An Earthen Queen

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its rained for days.  Weeks really.

The sky a dull grey, clouds looming, hour after hour. There has been the odd gap, a shaft of blue but it has been rare. It has not been apocalyptic rain, not sheets of water pounding into the earth. It has been a slow tedious drizzle, falling out of the sky. A steady, stealthy, beat, bent on a ponderous breaking of the spirit, rather than a thrashing of the soul.

It has fallen on pavements and rooftops, on hospitals and schools, in churchyards and backyards and roads and playing grounds. The world is now soggy and damp.

I have not been outside much.

I want to write to the newspaper, to open the machine and type in the words. Tell them this isn’t the first time, this has happened before, centuries ago. I can’t. How would I know that? Its before proper records began.

There are several of them, of us. Spread out across the country, all with the same thought, somewhere out there, something, someone, has called the rain.

English is one of the few languages where the word queen does not derive from the word king. This is why. This queenness thing, born of the land, eked out of the soil. Britain and its earthen queens, I remember them all. Not all queens but all of them queens.

Victoria  was not one, nor the last Elizabeth, although we someone times wonder about both. The Elizabeth before that one, she was one of ours. There was Boudica with all her wildness. She was born this way too, with the rain.  And Aethelflaed, the fearless Mercian prodigy. Each of them, born ready for war.

And this one will be too, a new queen, forged from British soil, literally.

I take out ancient robes, dust them down, ready to begin the journey, to seek out the child, if indeed it is given up as a child.

The rain, a new queens insatiable appetite for the land to nurture her at birth, to give her sustenance. She might be born fully formed. She is a queen with the clouds and the land as her womb and the rain as her milk. Formed in the mud and chalk and the clay, features fine and chiseled by the roots of Oak and Beech, Birch and Ash, Hazel and Blackthorn, succoured on rain tinged with the tang of nettles and blackberries, wild garlic, and wild strawberries.

I wonder what this one would be like, a war monger, or a woman of peace. There has never really been a woman of peace born this way, of the earth itself and not the womb. There is something about this birth, this island, that births them ready for war, even Elizabeth. So almost certainly a war monger, leader of men  but a slayer of men. A warrior queen.

What will that look like in the 21st century?

Will she be born like the others? Boudica was born fully grown. It had rained for months and we stood knee deep in mud as she writhed and fought and finally extricated herself from whatever held her in the earth. She arose like a goddess before us. Her reign short but bloody.

Elizabeth had a more even temperament, she came out of the earth as a child, yet still she had found war. I remember her standing on the banks of Tilbury, still remembered for her urgent message to soldiers, bring me blood. And Aethelflaed, who was born on the winds to the west and stayed there to slay all who defied her. She fought like a mad thing and was the best with a sword I have ever seen.

But it is a different world now. What if CCTV finds some naked woman emerging from the mud and screaming she is queen?

As I start to drive I can smell it already. Its primal this birth, wild, a queen, a thing, caked in mud and grime emerging from the land, an unfurling of limbs from the murky darkness of soil and clay. The rain will stop, the weather will calm and she will be here.

Then if we are lucky there will be days of sunshine before the days of blood. I can feel her, I can feel her power. She is coming. I look at the rain, at the way it is falling, called from the sky for a fickle mistress. I want to pray but prayer has long since left me.

If this must be bloody, let it be short. Let the days of sunshine be long. Let the rain stop. Let there be calm. Before the storm. Because I can feel the power of the storm, of its attraction and I can tell, this one is more Boudica than Elizabeth and the ground that is soaked in mud, will dry and then at her whim, be soaked in blood.

If you like this, hit the button. I wrote it as prose, but am not sure it would not make a better poem. If I was going to write a novel, I think this is how I would start it.

The Mirror

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I’ve had time to think. The panic has mostly gone now. I’m just bored.

I bought the house without really paying much attention to the mirror in the bathroom. I mean I saw it, but it wasn’t memorable. I don’t remember it being cracked when I looked through, but it was cracked when I moved in.

It was badly cracked. Right down the middle, not straight of course, a kind of jaggedy edge thing. The seller had taken it down and it was resting on the floor. The wall where it had been was just blank.

It was one of the first things I did, replace that mirror. When I think about it now sitting in this tiny little space, it was like someone had opened up a seam and climbed through. I thought the mirror was too big for the space anyway, so I bought a smaller one. I hung it up and I thought it was a lot better.

I came home on the third day and there it was on the floor, the new mirror, shattered. Completely shattered. So much for my DIY hanging skill. I went out again and bought something slightly different. I had a friend help to hang it.

A few days later same thing again. I thought nothing of it at that point.

I don’t know when I first heard the howling, I was maybe three mirrors in and I think I was in the shower. I’d bought a slightly bigger mirror and the howling was quite low level. Enough to worry me and make me exit the shower. But I couldn’t see anything. I checked the whole house but there was no one but me.

Each day after that the howling got louder, I just got used to it. I had the plumber check the pipes but of course when she was there, the howling was silent. It wasn’t a dog, it was quite a human sound, like someone screaming into the wind. I think they were words but I couldn’t make them out.

Then one day whilst I was in the shower the mirror came down again and shattered on the floor. Aside from the conundrum of bare feet and shattered glass, I swore I saw something push it off the wall, as if something were behind it. I checked and double checked that wall. It was solid.

Another mirror, and this time it was just as I was turning off the shower and I heard it howling, and then it said something. Really. Clearly. ‘You need a bigger mirror’, like ‘You need a bigger boat’ -straight out of Jaws but in the bathroom. I don’t know what I thought really. In the movie do they get a bigger boat. But as soon as it was said, ‘Off the wall went mirror number 6 or 7 or something.

I should not have listened, but I did. I bought a bigger mirror and put it there. I was something of an expert now in hanging mirrors, and in navigating broken glass in the bathroom.

This time I was ready, and to my surprise while I stood there in the shower a spindly arm came through, just pushed through. My first thought, thank goodness its not a shark, which is a ridiculous thing to think, but Jaws was playing on my mind after the bigger mirror, bigger boat thing.

I got out of the shower and I grabbed the hand at the end of the arm and pulled. It clung on to me and I pulled but nothing really happened. I mean what would you have done? Yeh, turned and run. Put a mirror somewhere else in the bathroom. Just not had a mirror in the bathroom at all. Yes I understand that I did keep going when I could have stopped.

It wailed back at me again.  ‘You need a bigger mirror’, before once again, another mirror shattered on the floor as well. At this point I did actually think about a home renovation. Just add an extra layer of plaster, but also when I examined that wall there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. So was it the mirrors, it made no sense.

For the next mirror I travelled. I literally went away for the weekend to somewhere 200 miles away to buy the next mirror, because who knows maybe it was where I was buying the mirrors. Plus there is no way I could face the same mirror shop again, or even have another one delivered. I wanted anonymity when I bought this mirror. Particularly since the mirror they sold me was quite large and not recommended for bathrooms.

I had to lie about it, saying I was putting it in the bedroom. The whole thing was ridiculously out of control and my budget app, my banking app was sending up warnings when I paid about how many mirrors one person could buy. If my whole life was properly connected I am pretty certain the 10th or 11th mirror would have resulted in a medical referral and perhaps that would have been a good thing.

But I did buy a bigger mirror, when really I should have called pest control or an exorcist, renovated, sold, gone to a doctor, anything but put that oversized mirror on the wall.

Because you know then, it happened. The howling. The arm. And I pulled. And I pulled her through. I think it was a her. It all happened so quickly.  There she was in front of me, withered and dirty, greyish from a lack of sunlight, limp hair. Ghastly. I really wished for a shark in that moment. And the smell was unbearable. But the mirror did not shatter, there was just a crack, like a seam. Jagged and twisty, but just a seam.

I guess I expected a thank you but that is not what happened.  She was quick. She grabbed me. She was surprisingly strong and I was struggling but so surprised! I felt myself being thrown and I saw the mirror and I felt the jagged bits of glass as I went through it.

I was stunned. I sat there for a moment in murky darkness. The only light was from where the mirror was. Where was I?  And then I heard it, I heard her removing the mirror, lifting it off the hook and setting it on the floor. And I heard her laughing. And then I was in total darkness. In a small room that I couldn’t really stand up in and it was cold.

I panicked but that did nothing. In the darkness as I felt with my hands I realised someone had written something. I traced the word with my fingers, PATIENCE.

And now I am sitting here in the darkness and there are walls, but not my walls. Its like a little cave and I can see where the mirror is supposed to be but its not there. My fingers trace over and over that word PATIENCE.

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A Hand in the Darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I swear that this is a true and honest account. My right hand was the last thing that I lost control of and these are my last words.

I think I saw it long before I touched it. Every night for so long, that slight, barely visible creature in the darkness. A shape, an outline, not bright beady eyes, but dull grey ones that barely registered on its face. I was never afraid of it. I was never anything but curious about it.

Slotted in between a wardrobe and a box, it was an odd looking shrivelled little creature. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Maybe someone I knew once. Each night when I got up to use the bathroom, it was there. I would walk past it. I thought I should be frightened but also I needed the bathroom. Even when I was going back to bed though, I wasn’t scared. It wasn’t menacing. It was just, there.

It was on the way back one night that my hand brushed its hand. It must have pushed its hand slightly forward or something. That hand was cold and bony and I felt a deep sense of loneliness spread through me as I climbed back into bed. The next night I brushed the hand again, more slowly.

It felt like human skin still, just wrinkled and used. It wasn’t a smooth touch of hands. There was a moment of friction. I still wasn’t scared, just curious. I must have done that for a week, just brushed its hand lightly. Each time the same thing, a deep sense of loneliness inside of me, a coldness, an abyss inside my belly. It was momentary though. I still managed to drift off to sleep.

I looked at that spot during the day, there was nothing there. No sign of a way in or out. No sign anything real lived between the box and wardrobe or in the box or wardrobe or under the bed. Yet I saw it each night and I had touched its hand. It felt real.

I don’t know what prompted me to grab that hand and hold it one night. It didn’t seem to object. I held that hand for just a second at first. Its important to know that I grasped it. It did not grasp me. I held that hand and I felt the loneliness, the sadness, darkness, a void, a something. But I still did it. And then I did it again, every night. And slowly I held that hand for longer. I held that hand for longer. Me. And I think I knew but I still did it.

It was a long time before I noticed the other thing. I always grasped it with my right hand. It was a Tuesday morning when I noticed that the nail on the little finger of my left hand had gone an odd colour. I couldn’t remember how I had injured that. Later that day I noticed that the whole top of the finger had gone a mouldy grey colour. I should have gone to the doctor. Instead I took a bath and poked and prodded the finger, to no avail.

It was at least a week before the whole finger had changed colour. Then I went to the doctor. The doctor had no answers, some kind of infection, antibiotics, hospital. They could not fix it and it did not seem to spread so they sent me home to consider amputation. Extreme I know. I was desperate to get home, to get back to my creature in the dark. I told no one about the midnight hand holding, even though I knew.

And that night I held its hand again and the next morning another fingernail went the same full grey colour. You get choices in life. And I chose. Consciously now. Each night. I held its hand. Each morning another finger. Then my whole hand, half an arm eventually. And the loneliness, some days it felt like it lived inside of me. No one could reach me. I couldn’t explain what was happening. The doctors were baffled, there was talk of CCTV to see if I was self harming and I guess in a way I sort of was.

But it had gone so far and I couldn’t stop. I knew, but I couldn’t stop. Something about the void, the emptiness, the need to give succour to that soul kept me going. Kept me holding that hand. Every night. And the greyness, the dying skin, it kept spreading.

I was bedridden and there were carers coming in and no one knew what to do as the greyness just seemed to spread across my body. They wanted to take me to hospital but I wanted to stay. I argued and fought to stay. To not be saved. Inside I felt cold and shrivelled, but I was committed.

And in the dead of night, in the darkness it would creep out of the gap between the wardrobe and the box and hold my hand. For hours on end. And I knew. I knew. But I didn’t resist. I let it happen. On and on I let it happen.

So if you’re reading this I guess I’m gone now. Don’t feel sorry for me. I chose. But please leave this for the next person who lives here. I chose, right until my last dying breath. This is my true and honest account of what happened.

If you see me, if you think you recognise me beside your bed, in your room somewhere, in the darkness. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Don’t reach for me. Don’t reach for me. Don’t squint and try and make out what I am. Roll over. Go back to sleep.

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And then I Flew

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The beginning

I cling to the tree. A spindly, sparsely leafed whip of a thing that is no taller than me. I’m not sure I should call it a tree. It’s a cluster of gnarled branches with the odd bit of greenery. Its central stem only slightly thicker than the rest of it.

Its roots can’t go that deep. The top of this cliff is sand and dust and beneath it is the stone that is this edifice. The tree is the nearest growth to the cliff edge, a brave little soldier that clings on to life, much as I cling on to it. Sometimes I pour the remains of my water bottle on it. I like to think I am keeping it alive and not vice versa, or at the very least our relationship is symbiotic.

When I let go of this tree, there is nothing between me and the edge. I come here often. And I cling to the tree. I feel its papery bark sticking into my fingers. Sometimes I get splinters, small grey bits of  tree that I take home. I dig them out with a needle. Little specs of blood and bark intermingle on a tissue on a table in my lounge.  

I am scared of heights. Or edges, maybe edges.

Some people are scared of heights because they are afraid of falling, others because they are afraid they will jump. That last one has a name, that fear of jumping,  High Places Phenomenon.  Apparently its your brain misfiring, misinterpreting the signals, that’s the science stuff. In literature when its described, its more about freedom, about the void, about flying, about wanting to know how it feels. A few seconds of absolute freedom, of falling.  Its hard to describe why its so attractive as an idea.

That’s why I am here again clutching the spindly tree. I am back from the edge. I am not thinking of the landing, just wondering about the sensation, the feeling of those first seconds, milliseconds. How will that feel?  To just go over the edge, to know that sensation. I cannot control it, that urge, desire.  Not easily. So I hold the tree. I let myself imagine. Close my eyes. See it. Guess at the feeling.  But not too much. After a long time I let go of the tree. I turn around and I go home.  

I do not think it is healthy for me to live near here much longer.

The middle

I moved away. Down along the coast. Somewhere flat.  The highest rock on the beach, about 2 feet, most I could do was jump onto sand and sprain an ankle. I swam in the ocean. I drank in cutesy coffee shops. I had long lunches with friends. I held a job, bought a house. Years passed and I thought it was gone. That feeling in my belly. That thing I was never quite in control of.

And then one day I was swimming in that ocean, and I felt it. The lump. I thought a lot of things, and I thought of that again, of that sensation, of free falling. Of not ever knowing it, well at least not in a physical sense. There was a visceral sense of falling but not a physical one. I went for tests, there was a treatment plan. A diagnosis. A prognosis. A life, a future, curtailed but there behind the meds. Hope. And I went back to the ocean, to its coldness, to its salty embrace, to prepare, to deal with it all, to get my brain in gear.

But I knew. I knew the end.

The end

The day before treatment started. I packed up the car. I drove. After 20 years the old town looked different. I went to that car park, which was now much closer to the edge. They moved it, but my beloved little tree was still there. Not much taller, still spindly, still clinging on. I booked into the only hotel in town. I slept. At 6am I got up. And then before daylight came I drove back to the car park.

It was empty. I got out of the car. I took off my boots and socks. This was a bare foot trip. The car park was gravel so the first few steps were not pretty. After that it gave way to dust and sand.  I went beyond the barrier to the tree. That wondrous, spindly, spiky creature that had held me steadfast for so long. I high fived the warning sign as I went.

Danger beyond this point. It should have said freedom.

I grabbed that little tree like I had so many times before. I spoke to it softly. Remember me. And I’m sorry.  And there’s a lump, they say I will get better but I don’t want that. I asked it for forgiveness, like it was a God. And just to bear witness. I felt its bark dig into my hand. It had not changed in 20 years and deep inside I hadn’t changed that much either.

Then I looked into the sun that was emerging on the horizon. I peeled each finger off the tree. I stood beside it briefly. I didn’t scream or yell. I just ran. Only a few steps. I felt my feet pound into the ground. The dust being kicked up.  And then there was no more ground. And one foot felt the air and then the other foot.

And then I flew.

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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Self care and the zip

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I look at my hand
Freshly washed
The faint smell of soap
I waft it through the air

I don’t want the faint smell of soap

I sit down
I am old
Tired
Yet here I am

I should have long since passed from this earth

I lay out on the couch
Prepare myself
I reach my hand
Forward, up, back

It is a violent action as I shove it down my throat

Deep inside
Down, down, down
I have made a cut
Fitted a zip

I pick out the food scraps caught in its teeth, let them slide down into my stomach

I momentarily,
Panic!
I always do
It is my hand

But its like there is something foreign inside of me

I unzip
Reach out
Through
Into where my organs sit

Down to my stomach, I have not been able to chew my food for a long time

I mash it with my hands
Squish and squeeze my innards
I feel my kidneys
Press them hard

They are calcifying in old age, All these things I must do

To stay alive
I push the food
Through my intestine
Its like making a sausage

Because that is how you make a sausage, squeezing it through an intestine

I consider
Should I ?
Will I?
It is possible

To pleasure yourself from the inside, but not tonight

I tickle my lungs
Smile
They still work,
Breathe in, breathe out.

My heart long since past its best, withered and drawn, pulsating to a soft dignified, dying beat

It is my heart
It will fail me soon
I squeeze, release.
Squeeze, release.

It is too old to do it all the time on its own anymore, I must attend to it occasionally

Squeeze, release
Squeeze, release

Squeeze

Release

Squeeze

Release

I find a rhythm, I pump it for maybe an hour or more

Then I pull back my hand
Fumble with the zip
Wrench my hand
out of my mouth.

I will live for another day, there is a secret to eternal life. Now I sleep

The words won’t come

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

A poem about writers block and ice-cream

I want my thoughts to soar
But they remain firmly grounded
Preppy little thoughts
Half formed and unrounded

They say nothing
Not of value anyway
My best ideas deserted me
Gone off on holiday

Yet I have to publish
As if there’s something I have to say
I try to focus on the grammar
But the commas want to play

They’re taunting me,
A game of musical chairs
They move around the sentence
As if no one really cares

They say write until the words come

But the words are in a taxi
Going around the block
Laughing at the window
They know that I am stuck

I can see their little faces
Shouting scorn at me
They’ll regret it later
I’ll put them in a spelling bee

What happened to my sentences
Where did the grammar go
Why are my words in a car
Bellowing  No! No! No!

I don’t have an answer
My thoughts are not my friend
Thank goodness there is ice cream
Ate a whole tub of it – in the end

First draft

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

You can never go back
And write it again
It never comes out right
Unless its fresh from the pen

You can tweak it, touch it up
But it’s like paint on a wall
The changes that you make
They have to be small

Some days the words
They come out, they just flow
Sometimes they don’t
Its impossible to know

By all means re-read it
Look at what you wrote
But hesitate to change it
Its like patching a coat

You can re-sew the button
You can wash out the stain
But we all know the coat
Is never quite the same

The problem when you write
Is it’s a way of being heard
If you change it too much
Its like your words are being slurred

You need to have some focus
You need to find some peace
Your don’t need to be perfect
You just need to speak

You have written it down
You said what you want to say
Its ok just to leave it
Just to up and walk away.

I never met a poet

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I never met a poet
But its what I want to be
When I look in the mirror
I’m not sure what I see

I never met a rhymer
A person good with words
There’s a whole community
But my voice is never heard

I come from far away
Where words aren’t written down
No such thing as wordsmiths
Tiny little island, tiny little town

I never met a poet
I’ve waited my whole life
To meet someone who’s called that
To see what they are like

I sit quietly in cafes
Writing notebooks full
words no one ever reads
And no one ever will

I’m not sure how you do it
How you call yourself that word
Do you have to write a book or not
Does it matter if you’re heard

I never met a poet
I probably never will
My time to write is limited
And mostly its uphill

I never met a poet
But I hope I do one day
I hope they look like me
And I know just what to say

Today you have been lucky
It was your lucky day
There is something I should have told you
As you turned and walked away

When I shook your hand today
Although you didn’t know it
When I shook your hand today
Today, you met a poet.

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.