work in progress – ataraxicat

I’m thinking about ripping my heart out

today I started missing you
so here’s how I’ll deal with that
I’ll stick my hand
in my mouth
down my throat
and tug my heart out
in ten seconds flat

plop it in the sink
and no more pain
won’t feel the throb again
drop it like jelly
and watch it drain
like a red teabag
only not quite the same

there’ll be no ache
just a hollow space
but better that than a break
or a wrenching, tearing,
sinking black hole –
better out than in
for my health’s sake

and my heart will just sit
in the sink for a bit
while I go to Tesco’s,
finish work, eat toast,
watch films, get fit
and feel nothing but nothing
not good but not shit

I’ll leave all that missing
with the washing up
under a dripping tap
and not give a fuck
as I pass by the kitchen
never again fussed
by the thought of us kissing

Exhibit

Someone hung her, years ago,
on a wall –
stole her,
ripped her right out of a book.

Isn’t she magnificent?
Take a closer look.

You could almost touch her hair –
very fine and
so red,
releasing a perfume into the sky.

Is she looking at you?
Try not to catch her eye.

You could almost feel her skin –
pastel and damp
with cold;
her neck is bruised and plum.

I wonder, does she care?
Perhaps she’s numb.

You might fall in love with her
all at once
like this;
you may think you hear her cry

but she will not answer –
so don’t ask her why.

The Pigeon

I was seven when
the neighbour’s cat caught a pigeon
and dragged its twittering, tattered trunk
through our kitchen.

The cat and her mouth,
now clean and empty, seemed innocent,
but the errant trail of crumpled feathers
gave it up.

We hid it from mam,
stayed up in shifts, fostered and fed it sugar
water from a spoon, playing each other’s
game of nurse.

I remember the thrill
waiting for the magical renewal we were
led to expect: a resurgence promised that
would never come.

It fell still then,
its beak soaked, sticky with sugar, as its
drowned and silent body lay between us,
ruined and scrap.

Sometimes I wake from
shadowed dreams to see the smothered thing
in its throes, and I do not sleep. We were not
what you think.

Some Give

I don’t feel bad about how
the world might be ending –
and I don’t feel guilty,
if that’s what you’re getting at.

I’m more concerned about how
I can feel myself bending –
a little like this, at first
and also, somehow, like that.

When it gets late, we watch Cops on TV,
once all the rest have made their way to bed.
Then you make cheese on toast, and I make tea –
we feel inclined to sit up late, instead –
and though our conversation is quite plain,
you’ll show me something funny on your phone,
and when we laugh our ribs vibrate with pain,
as though at something we should have outgrown.
At three or four o’clock we start to shrink;
my tired mind begins to wonder whether
you’ll think about us sitting here, in sync,
when you and I no longer live together.
For me, it’s that I’ll miss, though it seems trite –
when we watch Cops together late at night.

Love Letter

You write about the moon
its opalescence
a bowl of shadow and pearls

the way it paints over
everything it sees
the world in pallid gloss

You write about art
its multitudes
the lawlessness of expression

the ghost that shapes
everything we do
the bent arm behind us

You write about love
its essence
and of the helplessness

the violent shooting heart
without restraint
the thunder after the strike

You write
You write
You write

and it makes me sick

Ghost

It was you that taught me
to put newspaper between
the bottles so they don’t clink
when you put the bins out,
and how to read a map;
you’re handy like that –
a born navigator

I still get lost.

There’s a rolling boil deep
in my chest these days,
rumbling in my tight throat;
I let it out in slow sighs,
like bleeding a radiator,
and pick plaster off the walls
you built in the house

I still get lost.

Listen to the soft fricatives
of the leaves outside;
I think it’s autumn now, and
I still see you in the bath water,
and smell you in the sea –
I want to hear it over and over.
I wish you’d tell me

so I don’t get lost.

Only Dickheads Ride Vespas

Alex watched a large brown fly circle the sticky perimeter of his glass, and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. The heat was stifling, and his focus had long since shifted from his parents’ conversation to the distant, silver spatter of the municipal fountain on the far side of the smouldering plaza. He imagined himself beneath its aquamarine deluge – feeling the cool water sweep into his armpits, and slick down, across the backs of his knees. He fancied he could smell the scent of chlorine and pennies from where he was sat, but the fantasy soon fell apart in the heat of the airless day.

He turned his attention back to his parents. His father was three minutes into one of his recapitulated monologues on how the game had all changed since the 1970s, and how Alex’s generation couldn’t possibly hope to recreate such a prodigious era. From the bits and pieces that he had tuned into, Alex knew that his father had already covered the problems with digital refereeing, and obscene player pay packets – “It just beggars belief, son.” – and would soon circle back to good old-fashioned love of the game.

The Edge

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The night before, it was supposed to be Lucy’s turn to close up the shop, but she’d had to nip off early because the baby had the croup, and Tim had a work thing to go to. I’d offered to do it for her, because I actually quite liked the silence; the soundlessness of the shop floor as order is once again restored. Like a big jigsaw. In a way, I thought it would do well to prepare me for the following morning. Something practical, to take my mind off things.

At closing time, Arthritic Maggie had said Rather you than me, petal, and asked if I had plans for the weekend. How’s your fella, the one from Hull? She’d asked, and I’d told her he’d gone back home for a while because things around here were too depressing. So, he went back to Hull, of all places? She’d laughed. I laughed too. Why not, I thought.

Continue reading “The Edge”

Passing Thought

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Yesterday, you said you had thought about me
and I didn’t ask why.

I didn’t ask if you had been imagining saving me
from an inferno – snatching me from the strong arms
of harm, so that you might not be forced to live
without me;

or if your thoughts were of craving me
in that orange dress you like – at a party where
people stare, and everyone wants what you have
for free.

I didn’t ask whether it had been first thing
in the morning – if my image slid into focus with
the slow light of day, and stayed in place like
a ghost;

or if it was the evening when cicadas croak
their song into the darkness – if you had it then
when we cannot help but think of what we want
the most.

No, I didn’t ask. I just wanted to hear it –
needed to know nothing more of overcoming obstacles
large or small –
it was enough for me
that you thought of me
at all.

Tag: work in progress