Category Archives: Uncategorized

the mania for changing sex – no less –and those who’re ignorantof manufacturing’s impressin choosing how all dressand making great distressupsetsme i only wanted to save tressin 1973 today oxfam pilloriesshe – our Harry’s mum – the JKonemaking cartoon funof herthe cur who set our children freefrom fear of reading booksno lessBut twitter’s mindless-mind –isContinue reading “Twitter’s Opiate”

The Dog ate Parliament’s Homework The Press & our local MPsDo not speak for meBut blame instead all those in need Arriving here from overseas, Claiming that their failures toDo all they’d promised their voters they’d do: revise the way we run our schools;listen to those who work to rule;address the ever increasing messcurrently facingContinue reading “The dog ate it”

When tiny ones throw a plate  in impotent rage protest and throw a spoon across the room incensed because we find their outbursts cute I think of Ken  who wished we aged to sweet  in lieu of sour decrepitude  CC 19/2/23

Censorship is driven by an order to suppress, (whatever one might absently express set free, inadvertently, regret, perhaps) redress the freedoms one expects, (as accidents of birth, no less, dictate all privilege, noblesse; all rights which Others, othered, sadly don’t possess; an ease of speech, or otherness, and freedoms to digress) lest, the morals aContinue reading “Cancelled”

The Cosmos is on the bus: love & life & viruses, raincoats drenched in H2O, battered fish, and muddy boots pass on crude bacterium. Evolving gestating forms, bourn abroad on upper decks, mutate random, order less, fragments of cosmology.

The Cosmos is on the bus (II) From space, the walls we’ve built appear as lines,or cracks; the Chinese wall named ‘Great’, & Hadrian’s, delineate the hate that’s driven wars; the fallen Berlin wall, the great divide of North from South in Ireland’s name are monuments to shame.The Human Race bequeaths its scars’ disgrace:the arrogantContinue reading “The Cosmos is on the Bus”

No man is an island tho’ many women are Freud observed our differences but didn’t look that far He failed to see the re-set knob under women’s chins They press it when they malfunction but still it seems, men win Even when they’re on the blink but lack a knob to press They text theContinue reading “Devotions upon observances made of br/others”

Fairmile stood between the A329 and the Thames a bus ride from home an institution and though I shunned the one at school, it was better than babysitting: a pay slip with a uniform; this was pocket money, with psychology and cool. They’d said I could begin the work observing a new trial, reducing nastyContinue reading “Notes on Psychiatry in 1972”

In early September, just before my father’s birthday, I found myself driving through the village I was married in when he had been already dead for five years and I a parent for three, longer if mothering step children is counted as parenting. The trees we planted as each child was born now peer overContinue reading “Loss along the A422”

Bays One to Ten in ICU: take note; Rewrite the symphony which levels Human life, as if a metronome, Paced by seasons’ changing light, Writes white. 

It had all been all very strange: assimilating change; recoiling from and at once irresistibly drawn to magnetising ritual and cloying tradition; reliving every death, every loss, every sad transit; arguing perpetually with the chit chat that makes no sense; fielding hurt; guarding against regret; balancing the irrefutably irrational with authentic emotive floods. And thenContinue reading “Queen”

My mother’s desk containsremains, since left, unturned:a concentrated turquoise Quink;a fountain of ancestral prose;its oak now worn by elbowed woesshaped to narratives that yearnedto form a whispered speech

I might admit I bought the lemons and some mint, a cucumber, in June, while boaters shaded heads, and peers, as sculls beat up the thames my love

They’d come pre-dawn, as if stars, lights first, late hum turning to roar and fading to drum, as if the midpoint of the bedstead led them, each a safe twenty minutes behind the one ahead. Day changed cleft, and planes’ harmonies deferred to the escalating scales of wind-bourn commutes, eaves’ birds & the click ofContinue reading “Morning’s Song.”

A tribute to Sue and Gordon Kind – Rosanna Ley and all who know what love is. The week, delayed by covid’s griefs, once finally released, to join my Finca family, was terrifying in advance; my mind makes paradise a hell. I knew full well, if I could steal the courage to leave home, I’dContinue reading “Kind”

I am a fickle physical thingI think therefore I’m drawn to drinkBut Thought arrests my suicide;I’d sometimes rather be a mothDancing with Death in candlelight

Purpling littered cul-de-sacs, where bacon vans provide respite, crocuses still reach for light; above them, leaning over steam, trees ring with birdsong, drowning sound still, beating time.

Wind ‘Siberian’ spelt ice in 1963, when the thames froze and we discussed sparse provision to be made: a car rug; thermos; salt and a spade, as the wind whipped cold-sores mothers bathed, with tinctures uncles, gone to graves, had used to ease the pain of ice-blown toes. Siberian spells icy now: the wind-chill’s targetContinue reading “Wind”

fashion when covid masked the uk  it also muted talk of ‘letterboxes’ slurs the quoted news had made a PM’s metaphor for war: now men who’re aged between eighteen and sixty-five wave off grandmothers,  lovers, wives  and sisters as they stay to fight, defend, their families’ rights to life; Silence draws its cloak over allContinue reading “Fashionable”

The distal free edge echoing the light it reaches for,  its lateral nail fold shadowing the body darkening an eponychium covered now and tastefully: lacquered; over-decorated; wrapped and bound to drown, decay as feet wound once; a symbol of defeat; nailing femininity is tapping  new economies’ keys. 

‘Blown away’ in ‘22 is sinisterNot ‘far-out-blown away’ as of yesteryearBut in your face – hysterical – ‘I told you so,but you didn’t hear’. And still the individualsuffers dreadful guilt,about the vats of detrius we’re soldand told,and dutifully do, to recycle tooknowing, had we hadn’t bought it – it might not have caused,problems for ourContinue reading “Eunice or Rose”

Is there a gene which explainswhy the paranoid can’t helpshowing a faceabove a parapet? Is it a depressive’s narcissistic aim,to be the target of disdain,as if attention-deficit retainsa focus, ever-trainedon deflected fame?

Another Door.  Not like that radio you returned to the shop,  And swapped,  The trousers you exchanged Because you lost the weight  You gained When contentment waned.  Not finding love again. Not sharing the same name. Not turning the clock back. Not papering over cracks. Not staying up all night. Not blinded by love’s light. Continue reading “Another Door”

there’s a fine line defined – drawn betweendrugs and gin –the acceptable side of sinand neither – despite the trade the devil makes within –ease especially when – a friend who didn’t toy with lines – and played safe – dies anyway.

Can’t weigh it up Those intent on wringing joy from life, dependence free, living healthily, suffer the most dreadful plights and, despite the will to live and fight, still die in trauma and quite desperately, while others who just cannot find the willto fight blights, and often carefully concealed or socially acceptable dependencies, live onContinue reading “Weigh it up”

If only  More or less twenty years ago, I was in a pub with my brother in law who bore an uncanny resemblance to my husband, his brother. Approaching the bar, as my brother in law was drawing his wallet from a pocket, the barman began,  ‘Got your wallet on you for once you ballContinue reading “His English Wife”

Old friends ask me to Brunch At half past nine By which time they have walked the dog And danced in a line in the Community’s hub, As if they just can’t stop commuting (Yoga fit and daft old fools) Adding to the Yummy Mummies’ Chelsea Tractors’ struggles to Get the bloody kids to school.Continue reading “Brunch”

Anonymous is all the rage As if a silencing and fear (The very worst of harm) Were born of good intent And rent a rift, now sealed, Between  Whatever one had meant And what it has been made to mean, Leaving one bereft, accused, With no where left to move,  Nameless, shameless,  Hoping to beContinue reading “Report – anon”

(work in progress) My Mother’s Desk My mother’s desk contains remains behest and left unturned: a concentrated turquoise Quink; a fountain of ancestral prose, its oak re-turned by shapes of elbowed woes, ingrained as pain was softened, shaped to narratives that yearned to reach a whisper’s speech, pale-blue, light as air-mail’s flight,  ocean’s drift,  kiss-wished and sinceContinue reading “My Mother’s Desk”

Fell She falls yet into The Fell, into which the falling few fall still, not fallen, falling still, until The Fell accepts  it’s fed by falls and life depends on death. note  (someone known as Mum- someone’s mum – perhaps my Own’s mum – ‘had a fall’ and suffers still, still falling but not yetContinue reading “Fell”

I mistook The News for a 1960’s apocalyptic film occupying the living room as I wound the clock.  The scenes of: masked men, camouflaged for hand-to-hand combat on the battle field, reduced to silhouettes against a backdrop of feigned sterility; weeping nurses; statisticians counting costs and casualties, crept from live screens’ news today, seeking solaceContinue reading “Ticking Clock”

Did you peak in 1982? Do you really not know what to do? Is Being not enough for you? Do you know that your only duty’s to Survive? Make that your drive. 

A while now, more than two decades ago, just after I’d married and found my spouse had underground, unsound, addictive traits, we agreed we’d separate and enter therapy. I went to University – became the big i am of sorts today, while he, of course, as many know, died by suicide within a year ofContinue reading “#addict”

A while now, more than two decades ago, just after I’d married and found my spouse had underground, unsound, addictive traits, we agreed we’d separate and enter therapy. I went to University – became the big i am of sorts today, while he, of course, as many know, died by suicide within a year ofContinue reading “#addict”

Anonymous is all the rage As if a silencing and fear (The very worst of harm) Were born of good intent And rent a rift, now sealed, Between  Whatever one had meant And what it has been made to mean, Leaving one bereft, accused, With no where left to move,  Nameless, shameless,  Hoping to beContinue reading “anonymous”

Pecking Order Demote the Wizards in your life Promote yourself from Elf:  Bitch? Boss? Mother? Wife?  Neutralise and be your sElf. Exasperation’s justified, there really is no cause  for Wizardry at all. Henpecked husband Oppressed wife  Elf or victim, devotee, A self-fulfilling prophecy.  lived without a  need.  Promote yourself from Elf.  (Push buddha off – aContinue reading “Alabama Three”

Men see me now  as a nine year old boy: gangly, flat and sinewy; advances have evaded me for several anniversaries but beneath the Christmas Tree Father Christmas and an elf each made feelings clear to me; now I wonder if I can be a woman with a man, should the elf and fantasist askContinue reading “Elf”

isolation & I consumed the ‘might use one days’ saved & frozen; the dreams I’d hadwere also cleverly possessed, when covid staged a raid on every aspiration, cancelling all my plansto swim with manta ray and my sunny son once more.

let me let me write some seasonal cheer, at this the darkest time of year, here on these shores I call home, claim, find as mine and am habituated to since, I’ve mostly been here always, punctuated seasonally by winters’ closures – springs’ rebirths, optimism in between and dreams –  we read eternal miseries onContinue reading “seasonally”

I smell a rat.Gosh surely not,not while we’ve that lot out the back.I’m sure I saw it disappearinto that hole just over there.What there?But that’s where Deirdre dumpedthat child she thumpedwho claimed a damaged lifehad led him him to carry a knife.Let’s kill the rat, ok?

Lads, but particularly, Mid-life Crises’ Divorcees, Widowers, Rebounds, Blended family members, A National Survey Asks: Does your other half envy your mother’s love? fear your lost and failed affairs? dread that all your friends are what they’re not? can they see that what you’ve got is part of larger schemes’ interdependency? do they live inContinue reading “Mine”

I’ve been a fashion victim nearly all my life; the Afghan coat did not live long but bangles I found then forewarn jangled grandkids when Granny’s round the bend, again; a Swatch, an 80’s must-have, still signifies my age; I still wear kohl in navy while RayBans Aviators shade a faint disguise for Varifocal lensesContinue reading “Date my Dress”

Do you remember your gran’s dustbin and shopping with a bag or box to put things in and when Corona bottles came with cash you could reclaim for using them again, and can you point out just quite when we forgot and thought it new, again? And even so, I know, we all regret thatContinue reading “Dustbin”

Above, beyond all awe, accidents’ existents soar, distancing earth’s chance coincident inhabitants from inquiring of the mystery of being,  to provide,  instead,  fodder for the disaffected, who meditate on how to occupy the moon rather than the moment’s miracle and living. 

A box full of photographs became a monument to histories held but somehow holding me, prisoner to epitaphs, face to face with ransome charges levied for the emptied floors, left to honour all before that is and also, now, no more emptiness a vase abhors now is love and love no more,at once and stillContinue reading “epitaphs”

adieu a do I went to ‘a do’.The first to tell me what they doTold me they do what I doBut it’s now a job they doPosting things that make us doJust what they are paid to doSelling ‘life’ as ‘what to do’such as paying for ‘a do’and then tweeting, as I do. #theivy

Smart Casual? Be more you! Is that my jeansthe ones I likea t-shirt with no ketchup stain?Or is it not a suit& just as staid? Navy is the easy route.My mother disapprovedof mourning flowers & black. CC

Whoever’s to blame, does it help to gasp, ‘it’s China’s fault’ as you choke your last, or claim that your redundancy would not have been found necessary, if the charlatan who took the rap for all the double-dealing back slapping conspiracists had not led us astray, before he left, turning his back, allowing them toContinue reading “food chain”

I felt as a child a vampiric blood were bitten into me, at birth, and now, when I grieve my mother, who used to say, ‘look, she’s got my hair’ as we smirked, ‘no, you have got hers, you twit’ the Queen is absent from remembrance,-I’m remembering original dis-ease. God save the Queen.

bereft’s sad because of gladness shared, longing sore through open wounds gaping, raw, wanting more – to soothe the loss of love left 

now oppressive forms of dominance impose a new authority, through deference, expressed as gratitude to privilege that’s now eschewed (as if the right to speak of suffering is shed once the gift of comfort’s left ) bereft of voice or words for pain, in a silence justified by faintly concealed karmic lies, born of borrowingsContinue reading “Say”

I’ve envied the young, who have youth on their side, which shines its own beauty, which they might deny, while posturing ugly (all shaved up the side, leaden in work boots which thundering thighs are drawn to devise distraction from, still, irrefutable eyes, shrouded in black and funereal lines, shining beyond scribed defiance of pink,Continue reading “Beautiful”

I’ve had a similar experience to many, over dosed on mothering and missed my father who died before we’d had a chance to find the time for resentment levied at the parent left, living, mortal, still alive while life stories, re-inscribed re-imagine un-lived lives.  What if – isn’t – never was What was – unexplainedContinue reading “after fathers”

nest when you crave space: when you despise them for that jam on your sofa; for pissing  in your shoes; for muddling white with pink; for that toilet’s dreadful stink;  when you ache with spite about all you gave to save your kids distress; when you hate them and the mess they insist’s an effect ofContinue reading “nest”

as if, somehow the death of opposition and compassionate debate are algorithms’ aim; as if somehow we seal our fate, reverse an innate drive to thrive and form instead, a phantom suicide. Now we live in Cyber space, eternally, as if.

When they go back lunchtime’s too late. In Summer’s wake, papier-mâché barbecues rust beneath shed leaves, woven, breeze-whipped, between bars where trout,  caught in their haste to escape their mates, baked then flaked, lightly, on late greens. When they go back, night comes too soon. Hold Autumn back. Soften the wind’s hard edge, call itContinue reading “Tick Tock”

Doha airport 28-29/12/16   In Transit. In a glass box with roaring fans On leather sofas, sharing greatness, Men talk of their strategic plans In no-man’s land. A worn out woman who imagines others see a known but forgotten celebrity they can’t quite situate, pushes alien food around a bright white plate In an airportContinue reading “In Transit”

A revolution  A revolution draws an end to anything that ever starts as if the slate forgets, writes white the memory, begets again a parody of finding a solution to the problems in the narrative amnesia reframes.  Resigned, a line is marked and plenaries receive records of all tried, yet failed and still to beContinue reading “Revolution”

Before Before the hive went live, and an iPhone could tell your love, and that man attached to the bell on that door, where you snogged who on which step; Before the hive went live, and every passing flight of feeling caught in photographs or lines were saved, engraved in polar ice, immortally, defrosting frozenContinue reading “Before”

When I saw the car, there,  as I walked past in my new life, I felt for unfound keys in pockets, put bags down, looking at my feet, and life fell out onto the street, spilling time, not mine, not now,  but then, but how could my car  be where then was there? The bed,Continue reading “Air BnB”

All we dreamt in 73 lives on today in Glastonbury.  Conceived before the music played as early summer’s fields made way for merrymaker’s harvests’ hay, a resonance was set in sway that beats disharmony today. Beneath the rainbow’s incensed streets where now the hapless hopeless wreak a pitiless array of needs unmet but optimistic still,Continue reading “Regret”

My mother said, ‘Life long friends – found early are the best – those who lived through all the early mess, and love but when you meet friends later on, you find yourself becoming chums with those you meet discussing glue ear or depression and their ‘whoopsy-daisies-dear’ and you hope you’ll meet again, quite soon,Continue reading “Friends”

August – 2021 – A Bank Holiday at last.  It’s been a while since my own local town and many others partied, and perhaps some argued all night and woke up, stunned with a gripe, reaching for Alka Selster as many might have done with the tinnitus of yesterday’s music,  and the nitty gritty of beingContinue reading “Animal”

We often offer our templesthe richest of harvests’ gifts:a fatted calf, a hamper of cheese,raspberries and Summer’s wines;candles burn and incense cloudscrypts with scented smoke. Your body is also a temple and –the story goes –if you don’t treat it just like one,you’ll suffer a range of life’s blows:depression might be on the menu,and aContinue reading “Temple Plate”

Photo credit and reference: ‘’The Falling Man”, taken September 11, 2001, shows a man falling from the Twin Towers in NYC during the terrorist attacks/Photo Credit: Richard Drew/AP Falling Still All monoliths against the sky memorials to memory –  All stunning echoings of those  twinned towers – Two decades now, of falling man, of photographic-epitaph, Continue reading “Falling still”

For Edward Hammond – 1900-1918 I think I found your grave, Soon after my mother died I cried over your name, My grief and your mother’s Met in the effects. Once sifted, as behest,  The internet filled a void with you, Your mother’s longed for Late born son who Bitter, spinster sisters shunned, Went toContinue reading “100 years ago”

Again. When life hurts the local shop has  special offers on display; some things to take away the pain, and cures for the following day. Mysteries, news, and telly’s dramas dispense a range of remedies for tense and carefully staged distress, to the afflicted of their texts; Self-prescribing-advertising, double-doses the elixirs running through its veins,Continue reading “Again”

Eve if you had only been satisfied by being if you’d only resisted desire if you’d only not chosen to know you wouldn’t suffer so – he said – to justify the livid cries of her youngest child ripped from a bed on which doctrine enacts the abject

On Saturday I shopped and cooked, Sunday, bathed and did the washing up. On Monday I’ll have bathed and cooked, washed up and scrawled a shopping list, before the coffee in my cup has time to taint pale porcelain, reaching for the train.

Here, now trees are 15 winters stronger than they once were, when, we scattered ashes here and danced then, I listen to the whispers Breeze suggests give away the secrets that I cleave to,  as bequeathed: my private memory of you.   ❤️🦣 on 7.8.21

If malaria were covid air born,  bred in air-conditioned suites, where transit passengers enjoy a smorgasbord of delicacies  and drink in benefits  an eden-company provide to those who’re paid to think  of ways to double dollars,  might the thing that bites and blights the night (its sister dengue fever’s  adapted now to light) be vaccination’sContinue reading “Fight for breath”

I was ok with you being ‘out there’ devastating others’ lives, quipping that I had ‘an out’ from dreaded invitations, time to wax my legs, escape the 9-5 –  while all of mine were unaffected and alive – but now they die, decline or lose the will to fight, invite the possibility of joy; gone, out,Continue reading “Bequeathed”

People, sallow skinned,  eat inside  curtained against august skies: talk drifts ever over and again to dread,  or admissions of ignorance and grief confess fires and floods suffocate speech, remaindering covid’s breathless aftermath, the antidote prescribed to to those  who must survive without a sense of future and little will to thrive, to silent sentence,Continue reading “Sentence”

Writing lends a scribe an eye, an ear, to listen to words;  they speak, as others might excavating plots, of previously unread, or seen worlds they occupy, transcribed between the keys  imaginations made: writing’s paradox.  

I became a poet in later life, despite my youth’s intention –  to be overt, clear, direct –   to act as if I were quite sure  and do all that might be done  to realise,  become an I  active and proactively  sure of what I mean,  saying that, precisely;  (not living  a multiplicity;  not speaking Continue reading “poetry”

Unmasked ‘I am a Happiness Tsar having panic attacks’ I do not know how to live. We can suddenly mix but I am still stuck in a state of frozen fear. I hardly notice it since it has become part of the muzak that has played alongside a life lived in mediated and graduated formsContinue reading “How to live”

Is it me? It is they saidin all probabilitysince it seems to beyou’re the Me the Onethat’s always thereconsistently It must be youit can’t be anyone elseleast meD’you see? It’s always mein the endD’you see?I meets I eventuallyThen’s eternity

The pubs will mirror the Stadium and throng with songs not sung  except in time of long gone war to prop up the divide  and form allegiance to a side And if our boys don’t win  or even if they do big soft lads  dressed in England flags sporting St George tattoos will weep inContinue reading “Married to Sport”

those who are privileged  and also empaths are saddled with a duty and responsibility, bound to act  bound to a debt to be paid back passed on perhaps at birth that they are burdened by  more so than those,  bereft of empathy,  who benefit yet fail  to pay the duty back in tax or altruisticContinue reading “Gratitude’s Adversary”

in life far beyond the menopause once lived towards with dread – anticipating afterwards a slow decline till dead –  she finds she’s no longer womanly or feminine but looks and feels and dresses and moves as an eight year old boy instead And former nasty bastards, retiring their cold coal face, assume a femininityContinue reading “age genders dysphoria”

She visited family she’d felt divorced from (- a no fault divorce – ) at 25 – when her father had died – 40 years before – and it was deeply unsettling – to be staying with relatives – after a 40 year absence and feeling as if they were intent on reclaiming her andContinue reading “processing ancestry”

Tender, a word I’d forgotten to use, paints a picture of today that might be found in photographs on my mantelpiece already there and yet also to be, in the latest later.  Today’s rush to say ‘look at us – it’s for your auntie, miles and miles away – the camera wants to capture youContinue reading “Tender”

Whatever you and your therapist came to agree, put to rest and resolved, a suicide accompanies the bereaved as if a living-dead they escort through life. Beware the Achilles Heals of those with tough exteriors who’ve learnt how to live, despite un-told burdens bequeathed, which thrive still in the living-yet, bullying vampirically as if otherwiseContinue reading “survivors of”

Dear Lord and Father of mankind and also of me too, before my humble confessions I’ve a mind to take issue with you: about our blocked up sinuses and aching ill formed backs, evolution’s proof your original plan lacked  detail  you will neither admit or, god forbid, redress –  this or confess that your inventionContinue reading “Dear Lord”

blair’s mum, Irene and timothy,  ricky on the edge of life, rang me up today:  laney popped in on her way, to save her brother again; imelda rang and explained she’d  spoken to her Alzheimer’s man who’d defined her likely decay; my daughter wrote, of course, about something I can’t disclose;   my son sent meContinue reading “week day”

#Scammers – my password is …  My ‘account has been suspense’  #Scammers you’re quite right  I looked at it & my rent book very late last night The hook in the narrative Might I somehow just make it? Or might you  Persuade me To give you Tools to set you free? Employ me or anContinue reading “my password is”

Archetypes. Fathers and daughters,  mothers and sons, sons and lovers and Narcissus: some archetypes are the death of us  and never more than those  the archetypists chose to lend to the daughters and mothers, who are at once both of those.

I hadn’t written down  what I actually said, once my mother, still dead, had caught the crowd’s attention, just before the clanking grind that carried her on to ascension.  I stood beside her, gravely struck  by a moment that called for a heart to heart, before one and all,  with the woman who’d played LadyContinue reading “Eulogy”

after covid: the get together The get together, after so long in our own company, terrifying ourselves with commentaries of what we might never celebrate ensemble, again,  once we were actually convened, together, in a room, played out in the event as if to prove that nothing but tragedy might ever be made of fantasyContinue reading “late late”

Spectre Grandfathers, drawn in myth as if by co-incidence or perhaps a sinister synchronicity, become more feminine just as their wives transform into the tyrannical In-laws who blushing sons apologise and cover for; husbands who beat their wives are soft-focus’s infantilised, ascending to a form of spiritualised only the absent access, shaped by all theContinue reading “anagram”

Whatever it is, just do it! I spent three months not doing it. Now I have, my life has changed. I’d spent so long not doing it, I might never have done it again. I tackled the kitchen drain, I joined a course, filed for divorce, orI completed some god awful pdf task for theContinue reading “just do it”

A father, born in 1908, might contemplate the carefully arranged,  placed before him every day,  on the table a mother cared to display her best attempts  to erase the trials of his day, and look at the sight, dismayed; cautious lest any evidence  of how bereft he felt,  and how he craved a slice ofContinue reading “after life”

on the cusp and this summer, solstice was a wearying confrontation, wading through dusk and failing to meet the dawn; waking to the detritus of being on the edge of softly fading light, leaking dripped vitality through cracks between the seams, where ashen charcoaled branches lie paralleled and flat; iron dry, the creases dream ofContinue reading “on the cusp”

If only More of less twenty years ago, I was in a pub with my brother in law who bore an uncanny resemblance to my husband, his brother. Approaching the bar, as my brother in law was drawing his wallet from a pocket, the barman began, ‘Got your wallet on you for once you ballContinue reading “His English Wife (short story)”

Sugar, spice, newts and toads …  Possibly if myths proposed  newts and toads were the spice of life,  their inverse being sugary sweet,  and being nice the very worst vice, men might not possess their girls, daddies’ alter-egos might live their lives quite authentically – and feel no need to hitch a ride on theirContinue reading “Eve and Newton tend to agree”

Father was an accountant and I’m not good at maths.  He’s not to blame for that.  The pest controller’s daughter’s  terrified of cats. Her wife’s a liberationist  whose parents bred lab rats. The therapists’ child  might thank one of them for her hand-made shoes, yet find they stand accountable for giving her the blues.  Cobblers’Continue reading “#EveryParentDay”

I’ve been possessive,  jealous, once or twice, of people I’ve been kind to when they’ve been kind to someone else I hadn’t liked or found a threat –  as if I’d wished that those I loved were jealous too, and unkind types who threatened, fearful I might see what I also might have been, would lockContinue reading “Jealous”

Another Door.  Not like that radio you returned to the shop,  And swapped,  The trousers you exchanged Because you lost the weight  You gained When contentment waned.  Not finding love again. Not sharing the same name. Not turning the clock back. Not papering over cracks. Not staying up all night. Not blinded by love’s light. Continue reading “Another Door”

‪Just beyond the edge of joy‬ ‪a breath from equal pain‬ ‪I’ve tasted timeless ease‬ ‪an undivided peace‬ ‪cradled by a turquoise sea‬ ‪a turtle breathes in time with me‬ ‪six times her eyes meet mine‬ ‪we surface for some air‬ ‪she dives‬ ‪I follow to the reef‬ Ramora fish survive feeding on her softerContinue reading “Free Dive”

(Covid is a global humanitarian crisis)  The visiting vicar filled our heads, at Primary School  on Thursday afternoons, with tales of gloom the testaments had prophesied:  floods and viral pestilence he couldn’t begin to describe.  He told us it was punishment  for being Humankind. #bees #waste #tinyspinningrock  Cherry Coombe. May 2021.

Our honeymoon night  when at last I wore his ring  as he did mine  for a time  until the accident,  a sign he’d said,  they cut it off  and broke the bond  that day he went inside  he said,  but I remembered signs  of rifts   another way  Half gone – the first child showing,  fatContinue reading “Our Honeymoon Night”

Grouchy old bags, speak out about, a ‘locked down if you’re a weeny bit wonky’ – bank holiday again! What for? The much ignored who live alone are on the very barest bones – a holiday from what? (From fearing the grim reaper may kill all those you used to know – or you –Continue reading “Grouch”

C19 Nursery Rhyme  What are little boys made of? Snips and snails And puppy-dogs’ tails, That’s what little boys are made of. What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice And everything nice, That’s what little girls are made of. C21 Observation What are the elderly made of? If they were boys  they justContinue reading “I slept for 200 years”

Some easy grammar ease.  A sentence is a group of words that make sense on their own. A paragraph’s some sentences that also make some sense alone. A subject’s I or this, adressed assumed to be the author-ity; an object’s you or it or that discussed, reviewed; a verb is something we all do orContinue reading “Grammar-ease”

Tomatoes  I’d decided on tomato plants: raised beds; heavy loads of bagged-organic-assured-compost; canes; string, and plants at first just seed, cluttering up the windowsills, carried out and in, gently rooted and later coaxed to leave the hearth’s warmth to earth. I’d tend them, water, prune and feed them, later reap a bumper crop, and peerContinue reading “Tomatoes”

love  love, a blunt instrument, turned at will to wound (the injury appearing a chance consequence of circumstance – a karmic happenstance – likened to deforestation) cremates the will to give, to thrive, survive, shallows breath, leadens veins and bereaves

do we, post covid – might we have before, need of a manual guiding us through survival to teach us how to interact, chat and that, sort out family’s complications; or was it an ap that disabled that? I asked a relative earlier, on our whatsapp chat. I’m really now no further on. Now whatContinue reading “post covid chat”

within a year, I’d got the lot:  Tourette’s & ADHD; anorexia, assumed bulimia, probably; dreadful heart disease;  lung cancer and hypertension; terrible anxieties –  turning left at intersections, rather than the right, certain that the clutch would seize imagining the telegrams the children would receive; convinced by all the media warnings: health services were onContinue reading “Un-wrest Covid’s unrest”

when the kids left I was bereft and had to write to say – at least in a journal anyway – ‘it was me who made all the mess in truth – yet still, the neighbours bang on about noise I was young – unprepared – & terrified – determined, well, less lest ..’ andContinue reading “not yet”

People ask – ‘why doesn’t she just …?’ They rarely ask ‘he…?’ Or ‘they’ (unless, one of they’s not not beige) I’m not at liberty to explain my rage, just now – as I’m Post menopausal & still a hysterical cow –

I am glad one of the long ago (far too soon) kids who fell to me to care for and watch had a pokemon game they taught me to play. Life today feels like that game – just the same except I’m played, not playing, now, some say.

The thing in the box breathed me lived me moved me  loved me said me  danced me  hurt me  made the me that others suffered shaped hurt  lived  worked  cried  laughed  and gave birth to next 

In #China – skies aren’t often blue but – they know what to do and command that all factories stop billowing pollutants before a state event.Today the Queen’s dear prop and stay was put away – I know you’d rather say he’d passed – was laid – but anyway, we know, agree, he’s dead andContinue reading “triggered”

Half Siblings 1940’sglimpsed in a Covid gardenlooking ‘seedy’56’s gobby me asks,-are you going to say?-what?-what the affliction is? They shuffled & one confessed We drank the wine our father left before you were even born Hungover, the other one said

I rush into the kitchen, late, breathless with the idea; ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ I say just as they used to, to the dusty dead air; winded, blushing and grief-leaden, limbs turn to stone. Radio sounds, quelled, turning the key slowly now, haste bereft of will, the street scene halts steps, a triangularContinue reading “Kitchen Table”

The gardener next door, leaning over a fallen sycamore, across a soft hewn lawn, his arms more livid with sap than the tree he heaved; the man of my dreams, next door, and fifty years or more, I listen for the tone of his voice and the click of his key, as he parks on theContinue reading “The Gardener”

64’s careless, insecure, unsure what the mortgage was for; rude to the boss, aggrieved, bereaved; feels 13, holding the parents’ car keys, freed; and parties, piles the lot on the pyre, aspires to die, why not? A cavalier year which fear garrottes. 64’s a being been.

love is shapeless – can’t be regulated, boxed, contained, framed or organised;  it cleaves as lonely grieves, takes hold, limpet like, moved by tides, attached to granite, bound to die –  unsatisfied yet clings 

ego chat ego-driven self-defence is inverse suicide,a murderous reaction that leaves one dead inside – No offence intended – unless you’re still alive love be not love Love is not a fluffy thing A day without a night Embrace the dark and trust the other side of light. 

if you accidentally let someone in – love them by mistake – and they do, and know, and yet it won’t or at least you can’t let it be – unless an abject boundary’s crossed – what – so – if – or if not – how can you euthanise or anaesthetise – an accident

If I were the poet laureate – as ifTough callThe pharmaceuticals cash in – as it’sUsual to lieWhen somebody it’s easy to dislikeDiesGet on the Citaloprin in case you cry Mother, father, monarch, mindEven if you don’t approve and findYou cryThat’s fine.You might be moved and even ifYou do – approve, So? And? Accidents ofContinue reading “Philip’s Laureate”

Easter came and penance paid a memory of Simnel,  one an aunt had made,  and later after Sunday’s roast,  picnic car-boot hail and sun,  betting on the last in race This year my neighbours laid a patio –  a stone-ground-marble-blasted stage.  It only took four days.

At least once a month – or a covid year – a relative confides ‘we always thought you made your own yoghurt/knitted your undies from yak wool/were a yoga type/- messy – you know a once a week bath- vegan/lesbian/anti smoking.a bit weird? I am – was have been – may be still –a bitContinue reading “not”

what’s a map but a line between somewhere else and homethe london tubeumbilicalsustainsa rush hour’s every day of beinghome now home’s online and when the internet is down a rift and dread as if a one of us is – disconnect I count the cabin- windowed hours – as I once traced the motorway andContinue reading “map”

A law – An earthly human given living, being home, must know how flies attract to detritus, multiply and spreadthe abominations shed while doingas the please of moment’s whim dictatesshedding the abject, dumped amongst the struggling youthful will – you quashed – in seeking liberty, expression of another narcissistic ‘me’ – I weep – aContinue reading “Detritus”

Every window, garden,ornamented, lit,all night;the safe obsessed insist that dusk emit a smote,pupils prick-pin tightfight, deny dilation’s moons’ deep pools, retreat in fright.

Life lived through the digital bits the clicks connect, evokes insolvable regrets and underlines the what it was we lost and crave because

FAT  I was watching ‘Flog It!’ the other day. I’ve got a bit of a thing for Paul Martin. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a number of otherwise reasonably discerning women and pan-gendered people of my generation have developed a bit of a thing for Paul Martin. We have after all now spentContinue reading “Fat”

‘Recollections may vary’ and change when time changes the lens as an individual considers their own life story.  When looking back I’m staggered by the way the story I tell myself about how I have lived and what has made my ‘me’ changes every year as I do. Retrospect’s wisdom has a fatal sticky end.Continue reading “Say it with care”

A rough recording – thoughts following The Oprah Show. March 2021. Click and listen – unscripted – off the cuff – rough thoughts.

How much money will the papers make: raking through the detritus leaked between commercial breaks; cranking up the interest in, how much the latest two-page spread, paid 2 people to invest, in living where the press can’t get, access to their lives? 9 March 2021 When Harry met Meghan on the telly …

Ferdinand Saussure explained the way that binaries are imposed through language. Identity is made up from the ‘othered’ things we’re not. (For example – I am not a man therefore I must be a woman.)  The early twenty first century addressed the verbal lacks that pose themselves to those who live between opposition’s tracks. WeContinue reading “Not just All Women”

Cuckoo There is comfort in sounds: the sensation of next door’s washing, spinning; loud and bitter arguments filtering through heating vents; warning beeps on rubbish trucks backing into culdesacs, wintering summer’s tenements and tin-bin clanking detritus singing communities’ symphonies; whispers, pianissimo, drifting winds’ secrets shed in rustling papered autumn leaves, and birds re-chorusing territories, makeContinue reading “Cuckoo”

Mind sees lines, draws words for ‘sea’, ‘sky’ and, divining a horizon, paragraphs life, proof reads rhetoric, justifies prose with an image and is at war with being.

The Cat’s away. A short play. June 2016: The saints and all the deities are busy on earth, conducting a review of the impact of a decade of human activity. While St Peter and God are in the UK and Jesus is in the Far East, reviewing life on earth, Mary, God’s mum and herContinue reading “The Cat’s Away”

As the words came, fast and loud, sea-sprayed mist of spit and bile, breaking in waves on the shore of my chest, the rage leaked a plumb-lined stream of salty sweat running in a river down the fissures in the neck.

For Ron Freeborn. In 1969,we were bored.The teacher said,‘let’s go outside’.We filed in line until we stood beneath an Ash. At last he spoke again. ‘Trees reach, as if erupting from the inner core of earth,drawn to stars. Do you see?Now draw the shapes you see, un-know the form.The wood is not the tree.’

Little Chef. God and St Peter had been in The Little Chef on the Oxford bypass for quite some time, in the hope that their journey might be a little less frustrating once the Friday afternoon traffic had abated.  Besides, they’d both developed a bit of a taste for coffee; it was one of theContinue reading “Little Chef”

Dawn They’d come pre-dawn, as if stars, lights first, late hum turning to roar and fading to drum, as if the midpoint of the bedstead led them, each a safe twenty minutes behind the one ahead. Day changed cleft, and planes’ harmonies deferred to the escalating scales  of wind-bourn commutes, eaves’ birds & the click ofContinue reading “Dawn”

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit – a way of putting down – a bullying – My father, who was not a showy man or confident, knew this. He’d never pay a complement except when made without a dig at circumstance or chance. He’d never say ‘a man like you must surely know’ andContinue reading “Sarcasm”

Grief spreads more rapidly than any virally spread disease; each death a pebble causing rippled waves in tides that move eternally, and turn, invert the course of time and creep up on us by surprise.Covid’s legacy.

That book I readwhen I was 8Made me thinkthere was a gateA door behind the coatsToday I woke uprather lateSlid the mirrored plastic widelooked beyond the Primark tat(Discount lives & have no pride)Realised there’s no escapeFrom the future’s open jawsgaping back thro Wardrobe doors.

Later – when we are used to eyebrows smiling, recoiling, moving with suspicion amongst masked shoppers groping for shelved comforts; later – when we’re out again we’ll repent weeks spent craving an outing.

Albufeira.  Here, where my parents’ hearts still live Present eternal in lights dancing seas I navigate cobbles as they did then, Careful and grey as they seemed to me when They were alive and I younger than them.  My heart, once theirs, both hurts and scorns Others who come from the place we were born,Continue reading “Albufeira”

Blown East to WestLike the coyote, baying at the moon,All night, Wind clawed at curtains,Whipping them against framed cracks,Shredding the counter paneClaiming the petrified preythat lay beneathSweated sheets.

When the cat left When the cat left I didn’t think he’d found my: underwear disappointed;  conversation disjointed; meals not good enough or considered he might take another love. I thought he was trapped in a shed, not in bed with another, better dressed and more chatty than I.  If can’t trust a woman notContinue reading “When the cat left”

The Thames in 63A goal made of the lockHand in hand, my dad and ICrept on clouded glassUp stream – the villagers’Cacophony a memoryEvening and praying reedsWillows’ shadowed canopyCovering my dad and me The Thames in 63

#Covid’s latest gain:  #SirCaptainTom now ours Everybody’s grandfather Everybody’s past, through whom, in  Everybody’s Covid year Everybody found, Life a little easier as Tom walked around Round Love’s round and round Hopeful, optimistic, marking love on ground. Cherry Coombe

Covid Muses – do you miss the stuff that used to be enacted round the kitchen table – chats – coffee – life? Just someone else’s mess in the house or mud/armpits/dramas/joys/face/dress sense/addictions/obsessions/affairs/errors/successes/awards/contractual wins/love stuff/hair do/difference/similarity/arguments/making one think/ I miss the odd now and then – the odd drop in with a surprise – aContinue reading “in lieu of”

I’ve got a silly name that works well in pornAnd a friend I’ve known since just after being bornChanged hersAs I didWhen we were kids,Her Philippa had been kidded up to FiddyShe said, at work she had to be a Philippa if to be taken seriouslyBut when the Alzheimer’s began she saidshe had regretsFiddy didContinue reading “Names Again”