The Farmers wife

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I should not have been a farmers wife.

I spend my days, imagining

A different life.

I carry the land like a festering sore

When the ewes abandon lambs

They come begging to my door

I feel nothing, no empathy

Not motherly

A churl of stomach,

I retch and shake my head

Bloody little lambs, better off dead

I see why their mothers crept away

I bottle feed but I do not play

Unmoved by their plight,

Unmoved.

I am unmoved, by his plight.

Glued to this table

Tied to this kitchen,

Bound to this house.

Unmoving.

With my hands warm around my mug

It isn’t my fault, I am not to blame

He dies slowly with the light

I dream, I live a little

I sit here as darkness falls

I will not miss these four walls

There s been an accident

He’s lying out

In the mud

In the yard,

In the dark

Now, now its dark.

He is lying in the mud, in the dark.

Its been hours

I could hear him screaming as I drove in

It was daylight, maybe late afternoon

I parked the car at the front.

I crept to the door,

Turned the key in the lock,

Crept inside.

I have not looked out

I boiled the kettle, made a drink and sat to wait.

He screamed, and screamed and screamed.

I just…day dreamed.

I expect the tractor overturned.

Does he not know how many times I would have liked to lay down in the mud and scream

I guess its different when you are lying pinned under a tractor

But still there are many times when I would have jumped at the chance

to scream and yell and writhe in the endless bloody mud,

that is farm life, endless and bloody and mud.

Do you think if I’d done that he’d have rescued me,

Come out of the barn to see what the fuss was about.

Unmoved.

Do you think anyone was ever coming to rescue me

He won’t survive the night, not in this cold

I’ll hide in here til morning light,

then go out and look for the missing sign of life.

I should not have been a farmers wife.

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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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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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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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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