loss

tonight
we cry

and the lost
women shout

up roads
up chimneys

around hedges.

lightning through a passing
graveyard,

weeping electricity.

I know the truth if you'll let me show you..

My mother in a hospital bed, with
laboured breathing.
It's a white metal rail
separating me
from her, and
one plastic tube.
A lifetime of memory.
If you look inrto a mirror for a lifetime,
you will see death at work.
And I see
new wrinkles adding
themselves to the
corners of my eyes,
I see a white hair sprouted
where the rest
are dark,
I see two lines running
down towards
my breasts I have
never seen before.
I see a woman dying,
I see myself
as my mother.
A broken bottle,
an emptying vessel,
a hurrying squirrel,
no more nuts for Winter,
hopping over
to the other side
of the garden wall.

I see children,
somewhere we are
always children.
And I am a
baby wailing on a hillside,
grass blowing
around me in all
directions.

You wake up, yawn a
strange yawn, little
animal yawn, and
then you are back
in a lost world agan.
Yesterday, you
rose up like Lazarus.
Today, you are back
in unconsciousness.
Reality is a
slow, shattering wave.

Peacocks, bright lights,
fool, fool, fool you.
I am a breeze,
we are waving
on the rocks,
sinking, sailing
tides of lightening
fire and water
deep.
And this moment
feels somehow normal,
so ordinary to be
sitting with you
like this, the
trauma is somewhere
else, it is
only me and
you Mum, you sleeping,
me awake.

~~~

and more, this truth of feeling..

a swaying tree,
a tube too thick and noisy,
her warm hand.
a silver cross.

It is too many cups of tea,
it is HER EYES.
No, it is HER EYES.

No, it is MY EYES.

I am wearing her earrings - two gold plated hoops with hearts in the centre.
I am wearing her hair band to tie up my own hair, a fuschia rose.

And my Aunt tells me how much I look like my mother when she was young, and I'm surprised becasue I never thought I looked like my Mum, or like anyone in my family, in fact, except for a great uncle that I saw a picture of once. He was a sailor and he had eyebrows just like mine, and my cheekbones, my long jaw, and lips all full and pretty.

I remember the picture of my Mum holding an orange looking like Elizabeth Taylor.

I am waiting.

Drama is fun, exhilerating, exciting. Excitement is fun, exhilerating, dramatic.

Sitting here isn't any of those things.

I am a spare tyre, a key which will not fit the lock.

All I need to do is sit here and watch,
all I need is to sit here

and watch

at the bedside,
the clock ticking,
visiting time's over,
pack up this chair
and go home.

dream, february this year

as yet
we stay like
walking tightropes
or bent
sheets of decay.
I am no longer hopeless,
but a mist on the
distant ocean,
I can connect to all
that decays and breathes
starlight and clatters
forlorn along the
pavement.
But there is a warning.
Giant moon headed man
creeps forward and
whispers, man strung
up by his throat,
looks at me with a
terrible torture.
I have seen this all
before a thousand
million times,
broken necked villains
who just don't deserve
to die
that way.
But I feel no fear
in my conscious mind,
but as I slip
through the gaps
in the net,
this is not true,
I am still torn asunder,
I am still breaking up.
I am waiting for
the precipice
to go over.
This is vertigo,
a heady feeling.
This is crashing waves
in Summer
when no Summer is to be
found
gnashing between my teeth.
I am a lover again.
and what is true of this?
What of when all
the particles and
electrons and neutrons
and testosterones and
eggs come to land again?
I am particle soup,
stirred thoroughly
and often.
and will I still be hungry?
Will I want to eat it
from a bowl?
Do I even know this person?
Is he a stranger with
a familiar tongue?
Or are we onto summat here?
It feels real enough, and not real,
a scented flurry
into beyond,
a lightweight
dusted star shine,
a brilliant
reflection in the
polished urn,
wonderful,smacking
wonder, tempting,
enticing, and fun.
This is playing
with romance,
making the strings
sing again.
Perhaps, a joke.

I write this by your bed..

We are ferrel,
little animals,
back to the womb.
We want to climb
all over you,
snuggle under the
soft flaps of your skin,
sniff and gently
move away
the hair that
streaks your cheek.
You are our burrow
and our mother
bear,
and I must
give you back
to the elements,
to the ground air
and shit,
into fire water and
breath,
in and out again,
dispersing
into white
spaces,
parts of you
eloping into
tomorrow.

And what connects us now
as the
concertina tube
blows in and out
with a gurgle,
as your eyes
remain shut,
your toes out
the bottom end of
the bed to cool,
two perfect white socks,
toes pointingup
in the air?
You are peaceful.
I held your hand.
It was warm.
It was brown.
All those afternoons
in the sun
in the backyard
surrounded by geraniums
and
stone models of
tortoises.

Your hand is warm.
What else is there?
Your warm hand,
this/ a
silver cross.

Today, you lay
in a white nightie top
on a white pillow
among white sheets.
You looked like a
snowdrop
in Spring.
We brushed and plaited
your hair,
one bobble at the
bottom,
one at the top.

When we said goodbye,
you looked at us,
or was it through?
No. You looked at us.

And so this is the hardest.

And what makes me happy?
The breeze through the open car window, blowing on my cheeks, and seeing the moon three quarters full in the blue sky.

E. holding me.

People caring makes all things profound, when love is there.

ether, skin

I dreamed I was flying
pelicans across my backyard

I dreamed I was drifting
in sea up to my elbows,
sharks far away,
all weather permitted.

great great
and a storm
will bounce me
down
manholes &
up steeples,
over betting shops,
across
junkyards &
taverns.

~~~

only a pink thigh,
only her white stare.

eyes
throbbing,
revolving
into tactile
oblivion.
only a curse,
she
suddenly smiles,
white teeth,
clear blue
brightness

she, forgot,

what she came here for.

Friday, The Met, New York

Eduard Vuillard - 1868-1940

Interior with Paintings and a Pheasant
The "Foyer"
Before Dinner
Lady Sewing
Figure Seated By Curtained Window
Interior with Figure Sewing.

This is something notable. Estranged from The Men, I am bobbing just afloat The Hudson perhaps right now, about to be cast adrift..

Vulnerability like a whale on its back. Sailing backwards towards landing. There is a surplus of beauty in my brain and it all becomes live electricity or else a tidal wave from deep below, bottom belly, wishing to rise and overflow the mountains. Yes, this is a kind of loneliness, a waiting, an uncertainty, a longing. Pulling on me, at my elbow, will not let me go. Alone. The word clangs and clunks and I guess this is the final strand to pull from my mouth. I am scared, and I am perhaps losing, but what it is, I am unsure, what I found, maybe I didn't? A veil softly covers my eyes and it is all black gossamer and netting. It is what we call 'ze existential'. I'm sick of feeling stupid, and as a ghost, drifting on air, semi-invisible arm of a dress that cannot make people laugh and sing.

I need some water. I need more air expanding my lungs. They feel sickly, undoing, pitiable, forlorn.

And we go look at the suits of armour. No. I chose alone but I wish I didn't have to, I wish I could be locked in arms that weren't born of too much flying and minstrels and air born fleeting profiles already out the door.

But this is really my stick huh?
I don't want anymore intelligence, paint myself red once again to locate the real button of my menacing and vision. I need to love, and that is true. I'm a dead door nail today, and I'm always here, always there, apart

from any source which is not reason.

Isolated and

you were never where I left you...

(Then Yves Klein glowered at me from around a corner.)

more Creeley... Boat

Rock me, boat.
Open, open.

Hold me,
little cupped hand.

Let me come in,
come on

board you, sail
off, sail off...

If

Up the edge of the window out to
tree's overhanging branches sky
light on facing building up to
faint wash blue up on feet ache
now old toes wornout joints make
the wings of an angel so I'd fly.

Sparks Street Echo

Flakes falling
out window make
no place, no place--

no faces, traces,
wastes of whatever
wanted to be--

was here
momently, mother,
was here.