Bent Forward, Nearly Double

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Bent forward, nearly double
Her eyes on the ground
As she pushes the trolley along
The pity aimed at her

Is almost palpable

But she doesn’t notice it
She smiles into a pond
None of us can see
It is spread out before her

As she walks

What a life
The things she knows
Things like
You don’t need beauty to get laid

All that over done machismo

About how you should look
All of it ignored
What counts is how you feel
Inside

Moments she has known

The moment that he realised
he didn’t know her anymore
She saw it in his eyes
That self possessed woman

Who was no longer possessed

Raw, primal sex in a park
When she was young and
they were hidden in the dark
Faceless, nameless carnal

Primal

Cigarettes in theatres
Ice creams in the sun
Feet in mile after mile of sand
The joy of a first flight

When flying was new and rare

The first time held in by a seatbelt
Instead of lolling in the back
The first time fingers tapped a keyboard
On a computer with a screen

Swiped a phone

She smiles into the pavement
Their pity is palpable, touchable
But she knows better
Her knowledge is endless

They think the world is moving so fast

But truthfully it spins more slowly than ever
What has it done in her lifetime
Flight, motorways,
Computers, colour television

Phones. And oh, oh the clothes.

Bent over, nearly double,
Brown skirt, brown jacket
Secrets hidden in shades of beige
And gilded, patterned, darned with age

Ah the life she has led,
She smiles into the pond
Hopes their lives are as bright as hers
As she pushes the trolley on.

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.

Literal Yoga

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And the yoga instructor says cactus arms
I look at everyone else
It is clear no one is thinking what I am thinking

In my head, my arms are turning green
Spouting giant spikes
I am at a children’s party,
Walking through
Popping all the balloons
Adults look on horrified

The yoga instructor’s voice is calm, relaxed

But I am in the ocean
Swimming with my cactus arms
Spiking fish
Deflating toddler armbands
Parents are yelling and screaming
As small children drown

I don’t find yoga relaxing

Then we’re on to cat- cow
A cat? A cow?
A cat cow? What does that even look like?
Is it a really furry cow that meows?
Or a really large cat that is particularly stupid?
Seriously what is a cat cow?
I’ve never seen one,
Does the milk taste the same?

I find yoga conceptually difficult

Then there’s downward facing dog
Why is he looking down?
Why does the dog have to be so sad?
The poor dog, in a downward spiral
Head on its paws, chastened, sad
When it should be chasing its tail
Instead its caught in an endless downward spiral
Only depression awaits it

My friend says I take yoga too literally

Then there is a rabbit and a camel
And a dolphin
A whole bloody zoo of animals
All of them captive to the human spirit
There’s one legged pigeon
Oh poor one legged pigeon
How one legged pigeon suffers
I have never done two legged pigeon

I recently went vegan
And felt I had to give up yoga

The Captive Page

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

And so there it is
A blank piece of paper
Pure and clean and expectant

Waiting

Will this be the piece of paper
where the best seller scrawls her words
Or will this simply be a list of

Groceries

A note to a lover,
a wife’s final words as she walks out the door
‘You should have washed up more often’

Arsehole

Is it to be folded, crumpled
Will it get the soft sleep of an epoch
Breaking down in the rubbish or

Recycling

The harsh teeth of the retreatment plant
Gnawed by fraught machines
Pulped, pulped again, reinvented.

Reworded

Does it still know that it was once a tree
Tall and strong and proud
Before its feckless enslavement to human thought

Scarred

By a pen across its silky surface
Marked forever
With blue and black and red ink

Humans

As the first letter forms on its bright page
Does the writer know
Is she, does she understand

Culpable

For a moment does the echo of a tree falling
Does it make her pen wobble
Does she hold firm and write on

Guilt

Do fingers of guilt
Lick the sides of her ideas
By that, is her ocean of thought

Limited

Free the page! Let it flutter in the wind. Let it fly til it finds where it wants to be. Let it be free of your words and your ideas. Unshackle it from your need to express yourself. Let it float down your manicured street. Free. Let it go.

Those are not my words

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Carefully drafted
Beautifully crafted

Those are not my words

Your ears ringing
Your heart singing

Those are not my words

Lifted up, soaring high
Big emotions in the sky

Those are not my words

My words are tiny, small
They take up no space at all

They’re not heartfelt prose

More a little voice in the dark
Hiding behind a bush in the park

When they see someone they know

A tiny little, a very small sound
Held close tight, to the ground

When I walked past you the other day

A murmur, a ripple, a hum
A fading heartbeat, not a drum

You didn’t notice me.

Or my words.

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.