Damage

 

Damage

 

In the morning - an apology.

 

Now, here was a shock,

after all there exists

so many more deserving causes.

 

You’ll read it carefully

and, in wide-eyed surprise,

fire off a quick-witted response

because you are.

 

But of course, seconds later

you wish you’d taken more care

with implications there

of why the need for sorry?

Vulnerability of the down-a-pegged giver

will stay with her,

and she won’t forget

to make mincemeat of you yet:

well, depending on how big she is.

 

Of course, you see it all.

Striations. Those invisible patterns

radiating from her mind,

and those of her rivals

rocking her chartered world,

and some, to be fair,

you gave her yourself to unfurl.

Striations in conflict with striations,

blind visions that blunder

and perhaps she’s buckling under

the weight of everyone’s patterns

in clashing colours that cannot mesh:

well then, here’s stress.

 

Entombed in a buttressed castle

from high battlements she’s gazing

down - because who is to say

which mosaic, which tile

will prevail with just cause?

 

All these forces contradict

and make for choppy seas

of chop-logic, you found yourself

across the desk from baleful eyes

that had not slept,

where you should have

your own counsel kept,

but, too late, cry havoc and let slip

those words she now regrets.

 

So, tell her you love her,

no damage done,

until here comes another one

and of course, there is some

while you’re left wondering why,

out of all those deserving

she could have picked,

she picked you?

 

But, in the morning – an apology.

Striations

 

Striations

 

Baleful watchers from crimson skies

at distance, possess Jupiter’s red eye,

speak nothings of us in slingshot ire;

and stay their thunderbolts and fire.

 

They say: let all your four winds blow,

crack your cheeks, you hurricanoes,

where hot lava cools into striations

and your fighters take up their stations.

 

Slipshod, in fight-night boxing rings,

with corrugated ropes of cosmic string,

more just than corners in blue or red,

paint here two more colours instead.

 

Enflamed striations from our minds

impress themselves upon the blind,

invisible and unseen, in black flashes

shot skywards into night’s lashes

 

in raptures, perhaps we stuck it on you,

the tossing ship, the hapless crew,

by slinging striations of sticky silk

from wrists, in twists of cobweb built.

 

There’s guilt. But no room to breathe,

when striations from we other three

overlap you in dreary cuttlefish conflicts,

all squitting ink and lack-boned squid.

 

And all our striations are interlocked

in daggered drawn gunpowder plots.

and minute shocks against each other,

while all the time we smile like lovers,

 

No cartographer exists that can chart

some Sargasso Sea, or place apart

where seaweeds stop and still the boat,

for seasick swimmers to stay afloat.

 

Malignant watchers in crimson skies

are showing little or no surprise,

but move nought to scissor our striations,

just rubbing brows in contemplation.

Malik

 

Malik

 

They feel pressure, a stress

of a shared thing, huge divides

and something scuttles inside

her courageous heart.

 

 

      On one side

here’s your inscrutable audience,

in blank rows and she cannot read

the script on the lines of the faces.

They have taken their places

in silence, save for children

who fill in the books by bawling,

stabbing at phones, cat calling,

and all are waiting for traces

of dispensable wit, disposable facts

among pratfalls and maudlin acts.

 

 

We’re opposite.

She feels the weight of the young,

her colleagues who’ve never sung

on this stage yet, or felt the press

of rolling eyes, silent sighs

the guillotining of the breath

refused passage, choked throats,

the glottis stopped. Waiting turns

as what was bold and firm

by minutes melts to jelly,

craven crawling in the belly.

With each passing speaker

and each finished teacher,

ticking moments come closer.

 

 

                        Now

she smiles, takes the microphone.

Upon her cheeks where roses grow,

beauty from her lips is flowing,

in sweet perfumes and pure.

‘This little language in your hand

is a small purse of coins to spend

but wisely, choose your moment

and it will surely be just as potent

as anything else you’ll gain in life.’

 

 

Just as quickly sitting down,

and as these little words resound,

perhaps hearts within that pound

will take just a little more or less.

Doughnut

 

Doughnut

 

"Good morning, Po. Nice to see you again. What you want?"

Saturday morning. Last day of the weekend. Table for one.

"Er...a chicken muck-sandwich and coffee."

"What coffee, po?"

Ah, choices.

As school teachers go, Jennifer Hanley was a bit of a magpie.

And then, she wondered what it meant to be a magpie. That happens, you know? You idly associate yourself with some spurious British bird and are left with spurious connotations.

No magpies here, of course, she reminded herself, remembering how they used the timescoop to drop her here in the desert.

It was January and, wouldn’t you know it, the Winter sun was winking at her in conspiracy.

Words.

Key words.

She’s inner-monologuing, working them around her silent tongue  and switching tenses: spurious, conspiracy, winking, connotations.

What does it all mean?

Well, the timescoop was an affectation for a start, she admitted: no such thing, is there? Just a random fancy remembered from television, decades ago, where five of the same character had been dumped in the death zone to battle it out for 90 minutes. and there wasn’t much deathly about that zone, either.

If timescoops were a thing why then she had been cast back ten years and had aged accordingly.

"Your coffee, po." The small Filipina had delivered a suspiciously full tray.

No, no chance of seeing a magpie here, she reflected. Once, she had liked them. Years ago, back home, there'd been poems. But no gold and she'd got to seven rather too soon.

Here? Just those ubiquitous African myna birds and their high pitched squonking. They were clever, and travelled in pairs like policemen. If you approached, they could hop away incredibly quickly whilst regarding you with either hope or suspicion.

Then, under every car or behind every dustbin, stray cats. some grubby, others remarkably clean depending on wherever they laid their hats. Often they’d start off fine, but as they aged pick up bits of injury here or there – the odd missing eye, a limp, a flaccid tail, that once had been proud and pricking.

Occasionally, you’d see a stiff one stretched out that had attempted one leap too many.

It was no use getting attached, Jennifer realized. Time and again you befriended and fed one of them but always they would disappear, never staying around past two to three weeks. Experience had taught her that.

And experience was something that Jennifer had bags of.

At school they called her an old fart and chucked things. And that was just the other teachers. If she took the metro, fellow travellers would offer their seats.

She hated that.

Ah, let’s do away with Jennifer, she’d been Jenny before that in a two for joy sort of way. But as one had flown, she’d more time to think and, of course, had found herself bereft of magpies and swamped in mynas.

She wondered if these sort were proficient in imitation. There’d been some caged ones, back home, full of mimicry. Clever bastards.

Careful, Jenny, your teeth are showing.

She rubbed idly at where the strap was biting her shoulders. More weight these days, of course, and that belly was testing the T Shirt she’d tossed on after her shower. Her bilbil. The school librarian had pointed this out while she was hunting for a book.

Bilbil.

I suppose this is why Jenny was eyeing that doughnut in front of her. It had come free with the coffee. Promotion. Buy one get one. One chicken muck-sandwich came with another, a pair of coffees and the solitary doughnut. She hadn’t wanted it, asked for it, craved it.

Yet there it was.

Wandering back to her accommodation for a moment – comes free with the job you know – so picture an apartment for one with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and one quite generous study. It’s in amongst many such apartments in this particular tower block, set aside for teachers in the city.

The younger ones had to share. Company rules.

We’re only travelling by mind you understand, or timescoop if you will, because Jenny often uses that mode of transport. And she’s feeling irritated.

Maybe that’s too strong a word, actually. Irritation, I mean. It’s difficult to read that face, creased as it is like newsprint. Still, she’s wandering around there right now.

Outside, by the skips, somebody has puked up.

A young one. Irish probably. They scooped up many of those and bought them across. 

The sick was there this morning but an hour later just a thick, black, damp patch remained; doing its best to perpetually stain the brickery. Who had cleaned it? Probably one of the employees whose task was to do such a thing after the night’s doings had tucked themselves in bed with whoever they’d managed to bag.

Now, as the sun rose, manfully drying up the stained paving, the nocturnal were waking, staring in bewilderment, at their bedfellows. “Who are you? Who are you?” they might hoot, like owls, blinking through the misty morning dust that had gathered in the corners of their eyes – except that would betray them. Keeping schtum was the best policy.

The young are schtum.

How came they by those stains? Ah, no matter. Before long, they’re reaching for their phones. Ordering coffee cures and trying not to breathe in the other’s breath and wondering how long it would be before they could leave, deny it all and start texting accusations.

Jenny watches as motorcycles arrive in endless convoy. Park. Sign in at reception. Clutch the one plastic beaker of coffee with straws or nippletops for suckling. Head for the elevators. Disappear. Reappear empty handed. Depart.

Here’s an old fellow. He’s struggling through heavy C Ring traffic with two beakers and an ice cream melting over his wrist in the sun. Stumbles past the puke stain, up the steps, racing to his destination before all of the dessert has covered his cuffs in a slimy trail.

But now the morning muezzin was being piped over the intercom and, following him, Jenny once more found herself staring at that doughnut.

It wasn’t bad as doughnuts go, she supposed.

It came in a paper packet, designed to discreetly absorb grease and keep the sugar in place. Against her best intentions, she now removed it and placed it back on the cheap, red plastic tray beside the disposable tissues and gaily coloured cardboard wrappings. She quietly sipped her coffee and observed it.

You don’t often analyse doughnuts, do you?

However this one announced itself as a ‘cookie comfort’ and its torus was covered thickly in crumbled Oreo. Beneath this was a sugar glaze that trapped the dough within. 

Jenny removed the cake and broke it into two halves. Upon doing so, she discovered it had been pumped full of viscous synthetic cream.

She didn’t eat it yet.

Just looked at it. On the tray. In the middle of her table.

Around her, Jenny realized the noise had increased. Why? Ah, yes. Four youngish looking men, a couple with beards, all of them fit looking and muscular, were talking excitedly in a language she did not know. They were oppressively close and giving her the once over.

Instinctively, she covered her chest with the jacket she was wearing.

Using her peripheral vision, she took a sideways look, wondering what was happening, just on the edge of being intimidated by their proximity.

Then, with a whoop, they began vaulting over the adjacent table.

Not just vaulting, you understand. One had switched on a speaker which began rattling out loud, autotuned nursery music a bit like Pinky and Perky, if you can remember that. No? Well, Alvin and the Chipmunks, then.

They had formed a queue and were waiting in turn, jiggling legs and bottoms in time to the rhythm. In front of them? A cell phone, filming. They would vault the table, pull a pose in front of the camera, duck, then scuttle to the back of the queue, and repeat.

Jenny hadn’t much time to wonder why these men were doing this before an African security guard arrived and sent them packing.

He also looked at her suspiciously. Had she somehow been a part of this performance? Then, satisfied, he stalked back to wherever security men go.

Shrugging, Jenny went back to her broken in half doughnut.

She had always liked them. Had nothing against them. Found them perfectly acceptable fare.

When she’d been young, they had always been a plain, sweet yellow ring. Sometimes a bit stale and crumbly, but always quite simple.

Later the ring disappeared, and they’d become plumper and filled with fruit jam. Strawberry if you were blessed, blackcurrant if you were extra-fortunate.

As time went by, they’d become glazed, covered in a thick icing, over-sugared – and now, this. Was there any dough even left? This, she realized, was the problem, the meaning. Her key words were somewhere in there, but where, I could not say.

Jenny shivered. In fact, she now wished she had not broken the doughnut in half. She might have given it to one of those cleaners, tidying up after the diners and the table vaulting gang. But it was too late, now.

She got up from the table, leaving her doughnut behind. Remembering a time she’d been visiting the Ivory Coast. The sun was setting and, as she’d looked up at the trees she’d been sitting under, the leaves had literally started to stretch and move, widening out, like broken umbrellas unfurling.

She had been horrified to discover they were bats. Bats all along.

It took several gin and tonics to settle the nerves, believe me.

And hurrying back to her hotel at night, her eyes had been drawn by an iridescent phosphorescent glow in the ground – some sort of unearthly glow, undulating in the leaves. Drawn towards it, Jenny was transfixed by what she discovered. Thousands upon thousands of copulating cockroaches, writhing in an ecstatic dance – but this time, no phone, no camera.

It’s Sunday.

The doors of the apartment block is disgorging occupants by the baker’s dozen whilst stray cats slink away and your myna birds watch in interest, executing gymnastic vaults if any people get too near.

Jennifer is such a one, boarding one of the waiting buses that are there, waiting to take your teachers to schools across the city.

She sits in her normal seat, alone and behind the driver, reaching in her bag; the only one to pull out a book.

But, as the bus pulls away, she cannot see the words. Or, if she can, they mean nothing. They defy her and fly away, like magpies. She can read nothing.

It is too dark, too dark to see - even with the flashlights from the mobile phones that surround her like swamp.

Gum

 

Gum

 

If you swallow it, you’ll know.

 

Mostly, you don’t, and you shouldn’t,

but, believe me, it sometimes goes

where you don’t want, a lump,

somewhere down throat and stuck,

or maybe not, you just feel it there

before it’s off on its winding journey.

 

I’m a fan of the nicotine variety,

because she urged me to give up,

so, I’m now a smoke free zone,

call me ULEZ, if you like - I’m signed

just past the interchange for the M25,

which goes round and round, in orbit,

starts just about where you end.

 

Coffee, too - it’s bad in the morning

before you’ve eaten, causes heartburn,

dear, reduce your alcohol and stop swearing,

by calling everything ‘stupid’.

 

But even you’d get frustrated with the young

idle juveniles that they bring

from the home country; pay them less

to leave school classrooms in a mess.

 

I digress.

 

So yes, then there’s attention to your dress,

the unruffling of shirts, the zipper check,

cream upon chaffed elbows

and all the while, you’re chewing gum.

 

That’s important after quitting,

you’ll notice how exasperation builds

even after you’ve killed the smoke,

expunged most of the tar from your lungs,

some hunger for it stalks and comes.

 

Until the day, after some research,

she’s there, spelling out the side effects,

like nightmares, palpitations and dysfunctions,

snatches those packets you husbanded,

as your fortress of last resort

although you’d claim it’s nothing of the sort

or that you resent the absence.

 

I suppose she’s talking common sense,

taking away the last bastion of your defense,

marry in haste and then repent,

but gum sticks, doesn’t it?

 

And maybe in some long years hence,

she’ll look at you with mild curiosity

as she would look at an inoffensive grub,

frowning puzzled from above

at something that she used to love.

Mary

 

Mary

 

Mary was a year older than him,

an upper sixth while he was lower

enough to paint pictures of love

in broad brushstrokes imagined,

always woke from naïve dreams

before knocking and entering in.

He only ever managed shy grins

back then, but they shared time

in the common room and spoke

words that had lots in common

were pleased that they got along,

firm friends with touched bases,

dilated pupils and flushed faces

and thoughts about inner places

which age must keep close secret.

A year was all the difference then,

if he would leap then so must she,

that’s how it must have seemed,

her great wisdom and maturity

in womanhood had blossomed;

his months were only flotsam

tossed and floating in her flood.

Catholic pure and freckled skin,

he can still see her hair framing

those dark eyes and softening

her coquettish smile in porcelain,

his tongue tied moisten her lips,

then, in a desperation, he slips

one day, folded half-baked note

into her purse: ‘Ring’ it urges

in trembled, cursive ink-stroke.

There’s numbers. I can’t recall

how it goes or what was there,

but a boy, he’s waiting her call,

bitten nails, in the sallow hall

of his parents’ home, forbidden

to ever use that phone himself

on pain of charges, and the cost

is to incur his father’s wrath,

more thick ears or purple bruise

or skin marks left by tender shoe.

Waiting near, for fear they hear,

rehearsing all the lines he’d say,

still there’s no shrill bell, until

at last snatched from the cradle,

on hearing her voice, he’s unable

to mutter even a syllable. Chokes.

I still hear those sounds of throat

closing and struggled heartbeat,

think each word that retreated,

how it could not be completed.

Weak joke - didn’t put that note

he cannot sing, bring him to say,

‘Mary, I love so much, it hurts.'

He went away. Sailed off to sea,

but once, while he was on leave,

he phoned again and they agreed

to catch up to where they were.

She's coming, heart's drumming

for it's surely more than friendship,

this new man preening in her slip,

evermore clutched by time's grip,

to hum notes he always will regret

and he knows he never will forget.

Seat

 

Seat

 

On every bus throughout the land,

here’s just one seat. He stands

solitary, alone, on speaker-phone,

positioned as a noisy private stone,

like some sort of piffling henge;

low-cal, non-alcoholic brew-dog

with space for access, egress,

because all other stones have fled.

Your remaining seats are twinned,

recede backalong, take on the chin

the less room to stretch out limbs

looking on in mute suspicion

as is generally English tradition,

when cuckoos long ago have flown.

So, he lights no Norwegian fires,

sure, but maybe our seat aspires

to be the one to burn and blaze,

influence some latest craze,

be remembered till end of days,

or join other seats side by side

who stretch far and down the aisle.

But, now he is content within him,

has vacant eyes and vacant grin,

blotches all over seat coverings

and has been known to drool,

mutter warnings of loose stools,

in gay abandon scatter blithely

trash about his feet in panoply;

browns, blacks, greys - cannot be

moved upon to stow or sort,

chucked around without thought

to trip up your unwary fools.

Your edition of broadcast news

for the duration of the cruise,

in woolly hat and knitted spork,

Barnados or from Oxfam bought,

he’ll talk; when he’s done, talk,

and if he’s over, talk some more

in pitch impossible to ignore;

seats that walk, use the door

to drag his mongrel by its lead,

and release it so it could be free

then shout: ‘Run, Forest, run!’

With every sweep of second hand,

his phone will bleat and demand

our seat’s call and response;

other seats affect nonchalance,

look away, but behind their lips

are twisting teeth, biting cheeks

ignoring inner voice that speaks

of treacherous, unseemly things

until at last it comes, the bus brings

our solitary seat to a place of rest,

decides which way it would be best

to disembark his pigpen of scrap,

while peering this way and that,

step stumbling, strident grumbling

and those feckless wonderings

why nobody came to meet or greet

the trash he's strewn about his feet.

Now here is left our solitary seat,

somehow lonely and incomplete,

but, fear not! It’s never very long

before another seat comes along.

Gonegirl

 

Gonegirl

 

1991, Prom, girl gone.

Came home, something wrong

and his small flat, empty, cold,

on the hob a stew grows mold.

Two children clung, each holding

tight to his opposable hands

while wanton Winter cruel blows

like ice across the empty land.

Shivering while their questions flow

that cannot be ever answered,

and he sees no reasons,

because there are no reasons.

Just a stale trail of breadcrumbs,

inside his head, a drum thrums

and reeling left feeling numb,

until blood like percussion comes.

Someone left she’d called Bruce,

he’d met him once, twice, called truce,

a pax, had told him there’s no use

in facile sulking, had spoken truths;

arranged marriage gone south.

Or Dave, yes that was it, a mouth

set by permafrost into frigid lines:

how he’d begged her for more time,

had sobbed, cracks in his shades,

cracks in his face, cracks in façades

of the walls of his place. Girl lost.

Now, finally his turn, come to pass,

possibly it always had been this,

but, oh, how such pain would last,

walking amongst the living, dead,

thoughts of horror in his head;

he flamed like nitrogen for years,

and it left him with forever scars,

asked himself that question, why,

sought high and low for her reply,

in places where doubt multiplied.

They sometimes kept in touch,

and he only asked her this much,

she dyed his grey, withered his bloom

but her lips were sealed like tombs,

to ‘when will it be, will it be soon’?

No answer ever would be uttered;

by degrees hearts ceased to flutter,

then hearing from a friend one day

where he was now living far away,

she’d rolled her car over on a motorway,

and while he continued growing older,

could only offer a hard shoulder.

Mug

 

Mug

 

She holds it up too conspicuously,

flag-waves it - for all the bus to see:

a plastic mug, reads ‘Proud to be Me’,

in disposable beaker and straw scrawl,

blink and you wouldn’t miss it, really.

Definitely draws attention to something,

I can’t say I know what, though.

You're curious. If you lack for nothing

then what is it you know you lack

that you feel those indifferent at the back

should sit up and take note of?

I mean the mug is causing no ripple,

no applause, not even a shrug

as she’s standing, sipping, staring,

but that’s the sound of no one caring.

It’s coloured like Bridesmaid’s confetti,

and ribbons from a shook tambourine

in crimson, yellow, purple, green,

like you might see in street parades,

you’ll hear whistles, then they fade.

Or even, ‘well done for being brave’

and then passes you a free lollipop,

sugar at the dentists to cure tooth rot,

because a hole here needs filling

but don’t use raw plugs, keep drilling.

And the therapist at the support group

who told you there’s only ‘I’, not team,

now let’s build your self-esteem,

so here’s a mug, it says you’re special.

And is there actually anything in it?

Those who are the quiet majority,

passed up on, are non mug owners 

here on the bus, are not standing up

with look you hair and spectrum cups

or charity shop chunky knit bonnets.

It’s not unique that it doesn’t quite fit,

nothing special at all. Even that voice,

husky pulling sledge, is down to choice.

We’re all separate, take our own paths,

machete through the tall grasses,

most of us cry, some of us laugh,

but don’t feel the need for naff

flag day ‘proud to be me’ plastic trash,

as if everyone should want to know

any pitiful story behind the logo:

You feel the need to tell us like it is,

be the correct answer in a TV quiz

compered by some camp comedian.

Yet, here's no scoop, no hold the press,

no exclusive story, no life’s a mess

just an inkling of too much of this

self-indulgent, self-important pastiche.