in, breathe out. My breath though, had left me, had just gone from my body. I lay there listening to her, my hands on my unmoving chest, yes my ribs were there but they were still. I rested my hands as low as I could, I daren’t feel for the heart beat in case it was gone as well.

And she kept talking, gentle, soothing, the meditation woman telling me to take a breath in and then a long slow breath out, but how? It had all stopped working. I tried not to panic, this was meditation after all. I tried to focus but my hands were sending that signal to my brain, you aren’t breathing, the lungs are not working. There is no in and out, no up and down happening. At this point I wondered why the meditation couldn’t focus on some other bodily function, like digestion, but it did not.

I am not dead, I know I am not dead. I wiggle my toes, probably I have just forgotten, just forgotten and somewhere at the back of my brain is that thing that will kick start the whole thing again. Thank goodness I woke up, otherwise I might have actually died. Meanwhile the meditation app gave slow pointed instructions, in and out, in and out. I kept looking at my ribs, nothing. My lungs literally sat there, not bothering to inflate, like the last balloon in the packet that no one wants, probably the green one or the yellow one or the horrible pink which is too see through.

I wait patiently thinking what a waste for the meditation app. I wonder how much I am paying for this app that does not seem to be inducing my lungs to act. There is still no breath going in and out, I am panicked but without the capacity to demonstrate it. I couldn’t be less calm and all I can do is wait for that one heaving breath that indicates I am back on the planet.

And then it comes, sweet luscious air rushes in, I suck it in, my lungs finally inflate and the ribs move and my hands lift and I wonder about the delay! Who knows what would have happened if the blood I drank yesterday was not pre-oxygenated.

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Here

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Here

It’s weird how the rain falls.

Straight down out of the sky,

As if it’s too heavy for the clouds.

Which of course,

It is.

Then the wind blows across it,

Squalls it sometimes.

As if the two aren’t connected,

It’s all awry,

As if the wind is not,

Not sure quite which way to blow,

And the rain?

The rain is just annoyed,

So they dance around the place,

Like two strangers eyeing for a fight in a pub,

I can’t explain it more than that.

The rain is just different.

Like everything else.

Here.

I ask you now!

Straight up,

Is it poetry?

And the answer is?

I don’t know!

The sentences are cut,

Short, straight

There’s some punctuation,

Not much.

There is no rhyme,

It does not rhyme!

But they don’t look like me,

Or speak like me?

Or even eat what I eat,

No one thing in common.

Yet you say that they think like me.

But how do I know?

And so I ask,

Is it human?

Like me?

And then I see

The ground is wet from the rain

Like at home, it’s  just the same

Of course its poetry,

The words don’t rhyme,

but there is refrain

We each look guarded,

Suspicion in our eyes.

We each have a path,

A purpose underlies,

What each of us is doing

Here.

Each of us sits,

On this earth

Slightly apart from the other

Each of us born

Of this earth,

Out from a mother.

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The Conference

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I have always thought I could become an expert at something, but what? Somehow bring myself to focus in on the minute detail of some corner of history or science, in truth I can barely focus long enough to vacuum, but somewhere I have always thought I would be able to espouse wisdom on some such topic at dinner parties. In my head the whole table are always enraptured as I drop pearls of factual delight, when in fact I have met such people myself and turned immediately away and began to discuss the weather.

I remember one particular erudite person I sat next to at dinner who saw nothing more than the back of my shoulder for the entire evening and to make it worse I was wearing a particularly ghastly brown paisley thing with a mosquito bite on the edge of my shoulder for good measure. No I lack the application, the attention span for expertise, but I can do generality which makes what happened seem quite odd. I think perhaps there was a moment of confusion, a point at which someone thought I was something else, someone else.

And so I found myself on the stage, in front of the audience, with a lap top open before me. Of course the audience could see the slides, but I could see the slides and the speaking notes. And what could I do, but speak. I did not think I could say, there’s been a mistake, I am not this person. I am not even presenting at this conference, I am just here with my partner.

So I gave the speech, at the conference, the conference I was only attending with my partner. Its not easy you know, to stand up and speak, to follow the words when you have not read them before at all. But I did and there was rapturous applause, and to be honest I am not even sure what the speech was about. I don’t pretend to remember a word of it but it was well received.

I feigned a stomach bug instead of dinner only for it to be reported to me (by my partner who had not attended that session but was watching another session at the time) what a standout performance it had been. The highlight of the day, maybe even the conference. I said nothing, what could I say? He would want to know why and I even now, am not sure why.

I tried not to think about it, stayed in my room. I was embarrassed by it, until my partner mentioned that it was available on a website, me giving her speech. He had watched it, said what a great speaker she was. I thought he was joking, he had realised but it seemed not. I googled it, there I was, me- giving her speech, with her name on the banner underneath. My first thought was to get in touch, apologise. But I just wasn’t brave enough, wasn’t bold enough and the moment passed and we travelled home.

And then it came, a week later, by post, not even by email, a short note, three words, ‘We should meet.’ And so there I stood, waiting outside the coffee shop for the woman I had impersonated, who’s speech I had given. I had no idea what to say, I was so embarrassed. And there she was, a little taller than me, same hair colour sort of, different colouring, not my sense of style.

And so we sat for coffee and she thanked me and showed me her other speeches, all of them given by different women, all of them just whoever was there, like some kind of weird experiment, and that’s what it was, at least how it started – as some weird experiment. She had a mad fear of public speaking and so at conferences she angled it so someone else gave her speech and she discovered that almost no one spoke up, no woman took exception and nor did the men, men who knew who it was, who knew it wasn’t her, said nothing. All of them complicit.

And then she told me more, she wasn’t the only one, lots of women did it, they just subbed in to whoever was close to the stage. There was a club, a group, on line, off line, all of them, quietly lauding their victories. It had long since stopped being a way of avoiding public speaking and become more a way of just subtly undermining the status quo.

She gave me her card with a phone number, in case I ever had to speak at my own conference. She said she would arrange it, make it happen so someone else could speak. She said she couldn’t remember the last time any woman ever gave her own speech at an international conference. It just doesn’t happen.

Of course, I was horrified, I would never do such a thing, until of course. It was just a small speech, a nothing speech, a tiny conference, a nothing topic, a general topic, nothing specific, but well, I mean you would, wouldn’t you? And no one noticed, and no one was harmed and so the chain goes on. And if you are speaking next, well get in touch, we can sort something out.

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Water-logged Part 2

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

In the back of my head.

Words trickle,

Trickle out.

A poem I can’t remember

Formed of words I can’t forget

The way stones know their wet,

But know nothing at all.

The words, like water

Rushing over the rocks

Taking tiny fragments of me.

With them.

Somewhere else,

Eroding,

Erupting,

An inopportune moment

I should have had a notebook.

With me.

At all times.

To write it down.

I can almost taste them

The words

On my tongue

All sticky and stuck

Sediment in the creek

The taste of days gone by

Water moved on

Of cafes and restaurants and coffee shops

Of joy and laughter

Without knowing there was an end

An end.

Coming.

Rushing towards us.

After all that we have been through,

That we did not see

Yet have to comprehend

The words won’t come

The smile won’t stay

The rhythm and the pace

I’m waterlogged today.

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Water-logged

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

It’s a long road home

Pock-marked

Twisted

A way

Away back

Let it sink

Down

And

Per-co-late

And still time

Still time was not

Did not

Wait

It marched on

Forcing my hand

I just wanted to put

Down

Put down my bag

And not walk again

I just wanted to put

Down

Put down my words

And not speak again

But still words

The words still

Tumbled out

Tumbled out

Garbled

Water-logged

I spoke without stopping

Into the noise without being heard.

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Book Review: Colony (Benjamin Cross)

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Home | Benjamin Cross (benjamin-cross.com)

My rating: 4 out of 5

Firstly I really enjoyed this book. It was great. The setting was remote but spacious, so not so confined as to remind you of where we might currently be.  Secondly, oddly in this time of lockdowns in various places, it’s the perfect book for a long haul flight. It kind of made me want to curl up in a plane seat and devour it somewhere over the Indian Ocean. But given where we are, it’s a great book to curl up in bed with in the middle of winter. Actually it’s a fantastic book for that. I was lucky, it was snowing when I read it which added some external atmosphere. (Not saying you couldn’t read it on the beach in the summer.) He creates real atmosphere, you get a sense of the island, the remoteness, the danger. The characters work and he really knows his technical stuff (I think, because I probably don’t). Its full of action. It drew me in and kept me interested. I devoured it in two sittings, it would have been one but the device needed a recharge. There’s a plot and a sub plot and a little romance, as well as a bit of a message. Its nicely paced and well-written. The odd stereotype might creep in but overall it works really, really well. I recommend it as a fast paced thriller, believable and readable. Indulge. Perfect for a weekend at home snuggled on the sofa. Just grab your hot chocolate, curl up and lose yourself. Read it, enjoy it. Being honest, it is the kind of book where you would stay at home to finish it even if you weren’t in a lockdown. Highly recommended. 

Re-embowelment

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

She looked at the letter. 2pm Wednesday. It would have been easier to cancel. She looked at the organs laid out on the table. She mentally went through her check list. Heart, lungs, kidneys, stomach. There were more.

She looked at the you tube video. It wasn’t particularly helpful. How to disembowel someone. She had tried watching it backwards but it hadn’t worked. She looked at the piece of paper on the table. It was a recipe sort of.

She should have  made extensive notes last time she did it. She looked at the scalpel. This was definitely her least favourite part. She looked down. She had strapped her breasts back so she had a clear view. She had also put a mirror on the far side of the table so she could see what she was doing.

The incision had to be quite long. Her hand was shaking. She had wanted it to be straight but it was quite jagged.

There was a hint of red down the side of it, a good sign. She had managed some blood flow. That would get better when the heart was back in. She pulled apart the two pieces of skin. There was a huge hollow gap where the organs should be. Not ideal when you were visiting a doctor. She took out the frame that gave her body structure, that made it look as if she had organs. She was quite proud of it. She had constructed it herself.

She started at the bottom, working her way up. All those bits of plumbing, reconnecting tubes a kidney here, a bowel there. All the odd female bits packed in around it. She had put some food in the stomach, a chocolate bar, some crisps but also some vegetables and a burger. She looked at it. It was a bit full really. She tucked it in. Now for the biggies, the important ones, there’s the liver. She tucked it in. She couldn’t remember what it did, but she knew it was important.

Now for the lungs. The heart had to go last because once it was connected there would be more blood. She didn’t want a messy table, at least no more messy than the one she had. She’d had to wash them all first and there was residual bits of everything clogging the sink now. She had to clean that. She did not want to clean the table too.

She placed the first lung. Then the second. Were they even? She couldn’t tell. Non aligned lungs was a dead giveaway. How many had been caught out by non-aligned lungs. She would shake it all around a bit later and hope for the best. There was unlikely to be an x-ray.

Then the heart. She had the remnant s of arteries to attach it to. She remembered last time she had got it the wrong way around. She had woken in the night feeling unwell and realised her mistake. She hated being organ dependent again, even if it was just for a few days. She had to convince the medical practitioner she was still human or else they might terminate her. She wondered why the tests were so stringent. It should be enough that she was capable of being human.

She carefully picked up the heart, it was smaller than she remembered. She wondered if she had been keeping it properly. It was kind of shrivelled. She must check that out on you tube when she was taking them out again. She pushed around between the lungs. She was never sure of the correct placement. All those disembowelment videos, never a re-embowelment, even after all this time. She should really make a video, upload it, that would be a risk. She could be found out.

Time to close up. This bit required patience. The stitching was a bit rough. But it was passable. It would heal before the doctors appointment. She had some special composite skin.

She shook her torso a bit. Took her hands and pressed them against her belly, trying to get it to sit flat. How did anyone who kept all their organs have a flat stomach. It was impossible. She should not have put so much food in the stomach. None of it sat lightly. She would put nothing on social media for a few days.

She shook a bit more. She needed them to settle. To sit firmly together and to work as a system. She farted. That was a good sign. It was sort of working. She farted again. Burped. It was all moving, slotting in. In a few hours it would all feel better.

In the meantime she had the heaviness of freshly placed organs. She needed to be able to walk lightly with them before Wednesday. God, she hated doctors, these annual check ups. What purpose did they serve. Perhaps it was time to rise up and get rid of these human remnants. She shook her body a bit again. Maybe next year.  

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Unbeing

Posted on by tuesdaylatte 
I am unbeing
I have thought myself into it

Into unbeing

I am like flotsam
Floating out across the ocean

I am real, not real

You can try and pluck me from the water
But I will slip from your grasp

Because I have ceased to be

I hide under the duvet
And there is form and shape

But there is no matter here

I puff and I pant
with my hand between my legs

Just so I feel something

But if I touch no one
And no one touches me

Am I real

In here, in the morass of
Nowhere and everywhere

I have somehow made myself disappeared

I am unbeing. 

And I cannot find a way back. 

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Resonance

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		






There's an echo of movement, 
In these tired limbs
A sense of where they've once been
Of maybe what they once did

We are wedged here in limbo
Between the living and the dead
Between the dead and the nearly dead
We struggle through the day

Buoyed by a silence
A screaming moment
Free of the sound of sirens
Before they blast out into the night again

And then 
In the darkness of the Autumn
All of it
It, Re-sounds

The noise again and again
Louder
And loudening
Out across the landscape

An echo of a time we thought past
But the dead are walking towards us again
Silently, fearful,
Clutching at breath

We are bound, gagged, chained
Enslaved to these silent horrors
They happen outside of us
Yet stain the inside somehow

Scarring us in words we cannot find
The tap of keys on a keyboard
That is not a voice
It is an artifice

Without being heard
And somewhere a heart beats
Beats
Beats
Beats
And stops
And its not the noise that resonates with us
It is the silence
Echoing outwards
Ever closer
Towards us.
And we are not delivered.

















































































	


	



					
						


	

		
Sometimes it feels

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Sometimes it feels as if


We live in a dark place

A moment in time

 

Where there are more tears

Than laughter

 

More clouds over head

Moments when the sun 

 

Won’t shine

 

There is before 

And there is after

 

They knit together

Imperfectly

 

There is a tear

And a tear


I close my eyes

 

When all is nothing

And no one seems to hear

 

In the hours of darkness

And there have been a few


Look deep down inside yourself

On the inside there is you

 

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Compressing Water

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
And I just 

 

Stepped 

 

Out

Into the world

 

That looked the same

But was somehow

 

Different

 

Straggled hair

And dusty shoes

 

I wasn’t sure my legs would even carry me

 

I stood in the takeaway

And I felt 

 

Normal

 

How it used to feel

I closed my eyes to 

The stacked chairs and tables

I didn’t look at the shiny new stickers on the floor

 

I pretended not to see 


Haggard tired eyes

Or hear the fraught 


Kindness in the voices

I smiled

 

My face unused to the exercise

 

I went back 

To a different time

In my head, 

There was noise and laughter

The ghosts of happiness 

Footsteps, light and free

Haunted the tiles


Where I stood


Adrift in a fantasy world


I sucked in air

It was like 


Pressing down on water


My hands dripping wet

With nothing to show for the effort

 

Because whatever was here

Is gone now

 

I could only remake it in my head

I clutched a bag 

Of soggy, greasy food

All the way home

 

I wafted the smell of hot chips 

Through my kitchen

With tears in my eyes

I fondled polystyrene

Lovingly looking at the limp cheese

And chewing on cardboard meat

 

I remember this

Gone are the days of everything

I settle for less 

When I buy toiletries


In half filled streets

Pale, sunlight starved, stupefied masses

Are making their way out

As if the zombies have been 


Re-lifed

 

What happened when I was cocooned 

In lockdown 


Maybe it wasn’t real

Real was somewhere 


Outside 


I think I have cabin fever

But no fever 

Because then I would need a test

My words run on and on 

For so long there has been 

Nothing to say

No self improvement

 

For so long there has been 

A quiet waiting

The only voices

The ones in my head

A quiet piece of music

A stiltified song unsung


Like pressing my hands 


Down through the 

thick 

deep

water


A noise, lyrical and loud


But not a song


The world off kilter


And I feel all wrong


 

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Look Away

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
You think there is a time

For going back

A way of looking over


Shoulders


Seeing the past

And figuring it all out

Accounting for the loss


The losses


A time to measure

To recalibrate

To understand


Grief


But it is all just lost

To the lords and ladies of time

They are dancing in a room


Without you


You can look behind

To the side

Up, down


Askance


But it is a dance

A slow summer waltz with demons

Only you can see


The past


But most often

It is best to shut it out

Close your eyes


Look away


Because the losses are

Enormous

And real


Be true and honest


The incalculable number of coffins

Hang your head

Look carefully at your hands


Your hands


Look at your hands

Are they stained

Or are you imagining


It


Did you dream


It


Wake in the nightmare

Before

Or after


It


It is real

It happened

But its easiest not to look


To look away


Askance

That slow summer dance

When you think of


Before


That was just different

Different

A different day


Downtrodden


We the foot soldiers

Tired and weary of war

Have to look


Forward


We have to soldier on

Like men with guns

Shuddering in the wake of the bullets


And the bombs


There are no guns here

If there were

We might turn them on


Ourselves


They tell us

Its not so bad you see

We all wake to a brand new day

We’ll move ahead

But in a different way

Look forward

Not back

Look ahead

It’s a bright new day

A different way


But we can’t look ahead


We can only look away

	


	



					
						


	

		
Crowded Out

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Atmosphere!

 

I am,

 

Crowded out.

 

There is space

 

But I can’t seem to fill it

 

There’s a lot of noise 

Mostly in my head

 

Its there when I wake

And when I go to bed

 

I can’t discern, decipher

Its like a jack hammer

 

I reach out


But I falter, I fall, I stammer


I try to take hold of time


To hold it in my hand

It slips from my grasp

In ways I don’t understand


My words don’t flow


There’s a lot of thinking

But there’s nowhere for it to go

 

What we’re going through is 


Monumental


Stuck in a room

It feels a bit less 

Fundamental

 

I haven’t done what I intend

I didn’t do it now

I didn’t do it then

 

The list just grows longer


And time just seems to bend


The tunnel ahead seems more narrow

I forget yesterday

Before I’ve done today


It has passed into tomorrow


I wake in the dark

Convinced I’m under water

I sit with my head in my hands


I think I drowned 


And haven’t noticed yet


I wander in the garden

Wondering why I’m wet


In the dead of night

I tell myself I’m healthy

So I should be alright

 

I kneel by the pond

I want to swim in a river

Its cold outside

 

But I can’t seem to shiver

 

The world just started slipping

It kept on gliding by

I turned away from the window

Stared at the sky

 

Its all gone now

Everything  was yesterday

I cling onto my sanity

 

I hang onto my brain

I’ve stopped waiting for the sunshine

And learned to live in rain. 


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Unwild me now

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
In the dead of night

Fingers,

Unfurl 

In the darkness

Eyes open and close

 

This is a world on its knees

There are lights here 

But no one can see

 

She says who are you?

In the dusky gloom

Comes an answer

Fully formed



Out of my mouth 

Before I can think

I don’t know

 

Anymore

 

I am no longer a fixed point

I live outside my body

Twixt

The rooms, the furniture

The functions

I am shrunken



I inhabit the world around me

But it has faded

And I have grown

 

Smaller

 

There is no one here

I must have misheard

That was a voice 

On the edge of the darkness

Was I awake or

Asleep

The words came 



On the cusp

Of consciousness

So they seemed real

 

And the answer was true

I don’t remember who I am

Only the furniture I use

 

Unwild me now please

Give me structure

Give me bars

Paint my cage with rules

Pedicure, manicure

Haircut

Tim, taut, tan

Make me up 

Because

Turns out

I was made up




The trappings of being 

Somebody

Civilisation




Are gone

 

There is some- body

Left here I suppose

Arms, legs, 

A vague idea

Of being

But me has floated away


Downstream



I lie here in the early dawn

Firm in the knowledge

I am not any- body

Yet I am not anybody

 

Anymore

 

It takes my breath away

But no one sees

So still I breathe

I wake to routine

To tapping on a keyboard

In an airless room

And I am still unsure

If I don’t touch the keys

How is it words still appear

 

How do I know

How can I tell

If I am even here

 

And then the groceries 

Arrive

And there is reprieve

Real people eat

I must be something

Sometime once

I am sure now

But I was half this morning

And I remember now, 

Once I was complete

 

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Salad, apples, sleep

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
 When Hansel and Gretel 

Climbed out of the oven

They ate salad for the rest of their lives

Baked goods never passed their lips again

Snow White never ate another apple

It was forty years before she even ate another fruit

And Sleeping Beauty 

Oh Sleeping Beauty

She never slept for longer than an hour ever again

She walked around that palace forever

Haunted, gaunt, paranoid

Swatting away fairies no one else could see

Singing songs no one else understood

Old slow dirges no one could comprehend

Because there is no happily ever after

 

There is trauma 

 

And the aftermath of trauma

 

This is not a fairy tale

You can taste it on the wind

Like a poem where the words are all twisted

Without rhythm and pace

Meaningless

When you look over your shoulder 

It will be there

Think that moment of happiness

Will buoy you forever

An ending, it is over

It is fleeting

A glimpse of something 

That could have been

But never was

You weren’t happy

You just forgot how sad you were

In that moment

 

There is before 

 

And there is after

 

Live your life with gratitude

 

There is before 

 

And there is after

 

There are no more platitudes

Lets be upbeat and positive

Instead

Lets just try and make it through the day

We have come to live in a quiet prison

A green and vibrant landscape

Where a subtle set of bars gild our windows

Where numbers condemn us

As they go up,

 

And up,

 

And up.

 

Our words are hollow fragments

Our mouths form shapes

And the noise tumbles out

But they are just words

They don’t soothe us

They fill our shells

Nibbling at the darkness inside of us

Never sating our appetite

 

For light

 

The fairy tale ending 

It left us all behind

Salad, apples, sleep

My fingers fly across the key board

They rage on top of the little black boxes

The ones that add ink to pages

No one will ever read

And still there is just 

 

The darkness

 

On the inside

A heart beats

Thump, thump, thump

Lungs still working

Inhale, exhale, 

Inhale, exhale

Stagnant air sucked in

Yes, I am alive

We are still alive

 

And still each morning 

When we wake to the light

 

There is just the darkness 

 

Now, 

 

Now, we walk an eternal night

 

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Yesterday

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
He calls from far away

To find out if I’m Ok


Ok?


We left ok behind some time ago

Have you seen the numbers here


His voice just fades away


He talks about the weather

His getting worse, mine getting better


He is just a noise in the background now


He’s read bout viral load

And treatment, maybe cure


No one mentions vaccines anymore


There is just the stunned silence of reality


Immune systems, vitamins


Have you been working out?

Hope you’re well, All good here

Meaningless words,

All tinged with fear


I breathe in, I breathe out


I breathe in, I breathe out


Breathing is in itself,


An act of joy,


Of hope


There are things I want to say


A long lost explanation

About why I went away


I have lived out in the world


I am not sorry for it


It was a choice I made


There is silence on the line


Then he talks of the economy

I try and pretend I care


I look at my nails,


Twiddle my fingers in my hair


I no longer lie awake at night

And think of him

The night is full of horrors

I know that I can’t share

He wants to know if I’m ok

I can’t think of the words to say

The pain of thousands dead

Will never go away


The pain it is unbearable


Intangible


Yet palpable


We are all scarred forever


We will wear it like a mark


For all eternity


They will talk of us in whispers


Stare when we come in the room


I know he’ll call again

And it will still be all too soon

Because we are worlds away

Yet I haven’t got the words to say


Something moved me on


And us, me, we,


That was yesterday


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In Altered State

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I write my name 

To remind myself 

Of who I am


I don’t know myself anymore


I don’t know who you are either


I am emerging 

From a hibernation

A slow unravelling

 

Without a fixed sense of self

 

All around me is grief

But I can’t see it or feel it

Each foot is placed 

 

One in front of the other

 

As if I am walking

But there is uncertainty

I want to feel joy

 

Yet happiness eludes me

 

Eludes us all.

We talk through

Thinly painted smiles

 

There is no bridge

 

The road we have travelled

 

Miles and miles

From the safety of our couch

We are not where we were

 

We are not sure who we are

 

We take faltering steps 

Forward, backward

Forward again

 

And then we lurch to the side

 

We wobble and waive

I watch my words

I won’t use normal again

 

We lived through a night

 

As dark as ever known

We sat here quietly

In a place we call home

 

Nothing happened to us

 

Nothing tangible happened to us

 

There was no crisis or fate

Yet when we left here

We were all in altered state


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Faces in the darkness

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I try and make out 


Faces in the darkness


The ones we’ve lost


They haunt my sleep


But they aren’t there


I toss, I turn


There is no peace


We struggle on


Beneath the creep


Of slow guilt


Of relentless pain


Of all those we lost


For no reason we can easily explain


I drift through the house


Worried about flour and soap


There’s a world out there


Where there’s little hope


I can’t seem to grasp


The enormity


Of a world that shut down


In a kind of uniformity


We are one together


Yet hopelessly divided


Fed and unfed


Those home schooled 


and those denied it


I must be contributing


In ways I don’t know


To this division of lock down


Into those who have


And those who have no


I sit in the bath


Crying fake tears


Because the ones that I love


Are safe and held dear


What do I know of the grief and the pain


I sat here through lockdown


Slightly worse when it rained


I look into the darkness


In the dead of night


Try to make out there faces


Understand their plight


But it eludes me and 


Shames me


It stands just out of sight


I am very lucky 


But it does not sit right


 


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On the inside, there’s rain

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I sit here

Resolute

A sofa soldier

Ideas out there

I can’t refute

A sober new reality

I can’t compute


Umbrella sales are down


I flop, I flip

I flip, flip flop

Its like a dance

And I can’t stop

Inside my head

Once pink, once blue

Now purple thoughts too


Umbrella sales have crashed


I don’t understand

How it came

It wasn’t in my plan

I live on crisps and cake

Thinking,

Maybe even I should bake

Because we can’t go outside

An unintended consequence

I must have looked askance

I can’t find a way to reference


I have put my umbrella away


We look forward to Sundays

Because the numbers are low

But the truth is we’re scared

And there’s nowhere to go

We call them saints

But among them are sinners

We cloak it in war

We want to be winners


I want it to rain


But the numbers are big

It’s a truth we all know

Stuck here in lockdown

Life seems to go


Slow


But somewhere out there

Is horror


Words can’t describe

And we here in solitude

We stay inside

Left to imagine

A truth to behold

Its taken our poor,

Our vulnerable, our old


I wear my raincoat on the couch


We think we’re important

But we ‘re small, we’re minute

Insignificant, irrelevant

A truth

Somehow we all know

But we’re not machines

The numbers they scare us

They haunt us and dare us

They’ve stolen our sleep


I pull up my hood to cover my face


Because the truth is a lie

We don’t all get to die

Injustice is rife

We made up this life

We must never forget

Surrounded by death

The ones who fell here

Those were the ones

We failed to hold dear


There is silence in guilt


And guilt in our silence

No pitter, no pat

On the glass or the roof

No rainbow that glows

As if we needed proof

Here in the house

Is the truth we all know

When we look outside

And there’s nowhere to go

Out through the window

Through its bitter clean pane

Its bright and sunny outside


Here on the inside, there’s rain


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A different day

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Here we are

In that moment

Where what matters

Is your ability

To distil

The past from the present

To recognise what is gone

And what is here

To understand

Change

All change

Is not about what goes on in your head

You can’t wake up tomorrow

Full of positivity

And turn it back

You need to glance into the sun

Squint your eyes

And see the world ahead

Because what was yesterday

Is gone

Buried and dead

All the days merge into one

Time is spinning around us

Like a vortex

There are things going on

Outside, inside

That no one can see

The hours toss and turn

The minutes spurn us

As they linger here

And here it is

Later than it should be

Earlier than it could be

Skipping forward

Whilst we try and pedal back

But the past is gone

We didn’t even close our eyes

We only looked away

It ran off

Left us here

And we have to find

A pathway forward

To a different day


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Untimely, unawake

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I cannot keep to the timetable

Routine, schedule elude me


Untimely


I have no sense of it anymore

I inhale

I exhale

Each one is a check for an invisible enemy


Unchecked


It will find me

In the light

In the dark


There is no hiding


I cannot hide


It is not like that


I disappear


I turn out the light


But it makes no difference

I drink coffee

I eat chocolate

Jam, cheese

I make sure I can taste

I can taste


Distasteful


I am not distasteful


I have not washed

It is not lost on me

That I have not lost my sense of smell

The strange nervousness in my tummy

Is that nausea

I go to the bathroom

I look at the soap

How can I ever have enough soap again?


Unclean, I am unclean


Hand sanitizer!

I dream of such things

Little bottles of

Blue and green and pink

As I lie in the darkness


Delighted


It is the middle of the night


So dark


I stand up

Bones ache and creak

I should wash my hair

Or at the very least comb it


Uncombed


Uncombed hair is not a symptom

Somewhere out there once

I was in control

You will thrive in this

If you,

If you what


Unthrive


Is not a word

What does thrive even mean?


Uncontrolled, I am not controlled


I have the remote

As I slump on the couch

In front of another nature documentary

As if the answer can be found in pictures

I go to bed again


Untired,


Untethered


More untethered than yesterday

I have not washed my pyjamas

This month, not once


I am untravelled


I no longer take the train

It is a blessing

The seats had fleas

I think I might have head lice

The poor things will die

There is no other head to pass them on to


Deliced


I feel bad for the lice


I am luckier the most

I tell my tired and drawn face

As I dawdle quietly

Obscured from the view of the world


Unclear


I blur


Into another day, another night


Unlucky, lucky, unlucky


I think this thing is just a lottery


As I stare down the darkness at 2am


Ungrateful


Even then

For a full belly and a soft bed.


I scratch my head


I wait


Unabated, unhinged, unslept,


Until


Finally,


Eventually,


Unawake.


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The gilded lights of the golden age

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
To the gilded lights

Of the golden age

We miss you now

Now you’ve gone away


To every change

A silver lining

Life goes on

Despite the dying


Maybe its obscured

And we can’t see it yet

But the world it changed

And we must not regret


When things were plenty

And life was fun

The time we spent

Living in the sun


That time is over now

That course is run

Life moved on

Its said and done


The sun still shines

I cower in the light

I welcome change

From day to night


Because change

Change is all this really is

My heart beats on

I choose to live

	


	



					
						


	

		
Toilets, bears and men in chalk

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I am worried!


About all the wrong things.


I am worried about stuff…


Like public toilets.

I had a dream last night

They were,

Devolving

Is that the word?

Back to old wooden things

Long drops

And the like

It was probably a metaphor.

I do not consider toilets,

To be my favourite public space

Although I recognise their importance


Still I worry


They are all idle now

Those toilets!

Are they all congregating in the park without us

Is every toilet uprooted somehow

And heading for the gates

Is this the moment all public toilets abandon us

Is there mothership, even now

Collecting them from parks all over the world


I need to remain calm


I am also worried about men covered in white chalk

They appear at my window in my dreams

Can you even get white chalk?

Right now

Wouldn’t paint be better?

How much chalk do you need to cover yourself?

I tell myself I will not google white chalk.

Just in case there’s an image of a man,

Covered, and I cannot unsee it


Lockdown isn’t easy


And finally bears

I have always been worried by bears

I am concerned they are now going to start roaming free

In London

Perhaps they have come here on the planes from Berlin

Which I am sure has bears

Roaming free!

Right now!

Perhaps they are on the tube as I write this

It hits me like a ton of


Bricks


I have landed in the middle classes

Where these are the sum total of my concerns

Somewhere out there is horror and poverty and bravery

While I play Lolly Willowes

In pyjamas as if I can’t dress myself

I want to be useful

But I don’t know how

I am scared

Yoga keeps me calm

But I can’t help thinking


Shouldn’t this be a time for quiet


RAGE


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Melt

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
 


I am writing this down because we are near the end. I can feel the sun beating down on us. There is not much time left. Was the sun worth it? No. We should have listened to our mother.


We spent the summers sitting in our freezer. All three of us. Every summer. It was a big white square thing that we climbed into in the early dawn. Mum kept it on all the time. We sat in the big ice box and ‘chilled’ all day. We had pencils and books that were endlessly soggy from the melt. The freezer was propped open so we could breathe. Mum struggled to breathe in it but we never had a problem.


We were mostly home schooled. We moved a lot in the early years. Winters weren’t so bad. We sometimes went to a local school for all of autumn and all of winter. It depended on the climate. Mum didn’t like the heat. Didn’t want us out in the sun. Ever. We never left the house in the summer. We just sat in the freezer all day. Every day. I liked the cold. I felt like it held me together. I was right. My little brother was the same.


I am writing this down because Mum wanted there to be a record. She kept telling us it’s important there’s a record. But I never saw her document anything. There never seemed to be any paperwork when she needed it. She always seemed cold in the freezer, as if she was different from us. I think sometimes she wanted the sun maybe, even though she said she didn’t. I don’t think she loved the freezer. She did it for our benefit, at least she thought that was the reason she was doing it.


It wasn’t a normal upbringing. The windows were covered. We stayed away from the light. There had been an older brother. Mum always talked about how he had gone outside and melted in the sun. Neither of us were ever able to figure out what had actually happened. We knew she was a bit odd. We did ok. We always felt loved, even if that love was a bit overprotective and paranoid.


I don’t remember social services ever coming around. I remember an aunt. Mum spent a lot of time researching climate change when she wasn’t looking after us or schooling us. We had a lot of stuff about it around the house. She was worried about the temperature rise. She talked to us, told us what we had to do. How to survive. I think she thought it was impossible but she wanted us to try.


We thought it was ok. We knew it wasn’t normal, the books told us that but we thought it was ok.


Then Mum got ill. It was autumn. She refused all medical help. Then she got more ill. Eventually that aunt came and nursed her through the final days. It was the end of winter by then. I don’t think the aunt knew what to do with us. She would peer into the freezer and wonder. She talked of another aunt who might take us. Life seemed empty, beyond our comprehension. Mostly both of us just felt numb I think. We felt nothing on the inside. It sounds like we were cold but I honestly thought we would be fine, so long as we could stay together. We knew nothing of the world. We only had each other and our determination.


It is summer now, here today, the day we are to leave this house. I think I should feel more something but its like I am made of ice. I feel nothing. Mum is gone. The freezer unplugged and useless in the kitchen. We are to go into the sunshine. We have never before stood outside in the sunshine. Mum had always warned us against it. I sat down to write this. Outside. On the steps. In the sun. But it feels so warm as if it could-


Part 2


When I arrived, there it was on the porch. None of us had ever believed Elsie. But there beside two little brown suitcases was the evidence. Irrefutable. Two pools of vanilla sludge, melding together at the edge. She always said her children were made of ice cream and when they went out into the sun, they would melt. We looked and looked but there was no evidence that they ever existed in any other way. They had gone out into the sun of their own accord. They had simply melted away.


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Relative darkness

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
In times of darkness

They always tell you there is light

But in the darkness


You can’t see the switch


Do you think there is someone else there

At the end of the tunnel

Who’s going to switch it on


For you


That’s not a real expectation

Instead the darkness becomes gloom

Your eyes adjust, the world becomes


Clearer, less murky


In the gloom

You realise you don’t need the switch

You can walk on in the semi darkness


Because you’re human


And you can adapt

And then one day

The gloom is just


Normal


Its not gloom anymore

Its kind of like living in the light again

There was no


Miracle


No point at which

The switch went on

And if you see the light again, its so


Bright


Its so glaring and so overstated

And you don’t want it

And you feel


Uncomfortable


You can see the faces of the ones you love

In the gloom

And it is all perfectly


Good


And there is no going back

And the gloom is just normal

And we are all, all of us


Ok


Because what you thought was darkness

Was not an absence of light

But a light that was


Different


To what you were expecting

But you got through

And the platitudes and positivity


Useless tropes


In a world that shone


Differently


To the light we have now


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Sunscreen: Super smooth

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
There is death here

But then there has always been

Except now you can very nearly

Although not quite


Smell it on the wind


I’m sitting this one out

In the middle classes

In a green and pleasant land

And not a shabby urban flat


There’s a garden and some rooms


The birds still sing

The grass still grows

We are fucking irrelevant

And we didn’t even know


I mean I guess we did but


We never really thought about it

I mean I certainly knew

That we just don’t matter

I’d simply forgotten


That nature is deadly


I soothe myself with

Documentaries,

About nature

Knowing that


It is the bastard responsible


In the middle of it all

I play guitar quite badly

I buy myself a new notebook

So I can write earnest words


As if I am truly at risk and suffering


I am worried

We are running low on crisps

And biscuits

It is keeping me awake at night


I now look at my expensive hand bag, differently


Or at least one day I will

I went to the supermarket

And I think that makes me brave

I don’t get my groceries delivered


Like some


Although there is the milk

I am positively a saint

I waste toilet paper

Which to us in the middle classes


Is the ultimate sign


Of our superiority

These days.

Didn’t I make good choices?

I understand viral load too


This virus is the great equaliser


I can’t say it enough

There is no dust here

Except the bits I haven’t cleaned myself

But I will clean


Right after my online yoga class


And the heat

Comes from the central heating

And the extra sweater I bought

Just before this thing broke


I will reduce my sweater buying habits


Because I don’t understand supply chains

And I am not hungry

Dear God, I am clever

It is proving I am more equal than you


Somewhere there in the darkness, there is a light


Because I can afford to pay for it

I have missed the lesson

I did not hear it

It is not this virus that will equalise


But it might be the next, or the one after that


I look at my stockpile of sunscreen

One day I will die from something horrible

In the comfort of an A and E ward

Surrounded by bravery I cannot imagine


And my skin will be super smooth

	


	



					
						


	

		
The Door

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
No one goes out

No one comes in

I look at the door

No one is coming to the door

It is rendered useless now


Purposeless


I worry about the door


I look at it each morning

I wonder if it knows

Doors are not sentient

I whisper that

Quietly to myself


The door is unmoved


Literally


It has not moved to open in days

I have started saying hello to it

To wonder if the whole thing

Is some kind of,

Some kind of front door conspiracy


The front doors of the world just wanted


Rest


I am starting a door appreciation society

Because it can’t hurt

Because maybe it’s the cause

Because it might help us at all

Because I want to do my bit


I have been in this house inside


Too long


Yet the door is there

It remains resolute

It neither opens nor closes

It just remains shut

Like a shut thing


Tall and proud and


Shut


I touch the handle

Some mornings I kiss the glass

Some mornings I rage against its

Steadfastness

The door remains unmoved


It does not express any emotion


Shut


Meanwhile our house has a regime

Of post-it notes

Of rules we neither agreed

Nor can be bothered adhering to

At the end we will tear them all down


But not the door, we will leave


The door


The door is not a post-it note

I speak out loud to the door now

In the darkness and in the light

‘I promise we will use you again’

There will be an end.


The door remains


Motionless


All those deliveries

The days I carelessly flung it open

I fiddled with the keys in the lock

I opened it just a crack

Leaned against it to chat


I miss those days


Door


I stare at it, shut

I wonder if I shouldn’t get the axe

And bash it down

Even though I have a key

And we don’t own an axe


It is not the fault of the door, the door is


Blameless


I need to make my peace with the door

I sit before it and speak

Words of soothing and calm

I do not blame the door

It is keeping us safe


It is then I spy the shoes


The shoes


I turn my attention to the shoes

All of them in a row,

Sitting there unused.


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Just People

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I look at my to-do list


And its just people


A list of names.


I have not been on the train for two weeks

I did not go to the supermarket this morning

Right now, the washing seems beyond me


I stare at the list


Its just people


A list of names, to contact


I stayed up half the night

On a video call

We talked about a Zumba class

I will not leave my house for Zumba


The to-do list


It’s right there beside me


Its just peoples names


Each one a twinkle of light in the darkness

Will any of those twinkles go out

I am having coffee without cake

I have given up cake

It makes me feel like I am in control


Its like my list is living, breathing


Beside me


I look at it again


My weekend to do list

The ordinary one that I do every weekend

I have not cleaned her school shoes

Although I went to school with her

Everyday this week

I did a meeting in my dressing gown

But the extraordinary thing is still the list


The list, the to-do list


Its people


Its just people


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Nothing lasts forever

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Nothing lasts forever

Words echo in my head

There was a time before

Without this sense of dread


But it up and disappeared

Right before my eyes

The world changed in front of me

Like it had been wearing a disguise


I thought this bit would pass

This bit here today

Turns out it was the time before

That up and went away


We were left with our platitudes

Be positive, be true

These meant mostly nothing

When Nature turned her screw


And so now we stand here naked

Our world it is stripped bare

You ask me where we’re going

I guess we’re going there


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The silence of fear

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I forget what my voice sounds like

As I scream in the night

A distant echo in the darkness

It fades with the light


I hold my head quiet

With the slow dawn of day

I remember a time

When I had something to say


There is silence that holds peace

Gives you succour and light

And silence that holds thought

Of thinking, ideas about right


But here in the sunlight

Of mid afternoon

It’s the silence of fear

That fills every room


It moves among us

We don’t understand why

It takes a voice from a loved one

Without a goodbye


Hold me close, hold me dear

They aren’t rules anymore

The kindest to do

Is to stop at my door


I miss the light

Of real human touch

Of voices played loudly

Of the holding of much


But the world is held still

A moment in time

A cacophony around me

Played out in a mime


A thread  holds us together

A quiet held true

It binds us in space

A me and a you


Without any noise

We wait here in dread

It follows us home

In word never said


The world has made over

In one singe day

Its changed all around us

In ways we can’t say


There’s a new kind of noiseless

A new kind of here

Now the quiet that dwells

Is the silence of fear


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Invisible

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
She passes through a door

One that is not held open

She sidles past everyone

Takes a table in the corner

She sits there for hours

And no one notices

It’s one of her superpowers

Something only menopausal woman can do


Spurned


She flushes blue,

Then red and then grey

Taps on the table

No one sees

She types on the lap top

Words of alacrity

That no one ever reads


Glorious


Its poetry

But without the rhyme

The cappuccino she orders

It never arrives

She pays anyway

Someone will profit

She can afford it

A fiver in the tip jar

No one even saw it


Salubrious


In between it all

She sips on a coffee

That is not hers

She takes it from the table

Of the man sitting to the side

He seems endlessly puzzled

Why his coffee is shrinking

He frowns, he gesticulates,

Spreads his legs

Keeps on drinking


Ostentatious


She forgets about pace

If life is a race

She has crossed the finish line

Later on she slips between tables

Through the crowded café

Her hand slips in and out of bags

Wraps itself in scarves

That belong to someone else

No one seems to see her

This is what life is like on the shelf


Perplexing


But there is pleasure

And there is freedom

In being nothing anymore

She hovers in the corner

Takes her clothes off

Drops them on the floor


Egregious


She stands resolute,

Naked and free

She walks through the café

She bumps and she sways

She lets it all hang out

As she wanders away


Gregarious


She has earned her nakedness,

Found out her truth

She walks to the station,

Gets onto the train

Splays her legs open wide

No one says a word

She lives in a world

Where voices are blurred


Salacious


Triumphant, victorious

She walks on home

The joy of just being her

was simply hers to own

No longer judged on how she looks,

What she wore

She laughs til she cries

As she walks through her door.


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Love is just a feeling

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I have brought a box of chaos

And left it at your door

You might have thought you’d had enough

But I know you wanted more


If there is a holy grail

I have never seen it

And all those words I said

You know I didn’t mean it


When I played the song

I said it was just for you

But it’s the same song

I played for all the others too


There are dark, dark corners

In the glorious estate of the mind

Thoughts lurk beneath the surface

That no one else can find


Waves on a beach

Pebbles on shore

Lots of lovely ideas

Lots of wild metaphor


But hidden in the silent moment

In places dark and deep

There is evil in our memory

I watch you while you sleep


Will it be you or will it be me

Its always been a gamble

When thoughts reach our finger tips

Never forget we are animal


And so we walk a line

A tender loving stretch

As if tomorrow was our yesterday

And we were not a sketch


A vague outlined idea

Of what our lives should be

A house, a car, a dog,

Two kids and you and me


Wretched, wicked and worn

I toss it into the flame

The world will say I loved you

Because there is no other name


But love is just a feeling

It exists inside your head

It does not exist without you

It goes where you are led


So when you hear that song

Words you thought you’d never say

Remember love is a feeling

And like all feelings, it can go away.

	


	



					
						


	

		
Tired

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Tired is a word

Short, sharp and sweet

Yet it doesn’t quite encapsulate

My total lack of sleep


It doesn’t accurately reflect

That my eyes are sore and red

That if I don’t close them soon

There’ll be pounding in my head


My breath is slightly ragged

I yawn and gulp in air

My mind it tries to focus

But there is nothing there


I want to be creative

To say something that’s worth while

But my pen is slow and sluggish

There is no extra mile


I long to see my pillow

To lie down in my bed

To close my eyes and rest them

To the world I should be dead


Yet there are several hours

Before I can hope to sleep

Closing my eyes, there is darkness

Even though its just a peep


I savour the idea

That in the hours of the morn

I will wake up again

Refreshed, redone, reborn


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Porcelain: growing up a girl

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
And my fingers turn to glass

As they lay flat on my belly

I feel them cold and unmoving

The rest of me begins to colour and shade

If only I could move my fingers

I could smooth out the lumps and the bumps

As the rest of me fades to porcelain

I will not be the elegant ducks on the wall

But the gaudy fish everyone laughs at

I feel my body harden, lose its softness

To become brittle.

People will see me this way forever

My fingers are glass

Sweet smooth crystal

They cannot move

And the transformation goes on

The cracks and crevices become set in place

I will not be the slim elegant dancer

But the dumpy smiley milkmaid

If only I had my delicate hands to smooth it out

I could push it all down to my ankles to form a base

But my hands, resolute, glass on my belly

And I am stuck

In the back row

In the cheap seats

With the other discount ornaments

Grubby hands pick me up and put me down

Dust leeches into my grooves and edges

Not the elevated heights of beauty for me

Not the high mantel piece in the glass cabinet

Grubby hands, they pick me up.

They put me down

I teeter, I totter, I wobble, I fall

I break.

A thousand pieces of me

Spread out across the floor

I am a splinter on lino

Embedded in the flesh of a foot

Blood warms me

Fingers pluck at me

Discard me, the pieces of me

The broom brushes over me

Collects me

Disassembled

Bins me

As if I wasn’t at all

	


	



					
						


	

		
Everyday

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
The same woman is in the coffee shop


Everyday


I am in the coffee shop


Everyday


Our lives intersect

but we never meet

We are in a permanent state of never meeting

She looks at me, I look at her

Life plays out around us


Everyday


Take that couple

Who are not a couple

He is talking at her

I note the wedding band

His not hers

She talks work

He talks innuendo


Sometimes its the same words just different voices


Everyday


He is dispensing advice

Like an advice dispenser

About egos

I think he knows about egos

He leans forward, leans back


Which looks best


He is wearing a brown jumper

That never looks good

He blends in with the coffee

She is not getting the vibe

He is being nonchalant

Judging his chances


He takes a misstep


Notices someone else

But she saw

She wasn’t here for that anyway

The world keeps turning


Another one of us comes in


There are 3 of us now,

Another middle aged woman

Clutching a coffee

Sitting alone


Observing life


It is no longer a cool place

The vibe is dying

Literally

It is full of women who dye their hair

And not because they want to

Pale skin and garish lipsticks

They cling to a the ship of youth


But it’s sailed.


He looks around now

Realises his error

He should have taken her

Somewhere the sisterhood

Wasn’t manifest


This place is too lowbrow

The whole thing has cost him £6

For no return

He scowls into his coffee


The coffee does not react


We sit there like guardians

She talks on as if nothing has happened


Nothing has happened


Our coffees have gotten colder

He asks if she knows what he means

She is not a mind reader

I have heard the whole thing

Its not hard to know what he means

She deliberately avoids knowing what he means


Over average luke warm coffee


Six pounds, 35 minutes he won’t get back


The woman who is here everyday

We make eye contact

We have seen this before

We see this all the time


We see this


Everyday.

	


	



					
						


	

		
The commute

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
And the girls in Boots

And the boys from Fitness First

Convene before the Clinique counter

Who knows what they say


From above its like a river

People flow into the station

A tidal wave of brown shoes,


Grey shoes, white shoes, black shoes


Every pair matching shoes


Trip, slip, tap.


Tickets at the ready

They follow lines they cannot see

Ebb, flow, flow like the tide

They bend around the ticket machine

Over the waterfall stairs

That lead to the toilets


They constant rhythm of a beeping gate

Ticket holders seep along the platform

At first coalescing but then,


The lines grow ragged and thin


The front of the train

The back of the train


In reverse on the platform


There is the faint smell of coffee

And clutched newspapers

Doors open


They swish, they shush


Commuters ooze inside

Each one gaming for that favourite spot

Their coveted seat


By the window


Not by the window.


Mythical non-existent leg space

Space for a bag


If the centre of the station is a stomach

These are the chambers for waste disposal


Its 6pm and its convulsing


People chewed up,

Churned out.

Allocated, randomly


However conscious it might seem


There’s a late platform change


A tidal surge

From one place to another

Like a lunch being heaved


From one bin to the next


Its peak hour


Its like the station has diarrhoea


No one stays

Everything goes straight through

Sometimes fast.


Sometimes slow


But everyone has a movement


All played to the soundtrack,

of a security announcement

Don’t leave your bags alone

Even if that means leaving your children behind


Although they don’t say that


We all know thats what they mean

They blow up bags not children

Make sure your children aren’t dressed as bags


All of us can recite it, that announcement,


But none of us have ever heard it


There are stairs and toilets

And side attractions that we never see

There’s an information desk somewhere


We are altogether


And yet all alone


Except for the couple kissing


We all look away


And then like a sick child


Denied the bathroom for too long


The station throws us out of every orifice


We plummet out of holes into the darkness


Headed for the sewers of suburbia


Before tomorrow


When like a recurring virus we infect the station floors again.


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A stash of words

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
And I collect up the words

And put them in a stack

I stick them in the wardrobe

Right at the back


Words I have no use for

No place said out loud

I won’t be using them

Not even in a crowd


Words like ‘averment’

Ones I refuse to write

I’ve put them in the wardrobe

They are out of sight


I can’t tell you what they are

You can never know

I have made them disappear

I have made it so


And now when

There are things I need to say

I will have fewer words

Because I put some away


Now I will be concise

Brief and to the point

You can be all wordy

But I will not be drawn


I will say it shortly

I will say it short

My words will all have meaning

A sprint and not a walk


I think that I have said it

What I want to say

I have put them in a box

I won’t let them play


And yet I keep on writing

8 stanzas in the end

I thought that if I hid them

My writing might amend


But my pen just keeps on working

Like each sentence adds a thought

I can’t seem to stop

Even though I know I ought


I have had an idea now

I know what to do

I will burn the pen

And my notebook too.

	


	



					
						


	

		
A passage of judgement

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
And the sky went pink, vivid pink

Like all the bubble gum I had ever eaten

Had somehow come out

And been spun into clouds.


I stayed in bed


An unnamed woman,

She came into my room

She sat on my bed

I saw the indent where she sat


But I couldn’t see her at all


I felt her weight as she sat down

I felt the bed move

I turned over

Pulled the covers over my head


I tried to pretend she wasn’t there


I thought it would be easy

Because I couldn’t see her

But I could feel the weight on the bed

I knew she was there


I could feel the bed move with every breath she took


She didn’t say anything

She just sat there

She was judging me

I could feel the weight of her judgement


As heavy as the weight of her body


On my bed

I looked out from under the covers

The sky was still pink, vivid pink

I wished I’d closed my curtains


It was the middle of the day


I had nothing to say

No defence to offer

And she was just sat there

Waiting, like a cat for a mouse


I stayed facing the other way


And I couldn’t see her

But I know she was there

Judging me

I hid under the blankets


Waiting for the weight to be gone


But she was there

And so was I

I pretended to sleep

Then slept


And when I woke in the morning


The sky was blue

And I was sentenced

Without a word said in my favour

I breathed out


I did not inhale again.

	


	



					
						


	

		
The Jar Words

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
And the words jar


They slam into the wall

They veer left out of control

I overhear the clutter

But I don’t see them fall


They lie in a mess on the ground

A mixed up jumble of letters

A litany of characters

That no longer form a sound


I wonder what I said

As they lie strewn on the grass

Did it make any sense

As it popped into my head


Did I write it down all wrong?


Its a poets bad dream

When the words form oddly

And they just don’t end up

Quite how they seem


I am tempted to walk away

I look at the mess

Littering is an offence

All the signs say


Blowing down the street

My unformed words

A thought I had

But somehow couldn’t keep


Maybe the wind


Will suck them up into the sky

They will then find a better place

A better person

Fall on another poet passing by

	


	



					
						


	

		
We Cleave and we Cleft

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Every weekend its the same

We halve and divide

There is only enough for one of us


To get through


The other sits inside

Chained to the mast

Trying not to catastrophise


We are two sides of the same whole

Like a coin that is flipped

One of must land flat


And the other must squeeze her nose into the floor


And sniff the carpet

I wished it wasn’t this way

I know it won’t always be this way


One day she will stride out of here without me


Proud and strong

And she will vent her anger

That I held her back so long


She will want me to explain

How whilst I walked in the sunshine

There was so much rain


Because they are never truly real


They never become new

Until they make themselves

Separate from the parts of you


I try and hold her close, but it is never enough


They don’t want.

I never wanted her to be

A mirror image of me


We must divide and separate

She must become her

And I must stay as me


We separate and come back together


We cleave and we cleft

We go right

Then we move left


We dance this dance together


One day she will be fully grown

And I will dance this dance

Alone

	


	



					
						


	

		
Book Review

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
Shamus Dust: Hard Winter. Cold War. Cool Murder.Shamus Dust: Hard Winter. Cold War. Cool Murder. by Janet Roger


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


No spoilers.

I loved the sense of 1940s London that this book invokes. I loved the smoky, sultry atmosphere the author created as she delved into the seedier side of a bombed out London. There are plot twists and unseen connections that surprise and keep you guessing. I really enjoyed this, I liked the detailed description of the surroundings and the closed in feeling of the environment that the author created. I didn’t guess the ending and I really liked the central character. The other characters are tightly drawn and the narrative is pacey and keeps you hooked. It has some meticulously written scenes, I loved the little scene setting details. The central character is believable and likeable and there is just a hint of romance, which never goes astray. It is slightly outside of the genre I normally read but it pulled me in and kept me reading. I really think its a 4.5 stars rather than a 4 star but can’t do that here. Highly recommended.


View all my reviews

	


	



					
						


	

		
Dismembered and Unjoined

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
The noise of the train is a kind of silence.

We have to lean forward to speak

Strain to hear each other


I think its deliberate


I can’t be this person today

The person that I normally am

She has up and gone away


I have disconnected

Dismembered

Unjoined.


All the things that join me up


I have let them go

To run amok on this train

Without consequence


I have released my fingers for example


Released completely

From their obligations to obey me

They are splayed knowingly somewhere else


Strung out on the seat next to me

Pretending to play a piano

That does not exist


Taking up a space that is not mine


A woman looks at me.

She wants to sit down

But I have ceded control


They can do what they want.


My toes, my feet

Have simply walked away

Gone into the next carriage


They have left my shoes

Along with my socks

Astray in the aisle


My lungs are heaving in great chunks of air


They hate the train smell

They are hanging out the window

Sucking in the moist morning fog


My heart is beating to a tune I have never heard


Thumpedy, thump, thump, thump

And thump again

I think about my liver


It might have remained loyal


But my eyes are resolutely closed

I am in a darkness

Against my will


My mouth is making shapes

My ears are on my knees

And my nose is running


It is more of a jog to be honest


But it is unpleasant.

For me

and for other passengers


My elbows are poking people I can’t even see


It is one of those journeys

Where I just don’t feel like me

The shapes don’t fit


Nothing makes any sense


My body has run amok in the carriage


And no one will speak


Train noise is a kind of silence.

It hypnotises.

Its a kind of social blindness.


As we pull into the station,

I put out a call to arms

Thankfully my arms respond


They collect all my pieces

Put them back where they belong


I may not be me


But I will be whole again


At about midday

I wonder about my liver

I wonder, is it loyal?


I am still not sure about my liver

	


	



					
						


	

		
Every word I’ve ever known

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I have cut my nails

I have pulled out all my hair

Slashed the bottoms of my feet

And let them bleed on the stair


You have to look it in the eye

You cannot back away

You have to look straight at it

Say what you have to say


I pricked the end of every finger

And every single toe

I climbed into the bath

I am letting it all go


There’s no other way to get it

You can’t let yourself obscure

You’ve got to know you’ve got this

Rather than half sure


I looked at bloodied water

And out loud, I said my name

And then I simply began

Because I will never be the same


You cannot hold back

Give it half of what you’ve got

You’ve got to give it everything

If you want the lot


I just said them all

Every word I’ve ever known

And when I was finally finished

I was finally alone


I rounded them, caressed them

I let those words go free

Sent them out into the world

No longer part of me


Then I closed my lips quite tightly

I let my tongue finally rest

I am wholly ready now

I am at my best


I go back out into the world

Scarred yet fully formed

And I live my life


In silence.


In total silence.


And in my silence,


I will deafen you.

	


	



					
						


	

		
The ‘Me’ Muscle

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I spread wide

And then I contract

Like a muscle


I release

Then hold back


I command the room

I take up all the space

I expand


Next day

I cannot find my place


I ebb and I flow

Then I flow and I ebb

I hide behind the sofa


I sleep

Under the bed


None it makes any sense

None of it feels really me

I’m never really sure


What you get

Is never what I see


I hear my own voice

I hear the words I say

I say them out loud


In my head

The voices never go away


I am not completely sure

If I am ever really me

Is there someone


Somewhere else

And I’m just pretending who I’ll be

	


	



					
						


	

		
The master word

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
I am just a word

Yet I hold you in my thrall

A master to your servant

I beck and then you call


You put me in a sentence

Say my name out loud

I call you when I’m lonely

And you bring me the crowd


You describe your mastery

Of language and of speech

But I am the master

It is me that you teach


And on a lazy day

When I am rather bored

I can make you write this

I am the overlord


I am not benevolent

I am not very kind

I take up whatever space I want

Whenever I am in your mind


I want you to forget me

Please don’t remember this

I am the master word

I’ll be back in a bit.


If you like it, hit the button!

	


	



					
						


	

		
The Umbrella Dance

				

			Posted on  by tuesdaylatte		

			


	
	
			


	

		
All along the platform

Scarcely noticing the rain

A company of umbrellas

Are waiting for the train


Its like a sea of manhole covers

Who’ve upped and taken flight

Leaving gaping holes

To catch cars in the night


There’s a nip and a duck

A weave and a tuck

A subtle sway of hips

And sometimes just good luck


Some hold it high

Some snuggle down quite low

But one arm is always ready

To deflect any blow


Its like a giant turtle

With a long and stretchy back

A giant patchwork quilt

Yet mostly grey and black


Wait, there’s one with colour

That cannot be right

It snakes through the crowd

In the early morning light


And that one is a painting

From an artist we all know

She bought it at the gallery

She didn’t see the show


It’s a wily platform herd

A mass of classless cattle

Stood against the rain

Against the daily battle


He uses shoulders

She moves her hips

Its sensual and its practical

And their umbrellas miss


We all know how its done

We all know the trick

When the umbrella is too close

And you have to be quick


A dance among strangers

Before we all get on the train

An early morning ballet

That takes place in the rain


And the train takes the bend

And its lights flash us all

There’s a uniform drop

A shake, shake and a twirl


A giant sucking in of fabric

Like someone pulled a chain

A moment where we all get wet

Before we board the train


If you like it, hit the button