Chrysalis

They could choose anything. Stick insects. Rabbits. Tadpoles
were the obvious one, but what would you do with the frogs?
It was prejudice that drove her to butterflies. Anything else with wings
scared her but somehow butterflies were different.
The name turned bluebottles soft and golden; a creature made from her
favourite dress or hotly spread toast, her mother fluttering her chin
with a flower, looking for the shine.

The teacher said they must observe the life cycle and draw it on A4. She took it seriously; illustrations and coloured arrows and encyclopaedia entries. She knew even then how great the stakes. In those days her life depended, daily, tipped on edges she felt with her toes, could not see, or speak of.

They went into the woods for the caterpillars.
Stuffed two glass jars with dock leaves and grass.
Everything went startlingly right.
The sun shone
and found them out, furry black ones, orange, white,
each a mushy jewel of hope, an itinerant preacher. A pledge.

Now she does not trust the memory. Were they so ambitious?

She thinks she squeezed her dad’s hand in relief, told him about the gold stars.
They planted geraniums for habitat and waited.

Not all lives are meant to be long.
Every evening she checked; counted the leaves for hunger-bitten holes;
spoke names in the voice of the mother they missed.
Even then she felt the foreboding of the guilt that would come.

The day they were no longer there she was grown-up. She bore the grief like a gift, carrying it carefully in front of her, tying a black ribbon around her arm.
She had waited for a chrysalis but there were none.
Only lifeless twigs and dead leaves.

Of course, the caterpillars had vanished
from pure sorrow, pining for the woods in the tiny sunless garden
of the too-small rented house.

If only she’d done stick insects.
The pessimism that she learnt to carry like insurance was born then.

But the very next week it was the turn of the butterflies.
And so from lifeless twigs she learnt
resurrection.

Imbalance: two golden cups, diametrically opposed, make Portia’s prop.
Knowing not what either holds or the depth of the dip, only that
There are things one can add to the cup on the left, spoonfuls of sand.
There are tools to be tried. Not that they’ll level the field
As butter-knife flat as you’d like, but certainly they will
Lessen the gap, make a gesture towards, a feint of librium.
Come to rest.
Lesser imbalanced, companionable, better beknownst.

Climate Change

Bright white scuds overhead, if you look bluewards
You'd be surprised, as though God had his finger on fast-forward.
Buildings have skin grafts, scaffolding unfacing fronts.
Workmen orange-capped and plastic sheeting flapping.
If you're not part of the solution you're part of the
World. The writers at least are laughing, pens behind ears,
They've got stories now to outlast their last. Tragedies galore,
Human, animal, mineral, take your pick, all must have prizes.

Freefall

She will catch the plane.
She will be home soon.
The airport is busy, moving,
a kind of organism; there is no place for stillness.
This is
no place for me. It is a place for waiting. Purgatory
or the long white corridor where you queue
on judgement day.
I would move faster than them all I would not be here.

It is announced
a bored nasal voice
somewhere above our heads and our eyes open
blink assume a look of energised wakefulness
we check our bags and belongings gather
up our children empty crisp packets and duty free
we stand feel creased and stiff and
we move like the voice tells us to we await
further instruction

I am sitting next to a man
and a girl about my age. They’re Dutch.
He has a tweed jacket and she has
just bought a mini tube
of paprika Pringles from the air
hostess. She offers. We refuse.
I fidget between them, look
from one to the other, watch
their mouths flowering strange words
that collect and clog the air above us,
press my toes against the soles of my shoes and
feel my breath breathing my heart beating.

She will be home soon.
Already
this very moment
a car is rolling along a motorway in her
honour in her name there are people
travelling for her people
ravelling their lives around her because because
because because
they love her.

On his birthday she has set her alarm to wake her at six am.
Waking, foetal, her whole weight pressed downwards
as if she had not climbed into bed last night
but rather,
fallen directly onto it from a great
height,
she reliefs, inwardly
warms, even
while stepping into cold corridor air on the way to the showers;
realising time will be quick today,
she will reach worth waiting for moments today
without noticing the wait.
A better day, and one more crossed off, overall.

Layering herself in clothes is safe, warmer,
less opaque
and so she wears a thermal long sleeved vest,
70 denier blacks, her knee length patterned skirt, her knee high boots with a low heel, a shirt, round neck jumper, a jacket.
Collecting her life into her bag she must hurry now,
remembering to lock the door,
then stumble out of the building into the immediately chilling morning air,
like
she is warm flat coke poured over a glassful of ice, she is
pouring herself over
the cold six thirty am of the day.

happy birthday
how are you
do you feel older
no no-one ever does
so what time is it with you now ok I was nearly right just a couple of hours out what have you been up to then
I know I miss you too
yes I love you
no I love you more
you’d better appreciate this I’ve got up early
just for you
it’s freezing
in a phone box just outside reception I can see my breath
don’t start telling me how nice your weather is that’s
just cruel
mmm
really
look sorry it’s only twenty past six here
I should really still be asleep
well happy birthday anyway I love you
if you were here I’d give you a proper kiss
ok
take care
bye
love you
bye

and the noise is growing until there’s
nothing else.
She has closed her eyes, sitting back in her chair,
hands gripping the armrests,
concentrating on a point of dark mystery far
and above her nose, eyes, forehead, far
and above the aeroplane where she sits; far
away from the noise buzzing the vibrations the momentum
this far
away the jump and queasy sink of her stomach reaches her brain
only distantly
like a memory from childhood,
as the plane raises its nose
and plunges into the sky
she is thinking about her breathing
inhaling
exhaling
she is thinking about lifting off pushing off throwing herself
away from this ground aiming at
home though aim doesn’t matter so
much its just the pushing off that matters
like the swimmer turning blind under water kicking
the edge of the pool and spinning away in one hurtling jerk
an instinctive movement, a reflex action, self preservation. Delayed.

Can you see it?
Coming from Geneva Geneva to Amsterdam lets see
There
No sorry that comes in at ten. We’re looking for eight thirty.
Ok there, there it is, gate 5 which is this way
Come on. Do you want to get a trolley. I think she’ll have a lot of luggage,
Wee pet.
Save time later anyway.

Right. What time do you make it now?

Did you know, if you get
the bus from the university campus
into Southampton city centre,
say if you wanted to go shopping,
and I don’t mean just clothes shopping, I mean going to Asda – and yes
there is a Safeway nearer but say you don’t have that much money and so you particularly want to go to Asda because you’ll save about
30% - then this bus is going to take you about
forty minutes. Forty minutes! Terrible.
And nearly always, the bus fills up like it’s
the bus that picks everyone up who doesn’t get into heaven;
all us sinners squash in and cough and murmur and steam
up the windows until its as if you’re in a steamy kind of rolling,
rattling box, the combined weight of our sinful
bodies rocking us hellwards down hills,
slipping squealing into traffic jams we can only see
opaquely through clouded glass.

She is about seven minutes away from sleep;
at the very drowsy heavy stage where she’s acting on the dream stage,
with dream people,
where occasionally she glimpses real life and
Real life gives her a little, proud acknowledging wave from the audience.
That’s my child, there.
Dreaming.

Zoom zoom, whoosh, high,
high in the sky.
I’m getting a plane soon.
An aeroplane. You know,
they fly. Like the ones
you get when you go to see
Granny and Grandad. Like when you go
to England. Sigh.

Sonnet to a Hooker

Eyelashes on her cheek resting themselves like petals asleep
And soft slow breathing like hmmm haaaaa hmmm haaaaa
And that wisp of hair blown up and away and down again. You would want to curl Up, around but you are not there, not really, this is just poetry. See.
That moment in time arriving as it does every day with the devastating
Smash of alarm bleeping shrill and waking and all the energy summoned now is in The name of turning it off of making it quiet again and peace and
No. Now she is really waking and remembering sleep is only for a bit and then
You have to get up before you deserve that dumb heavy lifting or falling
Again that
She imagines in the day like sinking into a cloud.
Dark
That she can dispel with light that is in her power just lifting pulling at the curtains The sun is setting like egg yolk in oil and the room and her mood brighten
Enough to make her hungry.
A roughening sound as she drags the bone handled knife across brown toast Butter butter bite. Small straight teeth crisp dry awake.
Sheathed in favoured fabrics that make her feel rich, velvet, silk, cashmere.
Never mind where. Lipgloss and kohl under her eyes and
Mascara hugging her eyelashes kissing her cheeks with blush now ready and safe And hard as nails. Painted slowly redly neat.
The radio talking news to the flat like there’s someone there but now she’s gone, Muffled in a fur coat stalking in stiletto boots and slamming the door LOCK. Busy Day a list of jobs like a bank
Statement.

Refrigerate Pain and It Keeps and Keeps

Not always but when I get close to you it burns
Like your hand on a hob, an accident. You shouting.
Slap me with words you do not mean.
We could be
The drunken houses that lean into each other
Ready to fall anywhere but down. I give in,
Throwing balls at you, catching your eye
To annoy you, to make you cross I am playing up,
Acting down, a desperate move but it
Works more often than not and so I don’t mind,
Who remembers, who will know? Be unkind, go on.
Anything but the emptiness in eyes that you can bring, so quiet, like an unexpected snow fall in the night, you are suddenly
Cold and crisp and deep to fall into.

I Am Reclaiming

I am reclaiming the land you stole.
I will stamp on fences you have raised.
With zen concentration
I clasp the wire
You have barbed.

Away in a danger
Forgotten cave, I shelter from my modern winters.
Come, click your heels three times
And we awaken
Centuries deep
to evergreen garlands and dancing
Though the Sun has
Run off with another star,
We make fires to oppose the unknown
Panpipes bubbling like april springs
Scout - hall trestle tables heavy with
Sweets and fruits, gloriously cellophane-less,
Unpackaged, no nutrition charts.
And there is Bacchus, pouring pink squash
Down his Disney throat, laughter creasing
His eyes into two short lines.

Who’s got the remote? Rewind a bit.
Close your eyes to kneel
On the frayed, black-blushing carpet
And throw your voice like a soft tennis ball
Ricocheting from sooty brick to sooty brick
Certain he will hear even from the pages
Of your storybook. No-one is without their family,
And in this time of so much truth
Everyone will be given their red-ribboned orange
Stuck with a candle and four cocktail stickworths of
Deliciousness. Even Santa, who had begun to cause you concern,
Lonely in his solitary labours – and we all know
Reindeers can only say so much –
Has a special mince pie and a short glass of brandy, waiting. So that
He knows we care. For
He takes toys
Every-where.

O little child, not yet of ten,
How little we see thee cry
How deep and dreamless
Is thy sleep
While they hurry darkness by.

Why
Despair has, for now,
Nowhere
To land. Helicopters
Flutter, vague and unknown
At the back of your mind
You sticker them GHOSTS, DINOSAURS
The Wicked Witch Of The West.

Oh Toto.
I hate the colours. Take them away!
Make it black and white again
I kneel, and pray.

I Lent You A Book

I lent you a book
You sent it back
Wrapped untidy scrawled
With multiple stamps
Inside is a note on a piece of waste paper
I fold the note once, twice, three times
And rip it neatly at the seams
Then I hold the book, smell it, there is only
Paper – it is fairly new –
Holding it so that the pages flop between the covers
I study their lines and notice
A patterned crease, a bending at certain
Places. Carefully I open you up at those,
Scanning, my expectations
Waiting to be proved, or disproved.
Either way, whether I understood you right
Or wrong, is past and done
We neither of us think we’ll see the other
Again.

My heartbeat is irregular now

My heartbeat is irregular now
your eyes look into mine. My thoughts are
clouds around a sun that hides and turns and shines.
I know you not at all.
And never will be known.
Us two leaves that fall and flap,
dropped and flung
in desperate breezes
lapping over
tongue to tongue, and
snapping
synapse
signs.

A Snow Death

The snow prayed for a long, cold winter, kneeling in icicles
Clasping thin clear fingers together. And so it was.
Everyone striped in scarves, bundles of wool and
Stars in our eyes or someone thrown snow there.
Died a death five times in five minutes, a born survivor.
He said he never even saw her,
What with the christmas card look those trees had,
And the kids in fur trimmed hoods,
Thinking they might throw a
Girl, 21
They were taking aim from the roadside,
Scooping the powder, eyes flashing
You see I never saw her, trawled her
Ten yards before they shouted
Watch out! Snow fight!
Snow is a muffler, a silencer,
Something so beautiful about the whiteness of it
Something graceful if you remember it slowed down
If you turn off the sound, the hard thump and crack
Deafening in the silence of a snowed under day,
He’s ashamed to say it, it was almost balletic -
The lickety-split of the snow, packed hard by mittened hands
Flying straight at you, the smash of the windscreen.
Afterwards, the snow looked cherry flavoured, sweet slush,
Sickly dribbles and pots of redness they were desperate to hide.

Madrigal

Madrigal was the wanded man who walked, never ran;
Deceased like a fish with a torn fin, a plant spotted white;
A hole in a purse. A walleted blight
On their peace, a ban.
Magical or diseased, you are only a fragment of time now
Meant for lore or a drawing of me in my youth.

Nothing so much as raising the bar, the stakes of the game
A dousing in words, the trilling and spilling of letters and an
Unfettering bringing quiet ropes and chains like
Seaweed round the foot while swimming.

Very neat handwriting is a sign of great boredom.

The Last Dream Of The Night Before You Wake

There is a child running, not so far away, across the lawn and towards the stream at the end of the garden, just beneath the stone wall. The child is wearing a yellow pair of dungarees. They – at this distance you cannot tell if it is a girl or a boy – turn their head as they run, to look back cheekily, complacent with the summer sun on their shoulders and cheeks. And then their foot catches and they fall. Slam on the grass, flat on their nose, that little arrow of speed suddenly still. And there is that three seconds of calm with a bird singing and the cars murmuring far off, and then you are pierced by the cries, the screams of shock and injustice and pain, so disproportionate in volume and intonation, to the actual damage caused and you turn to walk away.

Shelving

Here I will leave you, you will wait in this room
a room all white and flat like the moon
or a milk bottle full I will one day drink
here I will leave you says the ponderous Think.
There are shelves you can sit on, all over the walls
Books here and there but enough space, oh enough
for whatever growing you will do in this room
in this room all white and flat like the moon.
Will you grow outwards and softly or inwards and tough
will you shrink to a glint of light on a spoon
that I looked for myself in, and found only you in,
cutlery spinning in drawers. Or is it a blankness,
a nothing of time - yes it’s a blankness a gliding on ice
a scooting and skating a three blind mice
enactment of closing one’s eyes to the dark.
Sit in the light. A room all white
and flat like the moon. Goodbye for now, until
next time, be still.

Zachariah In A Tree

I am afraid, like this,
too close and empty like a
child in the dark feet drawn up
to escape clutching grasps from
no-one knows where, or why.
Once someone said, everytime they crossed a road
they asked themselves do I want to die?
Every car a bringer of flat noiseless dark.

Why are all your friends lost, water should come easy
off a duck’s back and yet why mark a place
where you learn of pain, only to go back there again
and again when no-one is looking? In a heart
there is hope, an endless zoetrope of sunrays
that you use to warm your gut
on winter driven days, and in a head
is going back.

So there you track uphill with your fear
in a sack tied at the top. Climbing a tree
without looking down but knowing all ways
you don’t know how you will, or you won’t, you’ll stay
Zachariah in a tree watching a death’s love in life
like a child in the dark feet drawn up,
monsters rife without looking, just a maybe, and a when,
and a, who would love me, then.

Traffic + Travel

I’m afraid there’s been an accident,
It’s taking up three lanes
And cars heading north are having to
Follow a diversion.
It’s also rather slow south-bound as people
Are stopping to see what’s happened
So obviously that’s slowing everything up.
Traffic and

Travelling away from you is like
Pulling an elastic band backwards
All of that spring waiting for the release
To get close again, all of me getting
Taut and overstretched, whelmed over by
Magnets, the

Force of the crash was heavy as the car
Collided with a lorry head-on and there were
No

Survivors of the same place we’re like
That, you said, and I nodded. And you put
Your lips on mine and held them there.
And when I get near your door there is a
Knocking

Over of part of the central reservation; work is now
Being done to restore this rupture and the emergency
Services are asking for patience.

Then I'll Begin

We look like
Chess pieces, so opposite, holding hands.
You with your golden rapunzel hair in a plait on one side,
Your head slightly leaning with the weight of it.
Me, ebony. Dark, inpenetrable hair. I would console myself
With dreams of Snow White, while they told me of
Flaxen daughters spinning straw into gold.
In the sun and playground disputes, you might disappear at any moment.
Sometimes I would reach to meet
Nothing but air.
You, so delicate, so translucent, vanilla ice-cream
And two grey rock pools for eyes. Watery and always scared.
And you lived in a terrace on a hill that went up and up
Until it became moorland. Dark and damp and topped
With a salt and a pepper pot, for a giant’s tea, where
The hill reached the clouds, clouds that hovered darkly
Like a frown across the dinner table
And we would skitter and giggle through your front gate
To be met and kissed by your Mummy, deb-or-rah. A beautiful, slight wife of a King
Who sat us down in the small warm room that was your sitting
And your dining room
All in one
And combed our hair out.
A hundred times, each.
We were best friends. It was right. Our lives like
Jigsaw pieces; my mum and your mum drank tea
And swapped Clothkits patterns
While my little A and your Matthew dribbled at each other
In baby bouncers. And we would bite our lips in glee
And predict marriage, weddings,
Our eternal sisterhood,
The friendship of our fairy godmothers,
Storybook endings and fishfingers for tea