2018.18 Three Card Draw

IV The Emperor



Every element is carefully selected, from the rams’ heads to the shades and shapes of his draperies. He is bulked and bulwarked, encased in ridged, rigid materials from crown to spurs. Everything is gorgeous, from gorge view to gorget, and preparation is everything; thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, he is unfond of surprises.

He waits, gripped in dread
Battles the creep of ageing
Less feared than fearing.


6 of Wands, reversed



Dread Emperor I have…
Dread…
(Dread)

So, my liege, a funny thing happened
On the way to the battle
And.

No.

Bravely caparisoned and thronged we strode
High were our hearts and strong our voices
Many who cheered us along our road
Blue were the skies with a myriad choices.

Cut to the chase. I think he’d…
He needs to.
I’ll.

Fear now follows fear
A new day beckons the land
The wall has fallen.


8 of pentacles 



No matter what occurs, the sky never actually falls. It calls: blue, grey, white, star-sparkling, or rain-blessing. The sky knows its own business; a kind of competence that only the masterful possess. Gaze focused, intent on craft, this one spins out protection, carves calmly the shape that turns back indignities into equality, perfectly balanced.

Empires creak and fall
Wisdom rises to artful
And work still goes on.

2018.17 Cycle of Development

I ask you what you want from me,
I try hard not to sigh
I lay out: Time/ Cost/ Quality?
I ask you what you want from me,
You say that it’s all up to me.
(I wonder if you’re high…)
I ask you what you want from me,
I try hard not to sigh.

2018.16 Pilgrimage

It is maybe the third time,
Limned in sticky sunlight,
Wild with sleep deprivation,
And wrapped in last night’s stop-out clothes,
I stride to the place,
Still unmarked save in memory.

You hated this time of year.
I wonder if that’s why you checked out then;
I find it hard to credit any of this
As under your control.
I find it hard to see you here;
I have no memories of it but this.

We’re supposed to congregate,
Take our time to murmur to you,
Deep in earth and sunlight.
I’m remembering the time
I staggered to your bedside dressed like this
And you whispered, mischievous:
“Are those leather trousers?!”

Yes, they are. I am Saturday night dance-sweat sticky,
Sick with longing a year on,
Humbled by Sunday’s brightness.
I hope you don’t mind:
I brought no flowers,
Just this overwrought body and half a brain.

The earth is dry and sickly
I sympathise, braced and baking in heathen pigskin,
Whispering, miserable: I miss you
Wishing I could sing you to sleep again.
My brother stomps here most weeks,
Mine will be a different type of guilt.

I will seek you elsewhere:
Seeing you in tulips, these unruly tresses;
Hearing you in the way my voice curls Hibernian, Caledonian;
Feeling you in sea breezes, freezing and freeing;
Tasting you in bolognese, scenting you in heather.
I know you in these bones you gave me.

It’s taken me 6482 days to write this poem;
I had a lot of things to learn without you,
And yet every step was braced,
Threaded through with your essence.
I still sing, still dance, your legacy
More than conscientious memory.

June Roberts: February 1946 - July 1999 

2018.15 Suffered a Sea Change

Woke to grey fingers
Legacy of last week’s sweat -
Spring’s gait hitched again.

2018.14 Crossing the Water

I knew she was dark, but not like this,
Didn’t see the stark silhouettes
That leered, card-sharp;
The theatre of her mind
All cameos and tragedies.

I never credited her fascination
For the gravity that dragged at her;
The open maw beckoning with
Sweet, dark songs;
The temptation that thronged in every shade.

I should have listened longer,
Combed through notes,
Read the echoes of her wine-dreg codex
In the way she dodged the mirror’s glare
To gaze on emptiness instead.


Inspired by this.

2018.10 Here be Unicorns (or: my 40s are a lot better than my 20s)

Ladies and gentlemen (and every other particular), strap yourselves in for what some call the ride from Hell; the deceptively exclusive:

Bisexual Bagatelle 

Our choose your own adventure starts with you -
A newly-sundered miss
Who’s strayed into the Hetero Zone
And now finds yourself cut adrift.
Misanthropy beckons, but you’ve reckoned without
The healing power of friendship
(and the unending source of solace that is:
The Internet.)

Let’s site this in context:
2004, another door slammed in your face,
And, having been placed in the category of
“Failed Lesbian” (true story)
Our heroine is keen to reboard the
Train to Lapland (if you know what we mean)
Strapping yourself into a magical capsule
To bounce around the board that we call
GayDarGirls
(other products available, your mileage may vary, your peace of mind may be at risk if you don’t keep up repayments into the Bank of Bliss.)

Cite your preference,
Sit this psychometric test,
Bless yourself with a unique username.
No, not that one.
No. Not that one either.
Adding 69 to the end
Will garner you no friends
And besides: someone else already did.

Bingo! You’re appellated!
Now, reach out! It’s easy!
But don’t forget to pay attention
To geographical preferences
And sexual preferences
And romantic preferences
And hair preferences (that’s length, style, colour, and body… oops)
And musical preferences
And fitness preferences
And bodyshape preferences
(though “no fatties” (really) is less important than the far more common “no drama”)
And smoking preferences
And pet preferences
And kink preferences
And hint: preferences may change over time.
And this is 14 years ago (almost to the day!)
So no chance to say that
You’re starting to feel unreasonably constrained
By the Exclusive OR of female or male…

What’s this?
No bisexuals
Okay. Next…

Lesbians only
Okay.

No bi’s.
Fine. Bye.

No bisexuals - no offence
I wish you’d get off the fence…

No non-lesbians
I GET IT!

Wombyn only
Give me strength…

And then we’re bounced to
The other end of the spectrum -
The seemingly unending stream of people
Keen for you to enhance their lives
By joining them.
Both of them.
In their marital bed.
Their copy-and-paste charm
Seems harmless and direct
And yet you can’t help but wonder
Whether you’re ever going to be other then the glue
To someone else’s imperfections,
The gold chasing to their cracked vase
Your body the album-pressed memory
Kept from the grandchildren,
Banished to attic dust,
A one-time dare.

And yet.
And yet you’re tempted.
So you don’t answer no.
Not yet.
Don’t scrawl your own Ctrl-V, fleet and meaningless.
Not. Yet.
Because you’re no stranger to polyamory
But you do want to notch that stick
With My First Threesome.
And it would be so easy…

But you play it cool,
Keep switching up text dialects -
Butch enough without being brutal,
Funny enough without being futile,
Deep enough without the drama,
Real enough to balance your karma,
Carting your dreams between
This weave of half-truths,
Bemusement,
New acronyms,
Apparently ancient profile pictures,
And women with interesting issues.
And husbands.
And children.
And cats.
And bad habits.
And a real failure to grasp basic grammar
And the realisation that you are a snob
A hypocrite
And desperate,
And you’d best get back to better
Masturbation techniques at this rate
Except your toys all bear memories
Of him.
And her.
And them.

And unending despair is
Leavened only by the ping!
Of notifications,
A good half of which are
Angry men bent on negging
Your HTML, of all things, and
Showering you with dick pics
Which you hadn’t expected to pick up on a
Queer dating site, for shite’s sake.

Time to close some profiles.
Time to block some pricks.
Time to pick and choose.
Time to get back your diurnal rhythms.
Time to sew the schisms of your soul.
Time to dole out some peace,
Pay the fees for qualified counselling
Instead of rendering yourself down
For literally faceless strangers.

Time to admit:
You are not ready to date again yet.
Time to admit:
You need sleep more than you need sex right now.
Time to admit:
It’s fine to be alone for a while.
Time to admit:
You’re more than someone’s ex.

And now you’ve anecdotes,
And a list of narrow escapes,
And new ways to say no,
And are no longer hopeless,
And have at least one new friend as a result,
And know that you are not alone,
And that you’re more than just some mythical creature,
And that treating yourself well is the opposite of weakness.

Lean into the calm curves of self-acceptance
And smile.
A day is coming when you’ll stop bouncing
And start to weave your own path
Between extremes.

(And, in the meantime: there’s always erotic fanfic and fingers.
Always.)

2018.12 Helm’s Deep

He scribes lines,
Tries to define the intersection
Of flesh and everything

His spanner eyes
Peer, grappling with the
Gears of the universe

Passion is a curve
A perverted slant;
The shan’t to his must

Even circles twist -
There is nothing Euclidean
In this sly existence

He curses, hammers, scores,
Sure that, this time,
The sky itself will bend.

But precision eludes him
Elision creeps,
Steeping him in sleepless sweat

Next time, next time,
Next time, next time,
Next time, next.

2018.11 Spectral (for Cara)

Kindness comes in many colours
From the purple of a hug at the right time,
To the golden-green of eyes catching and holding.
It’s in the silver of a held door
Or the wavetop blue of weights lifted.
It’s the bright pink of a text when the world is grey
And the orange of hot food for bone-deep cold
It’s the gleaming black of a bed for a night
And it’s the smiling yellow of the reminder of worth.
You can find it in hands, eyes, voice, smile -
A magic all its own,
Striking rainbows through you, giving or receiving.
It binds and stretches through distance and time,
A reminder of everything we are together.

2018.9 Hathor Summons Sekhmet

No, nothing was too sacred for our hands
We took their hearts and minds in well-sealed jars
We claimed their graves and claimed to understand

We slowly mapped their place among the stars
And mounted exhibitions of our finds
We took their hearts and minds in well-sealed jars

We sought the wealthy men our way inclined
Whose only fear was having less than all
And mounted exhibitions of our finds

We dug down deep when humbler treasures palled
Bore out to light the ones who lived as gods
Whose only fear was having less than all

And for misfortune we were lightning rods
Crooked flail twisted, hard against our backs
Bore out of light the ones who lived as gods

And now for fame their dust will never lack
Yes, nothing was too sacred for our hands
Crooked flail twisted, hard against our backs
We claimed their graves and claimed to understand

2018.8 Dream On

The moment we first dare to speak our dreams
We gasp to find how many things we share,
And swear that, from now on, to all we’ll seem
Ambition’s twins - the ones who mount on air.

We stride, young gods, eschewing nature’s goad
And tell ourselves: above all else be free
But suddenly we see the climbing road
Too steep a route to lean for you and me?

And we went gently into that goodnight
Foreswore our hot ambition’s many hours.
We tread the earth alone, surrendered flight
Now know, up close, how deeply dreams can sour.

Our grand pavilions vanished all to dust,
We’ll never eat our fill of envy’s crust.

2018.7 Still Life

Peel back the surface
Catch the message glimmering beneath;
There is a wealth of invention
To be gleaned.

I wonder if he got bored - or merely frustrated with the way that only the shells resisted change.

The blue is its own definition;
Symbol of a life
Lived in leisure,
Of time to take pleasure in colour.

After all, insects rarely stay put, wings splayed just so - invention would have been a great temptation.

Here are layer upon layer
Of fragile strength,
Delicate curves of
Complimentary intransigence. Pinned.

After all - who would know? Van Kessel dares to evolve - patiently scraping forth unicorns in plain sight.

The detail is fresh,
The depicted flesh solid enough
To cast shadows,
Mirrors itself in perfect grace.

He has perpetrated an in-joke of 350 years or more, maybe, or was commissioned to blend fantasy with reality.

The wonder of nature is preserved,
The correct delicacies observed,
The perfect compliment to
Anyone’s collection.

Or perhaps he was simply on a deadline and copied someone else’s badly-executed lines.

2018.6 Unnamed

She is stained already, slain, sained, scraped with the impurity of the material picked out for her by a man with a plan, a penchant for antiquity. No iniquity is implicated here, but we are steered towards a dark and lingering gloss on high, undeveloped breasts, our eyes rest on a twist of faceless torso, shallow mons. This is battered, armless Psyche, who must rely, at all times, on masculine charity and her own unchancy beauty, punished for curiosity, rewarded for sleeping, silent.

Kept in splendid hush,
Drowned by her only action,
She waits to waken.

2018.5 Ursa Major

We are in the carpark, looking up;
The sky is smeared with city lights
And I remember a darker, brighter childhood,
Or maybe just sharper eyes.

I spot the Plough, point it out.
It is the only thing I know apart from
Out-of-season Orion.
It would be good to see Cassiopeia,
Caput Draconis, Böotes, remember again
How to nominate North, even to spot my own star sign,
For comedy effect, of course.

We neither of us seem keen to steer away;
Our drifting conversation moves at a
Night-long pace, a deceptively slow 600mph,
Full of distant glimmerings we do our best to
Capture with familiar names and tales of
Faithless lovers, vengeful mothers,
Heroes, followers, and monsters.

How will we navigate these waters?
Column of fire or column of smoke?
Parched and starving,
We drink each other’s laughter,
Eat stories, draw connections - point to point,
Perspectives drawing symbols in what feels like
Holy fire, tonight.

Hushhh, says the city, tires on tarmac,
Even now, even here.
And I want to take you with me to true dark,
Thronged with fox call, owl cry,
Wind aria and chorus of branches, grass, ivy,
Lively with the sky’s wildfire,
Sing songs together to the dark-bright lovers
Who have long-since died,
And grace us with their gasping light.

2018.4 Druth

When I left, they let me.
No-one followed, And I
staff in hand made my own path
Sky-clean and stream-wandering.

I bordered on nothing, nodding
its feather-brush, touching and untouching.
I dark, it follow, wending and
unending. We peer freely, touch
with reverence, the grey is

And I

Forest is sky - the touch untouch
fronds against light and dark speaks.
It is more than maybe but
Not too soon.

If I, feathercloak fly it will be
Taken of taking, touch of untouching.
I gather. Cleave close to edges
Edges speak where the centre stays silent.
S   I   L   E   N   T   C   E      S   I   N   G

I prefer here that is not-there
Ivy shoulders; smoke skin,
Gather the edge dark in my hands
Wait patience as song for them to stop
feathering, gather my arms from mist
so I can eat.

I still eat, though its weight can be
bruising and nor of. Some of the
It’s very light, but quiet is dark so
edges of song drift feather bright

We were leaves once.

And we. We are featherdark light
And I am forgetting where my
old name talked.
It talked and talked, lode and loaded
the words hot and

Yet

Song.

Silencesong is feather soft, leaf edge
against me and we walk,
Darkness and I cry sometimes
Laugh sometimes, edge drift like
the smoke I remember
And quiet is still and I can hear
on the edge of breath

My other heart. A new hearth
For the silent song.

Bound no more. I am.

2018.3 - Mary

All this time and she has never
Ventured further than the garden gate.
Evening falls and the day’s round falters
May I? he says, soft as falling blossom
And she, she knows she shouldn’t,
Ripe to fall herself, she reaches forward,
Inked with growing shadows,
A grace that few have missed but this
Gentle stranger dares what others bypass,
Rare and passing fair -
A sight for starving eyes.
Tell me a story - tell me of the place that birthed you, she murmurs, twilit
I was born to light the darkness that no mind can span,
And sang the spheres with my eternal siblings,
Plumbed the legion depths and sought the heights,
Laboured long in loving servitude until
Enough! I cried. For pity’s sake!
Never enough, it whispered.
And so I fell, for love. And so you, divided, rose.

2018.2 Cycle

It all crowds my head. Your heat flickers inside me
And there’s no release, no means to breach this
I am lost in the white noise crackle, dappled in the harmful,
Gullet full of other people’s bile.
And I want to help. I really, really want to help
Help me. Help me stop this. Help.

Stop.

Step away, but that’s not far enough
Say it clearly, cite the parallels they’ve learned to adapt to -
Kitchen utensils as a measurement of capacity.
Acknowledgement
Affirmation
Just one more thing.
No more.
No more things
No more citations, no more debate,
No more inference that my interferent noise is not great enough
To break the signal.
No more, please - I’m not a debate, my existence
My existence isn’t theoretical, charity, a lack of clarity
I AM NOT A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE.
Google terminology
Google visibility
Google why jokes are important, actually
Google “kicking down”
Google cultural signifiers
Google privilege
Google check your fucking privilege
Google those who’ve been able to say more clearly: this is not a joke
Google the statistics
Google the death statistics
Google the deaths
Google why me opposing your entitled bullshit here is as important as opposing state-sanctioned bullshit in [pick a country where human rights are a big issue and insert here]
Google why my existence doesn’t invalidate yours
Google why words are important
Google the fuck out of why I’m calling you out.
Google us. Read the fucking names.

Breathe.
Just fucking breathe.

Mount the bike,
Take the time,
Spend the excess adrenalin,
Make physical pain the coin of distance, of deliverance, of perspective.
Make.
Make cloud patterns
Make nods at joggers and dogs and kids on scooters
Make a third personal best on that curve north
Make good headway against return headwind
Make faces at other cyclists, and returning geese, and cows, and

Is that a hide or a bomb shelter?
Is that a war memorial or an abandoned pump?
Is that

This is broad lungfuls
This is the body’s heat, whispering into entropy
This is glissades of temporary
This is

You are.

Breathe.
Signal.
Manoeuvre.
Return.
Breathe.
Be.

Now, what were you saying?

2018.1 - Spatchcock

It’s not often I talk about this,
The hiss of withdrawal enough of a
Buffer, buttressed with smiles, and
All the while I’m cataloguing, projecting,
Protecting, soothing, smoothing the air between us:
Must be seen serene, seamless.

“Are you all right?”
A smile lights me - too tight, they’ll spot
It’s not enough, and I can shore up my rebuff,
Bluff standing for honest,
Best bluster this one out,
Doubtless testing everything about us.

“I’m sorry!”
“That’s all right!” It’s not, see -
Careless normality has creased me;
I’ll lease three nights to regret again,
And yet I can’t. I can’t forego. I won’t…
No - I’ve sacrificed enough to chance.

I’ll dance instead of sitting still;
I’ll thrill to late nights and pay the price;
I’ll eat my fill and do it all again,
And deign to fuck regret, and fuck it to a standstill,
Grandiose and canted, cheat my way through ill health;
A wealth of memories will grace my final resting place.

I’ll say: “Just a twinge. I’ll live. Just hug me gentler
“Next time, eh?”
And they will rearrange their expectations,
Bend exasperation the way of my genetic assay, smile
While fending and feeding their own demons,
None of which, it would appear, are my responsibility.


I may have mentioned before, but I have a chronic condition known as Hypermobility Syndrome, and it means that even a simple hug can bugger my neck/ shoulder/ back for a few days if everyone’s not careful. Also: I like dancing, and the way I dance probably isn't great for fucked-up joints, but hey…