The second song

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I could listen to the album
The whole day long
There’s just one problem
I don’t like the second song

Its meant to be soulful and slow
But it doesn’t matter what I do
I just don’t like it
I don’t like the tune

I’ve listened to it often
Again and again
But I don’t know what its doing there
It doesn’t quite fit in

I feel I should write, tweet or comment
But I don’t know what to say
I just want the second song
To go the hell away

But something compels me
To listen every time
Just in case I’ve missed something
That might make it right

He seems to slur the words
I’m not sure what he says
I don’t like the second song
But I like all the rest

I know I should just skip it
I know I simply can
But why did he put it there?
What a stupid man!

It ruins the whole album
It ruins my whole day
I don’t like the second song
And yet, I let it play

It’s time to change jobs

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

As I lie in bed, I feel my body.
Literally I touch it.
And feel it.

Atrophy.
Petrify.
Modify.

Tree.

I have been in this job too long.
I creep out of bed in the morning, a mess of vines
Veins fading into woodwork.

I stumble to the train
Out of the station to my desk
And then I stupefy.

Horrify.
Edify.
Terrify.

Tree.

I morph into something bigger. A large trunk, some branches. I cover my whole desk. I root myself in the floor. Clasping the carpet with delicate filaments searching for the moisture left by sweaty feet.  Leaves. The computer gets absorbed in. Seen and then unseen. As if nature is claiming me back from all this technology. The lights flicker on the screen inside of me. Flicker again. Flicker out.

I thirst. In the bright sunshine. Through the glass in the window. I thirst. I am a tree. I wait for the water. I never knew how thirsty a tree could be. Not hunger, just thirst. I see people work around me. I grow outward and upward and no one knows what to do. I hear them talking, feel the voices vibrate in my leaves.

And then, then it rains.
I see it splash on the window.
Sweet delicious water. I grow.

Up.
Up.
Up.

Through the ceiling.
Heavier and heavier on that floor.
I drink my fill.

I teeter.
I totter.
Teeter, totter.

And then I crash downward with the weight of it all. I work on the seventh floor. Down I plummet through six floors of masonry. False floor after false ceiling after false floor in a false world. I fall down, down, down and the building crashes around me. I can hear the vibration of people screaming in the rain.

I teeter.
I totter .
I let myself fall sideways.

Onto the pavement.
All over the road.
Then I feel myself again.

Literally, I touch my arms, my legs.
I am no longer a tree.
I sit on the pavement.

I am wearing yellow.
It is sunshine again.
I look around me.

Chaos.
Destruction.
Devastation.

I get up and walk away.
I guess I really needed that.

The Scent of Nadia

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He slides into bed beside her
She feigns asleep
She wonders what he is thinking
He’s brushed his teeth.
The minty smell of toothpaste
Does he think that is enough
She inhales, exhales, inhales
There it is.
A waft, a wave, that smell

The scent of Nadia

He lies there.
He wonders if she is actually asleep
She must be asleep
If she were awake
She would smell it
The vision of bodies tangled in the night
Hovers above him
He inhales, exhales, inhales
There it is.
Holding tight to his skin

The scent of Nadia

Nadia sleeps alone
Solid, physical, in a bed far away
Dreamless sleep
The room has no smell that she can sense
She sometimes feels the loneliness
Of his dishonesty
In the morning she gets up
Her head clear
She inhales, exhales, inhales
Moves the bottles around in the bathroom
Cleanser, moisturiser, perfume

The scent of Nadia

They eat breakfast at the same time
At the same table
Each one is alone
Each one showered, shaved, perfumed,
Ready to go out into the world
As they eat, he wonders
Is that a whiff of suspicion
Does she smell a rat?

She does not smell rats
She stares purposefully into her cereal
If cereal has a purpose it is to make breakfast longer
It needs more milk
She quite likes the perfume
Wonders if Nadia likes women,
Inhales, imagines, exhales, swallows, inhales to hide it
Tries to place the smell, Its quite floral, Daisy?

He wonders if she senses it.
She senses it and wonders what it is.
Nadia stands in her bathroom
And dabs it on

The scent of Nadia.

Where is Margaret Gilbert?

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Where is Margaret Gilbert?
I heard the tannoy say her name
There’s an empty seat next to me
On this over-crowded plane

I feel like I am royalty
I have space to spare
Where is Margaret Gilbert?
There is no one in her chair

The doors are locked for take off
She has arrived too late
Its like I am a rock star
With a model on a date

People they are staring
It is too good to be true
I’m on this flight for hours
Not with one seat but with two

I can stretch my legs out
Fling my arms around
Distribute my belongings
All along the ground

I can have the arm rest
I can have it up or down
Who cares where the head phones go
There’s no one else’s sound

I can use the toilets
Leave my tray table down
No climbing over a body
I can really move around

Where is Margaret Gilbert?
She never made the plane
Perhaps she died en route
Dead, so I am sane

Where is Margaret Gilbert?
I want to shake her hand
She gave me 14 hours of peace
Before I had to land.

Eaten

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He looked at his hand. There was less of it today than there had been yesterday. He had bound the empty skin of one toe to the next one this morning, but his left hand seemed intent on disappearing. He knew what it was. All those metaphors. All those years. It was physically possible it turns out. He laughed quietly to himself as he sat in the lounge. All those doctored photos. What else could explain it.

He sat there without the TV on. In the darkness. Listening. He could hear the neighbours, not easily. Just the odd bump to break his silence. He hated the neighbours. They were from some place else. He wasn’t sure how much else, but some place else. He felt his hand contract as he sat there. Felt it shrink and shrivel as rage coursed through him. They had no right to be there, those neighbours. The people who ought to live there, ought to be from here. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

He couldn’t articulate it but he could feel something gnawing away in his fingertips, eating the ends of them. It was so visceral he looked down as if he might see a rat there chewing the end of his hand. There was no rat but still he could feel it. The erosion of his self as a physical entity.

His rage was all consuming. He sat there listening for more bumps. A car door closing in the driveway across the road. Who were they? They didn’t belong here either. They never spoke to him. He had been certain to ensure that never happened. He had thought about putting something through their letterbox to tell them to go away.

The children two houses down were particularly noisy. Bad parenting. She worked. What could one expect. He went to bed. All night, he could feel it eating at him. His arm. He couldn’t lie on it. It was so uncomfortable. He wondered if he opened his eyes his arm would be completely gone.

He swore he could feel his internal organs shrinking each time he slept. His stomach caving in. He daren’t even walk to the newsagents to get the paper anymore. There were too many people not from around here. Too many people who did not belong here. His face was worn and tired from glaring and leering at women who let their breasts hang out of their clothes. It disgusted him.

He raged in the night and still he could feel it. Travelling around his body, eating wherever and whatever it felt like. He was filled with it, with the injustice of these people filling up his world, there refusal to live by the rules that he set. Did they not know that once he had been an engineer. He woke in the morning, more tired than when he went to bed. He had breakfast, the same breakfast he had eaten for 40 years. He looked at the left arm, the hand hanging off the end.

He know longer knew how to stop it. The hatred was eating him from the inside out.

Things Shakespeare never knew

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He is armed.
She is disarming.
It is not a match.
She is not Romeo.
He is not Juliet.

A child cleans her shoes in the kitchen.

Boozy jokes and sweaty hands.
He is nervous. She is numb.
Her skin is stretched over her skull,
high ponytail and the angry makeup of a Scottish queen.
She feels empty inside.
Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo and friends,
Slump at the bar.

The child bought the shoe polish herself,
Because Mandy said, and Mandy’s shoes are ever so clean.

He is inside of her.
Yes, No, No, Yes.
She cannot remember.
He does not care.
He is Ophelia floating down the river,
Hair unkempt, breath stinking of fermented hops.
She is Hamlet, at the point of death,
Toby or not Toby?
Was that his name?

The child scuffs the polish over the dirt.
Wonders why it doesn’t work.
How do Mandy’s shoes get so clean?

She saw him again.
He was in the same room again.
He did not see her.
Could not see anyone clearly,
Through the drunken haze.
She drinks some more.
He drinks some more.
Iago serves at the bar.
Desdemona and Othello
Are blind drunk,
Stabbing each other in the dark.

The child throws the polish at the door.
It falls open, speckles black on the floor.
Mandy’s house has clean floors
She leaves it there and goes upstairs.

Dad sleeps in the street.
Cleopatra,
The streets are an asp.
Mum sleeps on the couch.
She dreams of a man in uniform who can save her,
Antony.
An endless drunken stupor,
With the TV on and the towels unwashed.
The post is covered in soot this morning.
They don’t have a fire.
So that is not possible.
She wonders why,
Through hazy eyes.

Their child looks at her newly cleaned shoes,
Shedding black spots on mildew carpet.
She is cold, she is hungry.
Mandy with her nice uniform and pretty hair
Will be at school today.

And she is.

Mandy has her hair in pigtails with pretty ribbons.
They twirl and sparkle in the sun.
Suddenly without warning she grabs Mandy’s hair.
Pulls it hard until Mandy begins to cry,
She sees the tears, feels nothing, does not know why.

‘How you begin life,
Should not determine how you end it.’
Someone famous once said.
But he was an old white man,
Long since dead.

Needle in, needle out

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

They are watching, always watching.
Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

I live inside my head. I remember. Sitting by the fire with my mother. Learning to sew. The warmth, the comfort. All of that. And now this.

Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

The ability of clothes to transform. I have learned to block out all the noise, the pain. To pretend it’s a movie going on around me.

They are watching, always watching.
Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

Focus on the seam, on getting the two sides together. On getting it straight. Neat tidy stitches. One row after another. A new needle. More cotton. Strong powerful thread.

Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

The act of creation. Of making something wearable from a long length of fabric, of putting two things together to make it something new. That is not what is happening here.

They are watching, always watching.
Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

One stitch after another. My hands worn. Reddened. Fingertips smooth. Wrists, swollen, sore. This material is difficult. It doesn’t want to come together. It pulls apart. Flakes away.

Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

Clothes can transform, they can take you somewhere else. One stitch after another to make something new. This material can’t be pinned.

And still they are watching me, always watching.
Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

Their desperate eyes watch my hands fly. I am so fast, so very good at this. At holding their wound together as I flay my needle across and through their wretched skin. My hands. Soaked in blood.

Needle in, needle out. Needle in, needle out.

As if the power of sewing could heal them all and stop this bloody war.

Come the apocalypse, we’ll eat the cat

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

My mother always said ‘Come the apocalypse, we’ll eat the cat.’

None of us took it too seriously. And then the apocalypse came.

It was more civilised than you think. It was announced on the BBC. The second the announcement was finished, she went looking for the cat. I think we all felt it was a bit too soon. I remember my Dad sitting at the dining table, pushing the meat around his plate with a fork. It felt a bit unseemly, as if there should have been a bit of a notice period. Time to say goodbye.

There wasn’t.

It was in the pot and on our plates before most looters even got out of bed. Here’s a tip, early evening apocalypses are best. People don’t believe it, go to bed, don’t wake up. We did wake up, minus the cat.

That first day my Mum visited the neighbours to see if they were ok. They were elderly. She came back laden with cans. We thought that generous at the time. There was meat for dinner again.

‘You know this street is full of elderly neighbours,’ she commented a week later. Followed by ‘enough meat to keep us through the winter.’

I commented that not all old people had cats. She looked at me blankly. I pushed the meat around my plate. I had not seen the neighbours since it happened. I don’t remember our cat being that big.

Since the collapse of civilisation as we know it, there are far fewer people around. We however seemed to have thrived with an inexhaustive supply of fresh meat.

Being honest living through the apocalypse has been lonely. There’s been the kind of atmosphere you’d expect at the apocalypse. A little doom laden, a lot of darkness. Not much water. We’ve coped. Mostly we stayed indoors, with the lights off. We’ve been out raiding other peoples houses, but we rarely see anyone.

We got through the winter with fresh meat. A lot of cats I told myself. We planted vegetables in the autumn. My mother had seeds. She was nothing if not prepared. It’s like she’d been waiting for years.

I can’t remember when Dad disappeared. Now when I look out in the garden though I wonder. There is a particularly fertile patch of soil. I’m sure she didn’t. He just wandered off like she said. Still we had fresh meat.

I think the apocalypse made my Mum happy, proved to her that all that tough parenting she’d put me through was worth it. She was never happier than after it happened. She was hardy and strong my mother. Focussed and determined.

She taught me everything I know.

She cooked well.

She tasted good.

And endless bloody hope…

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

When you look at the stars
What do you see
Do you wake up every morning
And think of the sea

I’ve read all the words
Everything you wrote
About spirit and happiness
And endless bloody hope

I look at my life
And I don’t see you
I look at my words
And you’re not there too

Do you do the ironing
Or do you find it mystifying
Do you wash up every night
Because you know that is stupefying

Do you know what it takes
To write silly little words
When the to-do list is long
And you’re not being heard

How many loads of washing
Did you do this week
Or did you sit in the garden
In solace and peace

Because I could write
Write like you I think
If I just had the space
And the time to blink

It wouldn’t always rhyme
Like this one does
I’d make it all spiritual
Maybe mention love

When I see the stars
I often think of you
When I see the sea
I remember I had dreams too

But the dreams have all faded
And fallen from this world
I never got the chance you had
Because I was born a girl.