Peace.

Oh Lord above, please grant us peace,
So we may find our way to your Kingdom.

A God of multinationals, corporate sponsors,
Granting us a moment or a penny coin.

We have to draw up roadmaps to peace,
And proposals for our future lives.

Why not have peace for a moment and not worry
About money in the bank. Or money in the Kingdom.

I'm just waiting for a moment of peace.
Peace from your persistent evangelism.
Just for a moment, some peace.

Breathe Me

I want to be surrounded. Held in ethereal hands.
Hugged by arms that don't exist. Not in a
Conventional sense of course. I'm not human. That's
Insulting actually. I'm not chained to the earth, like you.

I want to be moved. I'm a lazy old girl really.
Don't like to bother to move myself. Let the other
Elementals do it for me. Though sometimes they need
A kick in the backside. Get a tiny tempest going, just for fun.

I want to be loved. That's why I like the tiny people dancing.
They love me moving around them. It's a thrill.
But people quickly forget I danced the foxtrot with them
At practice, when they're holding a physical hand.

I want to be breathed. "It doesn't matter what you want. You
Just exist," said a little girl. I want to be worshipped and warmed
By their moist heat. I want to be thought about. Counted
Slowly, as if saying a numerical prayer to my quantity.

The Angel of the Mosaic Seen From Many Places

I see an angel. Doves fly from her armpits
In ordered droves, each carrying a dented rose
By its stem. On her head balances a spaghetti
Colander of sorts, holes resting in the strange
Mosaic shadows of each wing.

Shame her dress isn't dropped over her head.
She's upside-down you see, or her wings
Would be around her feet. Where the lions are.
They seem a bit too tame actually, fragmented
Heads resting on their borrowed shields.

She looks tired. Probably went out last night.
Drinking wine. Eating manna.
She stands straight though. For the camera.
A man's strange memorial to his wife. A Russian angel,
In Germany, viewed with an English girl's eyes.


Based on the 'Mosaic im Hochzeitsturm' by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens.

Perhaps Tomorrow

Quoth he. Another time, when i'm less busy,
Not running around with this or that.
Perhaps when I don't have this job, or this mother,
Or this estranged brother on my doorstep.
Perhaps when the dog's dead, cat got run over
And all my friends have fled.
When i'm in 'Lavenders', the old people's place
Down the road, incontinent and paranoid,
Living in my own little world.
Then i'll have a spare minute, a moment
For your worries and cares.
As it is, i'm off to a meeting, to forget
This moment, you, and, of course, your name.

Sylvia Plath Syndrome

I think the world's infected. People are tired,
Stressed. Fed up with seeking something
Beyond reality. There are too many people.
Too much to see and do for humanity.
Whatever that is. So we look for a way out.
A way of talking to someone because no-one
Wants to listen to another complaint. Find
Something who will hear and comfort.
If I'm lucky, even give me a hug.

I think poetry is dying. People comfort
Themselves in iambic pentameter.
Because even the counsellor
Doesn't really care. She's paid.
The self-help shelf in the bookshops
All contain books on how to write poems,
With the odd one on how to scream.
We're all made of cracked plaster,
Slowly crumbling off the walls.

There was something sinestre in the old house
She saw on the far hillside. Spooked sheep
And shingle grave walls. She spoke in her words
To help herself and people heard her, yelling
From the ramparts. We're yelling from the
Downstairs window, trying to reach heights of
Madness, in an attempt to become sane.
We all need to be heard sometimes.
Syndrome's made me lose my voice.

The World's A Wanker

I think the world's a bloody wanker.
Think about it. All the old men, all the
Young boys. That's what, a third already.
Then there's the fundamentalist arseholes.
The bullies, the bosses with poles
Rammed up their backsides.
The bigoted hypocrites. The blundering creeps.
That makes it near enough half.

Then there's the bitches, slags, sluts,
Pimps and procrastinators.
Pikeys, chavs and hooligans. The
Curse of youth. The old complainers, aching
Grumps past their prime. The permed grannies
With their knitting needles clacking gossip
Under hair lacquer. That leaves one percent,
Crushed in the stampede of degradation.

I'm just on another planet all together.
Planet of my mind. Rotating around nothing
In particular. Part of very little. A quantum me.
Then again, that's what everyone says.
"I'm me!" They indignantly retort. "I'm not human!"
"I'm different. God's personal child!" And I tell them
To sod off. We're all talking utter piffle.
We just can't see it ourselves.

Brouhaha

All you can do is laugh. Watching
People crowd like pidgeons
Before a man throwing
Promises like sunflower seeds.

He stands on a platform
Covered in curled streamers
Like he's going to the hanging.
Of his opponent.

People wave and clap as he
Walks away. It's some achievement
To walk straight, whilst
Hugging babies.

Another man stands on the tarmac
Seeing the bloody hanging rope.
Broom in hand, he sweeps the paper
Trails away.

From now, all is quiet. Bruush. Brussh.
He never got near to the office door.
Too much laughter to hear what he said.
They didn't believe a word.

Lipstick Stains

Smears across the back of my hand,
Down one of my fingers in grill lines,
Like i've put my hand on thin metal gauze heated
Out of shape from one too many bunsen burners
In GCSE Chemistry classes. Melted lipstick gauze.

It's a new product from 'Loreal'. "Test it on your hand"
The sales-lady blabbers, "It would really suit you Ma'am!"
She smiles convincingly. As if she believes the
Colour of faith is 'Perfect Peach'. So I smear it across my
Skin in narrow, painful stripes.

I can't get it off. It was semi-permanent lipstick,
Painted on delicately with a sharp knife-edge
Or bent paperclip spike. "I'm a cutter with lipstick," I say,
To which the sales-lady replies, "Perhaps you'll be after
'Blood Rose' then?" Soft words with a sarcastic smile.

Anorexia Loves Being Me

She has hollows everywhere. Spaces, blanks,
Fill the boxes with blubber and fat. She looks like
The BT Tower. The Bulemic Tramp. You are shocked.
Awed by her face on the telly, thin, haggard.
Moldable like putty. She talks funny, with a soft lisp
As if her lips are too thin to produce a sound.
She clasps her stomach in front of a camera and
Sees who she is. What has ingrained itself in her
So much that she cannot live beyond its definition.
A pinch of skin between her ghost white fingers.
Tiny. Significant. The gram sending her to torture
Or ecstasy. Yet now she is real, not made of stripes
In red, green and blue, but standing next to me
Propped on brittle classroom chalk bones.
That's where it started. The agony. She is my friend.
I care. I can't change her, I love her tortured ways.

She is stronger than I am.
Worships a higher power.
The cruel criminal calorie.

Bad Posture

Hunched over, buckled in two
Like a car in a scrap-yard crusher.
It's run a bit too long, breathing short.
Perhaps fear. Been faking engine trouble
For years.

A girl tries to sing and squeaks each note.
Forces a tune into her heart and her body,
Killing her sound into someone raking leaves
On a shoddy autumn day. She can't sing now.
Too late for music.

He's old, in one of those nice comfortable
Sort of places. Telly and tea. Toast for breakfast.
Too many bricks to lift, too many heavy boxes.
He now takes tablets to pretend he's feeling better.
Looking at the carpet.

Shell Scavenger

He's an old man, limping along the beach.
Long ago hurt by life and war, leg torn
In vicious, metal scissor cuts into paper flesh.
He stares at the ground, watching as shell-like
Fleeting moments pass by. The surf collides with
His worn leather sandals, grit grating at his calloused
Grimy feet. Hawk-like birds fly overhead, about to
Feast on their injured prey in his sandals.

He stops. The sand grinds his bones as he bends,
Reaching towards a shell, one of so many crushed
Under his endless footsteps. Fractured, cracked. A curled,
Ridged tendril of bone, defeated in a war of stones
As he had been in a war of guns and bombs.
He raises it to the sky to see it against his old hands
With his weak eyes, see its beauty. A breath of wind
And it is gone, a tear of blood lingering in his palm.

Angus Die

I love this bit. The bit when I can go
All morbid on my readers.
The man's a bit of a twat really. Spends
All his time at his desk, with that bloody
Inkwell. Not that the ink's blood, 'course.

He keeps making blotches everywhere,
On all his papers. To most, they're meaningless.
Can't read his obese scrawl. And yet,
This all is meant to mean something.
Mabye it's new age dowsing with ink.

Well, technically i've just got things wrong. Fault of
Tapping technology. I don't hate Angus really.
I don't know an Angus. Death just got banned from
My poetry. No, Angus is a human angel, divinity reached
Through musical notes, spelling Agnus Dei.

Lonelily

I imagine a hillside, covered in low gorse ground
That crunches underfoot like shells on a beach.
A piece of driftwood lies on that beach, pointing
Like an old, arthritic finger into the melodramatic sky.
The sky drifts, darkens, disguises itself under a cloak
In a thousand shades of black under which a man
Shines a bulbous, yellow plastic battery torch.
Light speckled like an egg through the weave.

The torch reflects off the ground. God's looking for
His keys. Couldn't open the gates yesterday, he's
Got a queue going. He bends a bony digit towards
The beach of shining shell pieces that don't exist.
He sees a flower. Trampled and crushed under
Stampeding steps, yet still glowing in the torchlight
On the cloak-covered, tide-covered low gorse ground.