21 - Envoy

#NaPoWriMo Day 21 and… yeah, so this one kind of gut-punched me and delayed everything else, and then I was overthinking the visual imagery, which stopped me from recording the audio version of this and, while I finished all the poems within April 2026 (technically, if you live in California), I’ve only recently started getting the spoons together to make the posts. Anyway, Day 21 and wrote a piece of free verse inspired by the prompt “Temples and Prisons”. The publication which supplied said prompt state that they “are open to traditional forms of poetry, as long as they provide a sensory experience and avoid cliches and emotionally loaded language,” which I think pricked me to some of the lines that follow.

In fact, there are quite a few obscure references in this, so jump down to the end if you’d like to see them first, or otherwise ignore. Please note content warnings for assault, and implied parental violence.

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the twenty preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/fayroberts/posts/envoy-162005431

---

So here I am, locked in memories,
seething behind a scarp of bone,
not as alone as I’d like to be,
breathing (just breathe), pleading
for Lethe. It doesn’t come.

I should start at the beginning,
sins brimming over in media res,
desperate to avoid the kind of ploys
employed by the terminally metatextual,
mental guests overstaying their welcome.

Impressed yet? Or should that be etched?
I’m sketchy on the specifics, but acid
clambers up my throat, and oh yes –
etched is definitely (technically) the
better word.

Le mot juste, but there’s no justice,
just us, right? I am a bran tub
of unsorted clichés wrapped in
ill-fitting identities, overlapping
map references and… stuff…

Breathe some more. In. Out.
He used to clout you, side of the head,
bed not a refuge like it is now;
cowering angers him, but defiance
winds ire up into the crack of leather.

That’s not cricket, is it? Thwack!
Howzat? resounds and
I’m out, reeling, feeling misalignment
chime down my ganglia,
a ladder to clamber, but… wait…

The ritual glitches, high priest teetering as I
finally see him clearly, outlined in jumbled
metaphors and a score of
awful imagery: this bleak wee bastard’s
weak. No titan he, just greedy Tantalus…

Put him away, find a grey rock to
lock above his head,
shed the presumption of his power,
shower the lingering shame off
your body and stretch. Deep breaths.

Drift outside to see the sunset,
let lingering warmth invest the
dreadful, hollow spaces,
chase sounds that won’t echo
over and over, soft surfaces absorbing.

We weren’t meant to live
in mausolea, cold marble
crafted to showcase only the past,
fastened into shackles dragging
at our heels.

We need to know our
starting points to map the next
steps, and I wish I had an apt
and natty end, could
send you off tidily, but… this is it.

Painstakingly drawn by me using Krita and a Huion tablet

Notes:

1. Envoy (also: envoi) generally means a (diplomatic) messenger nowadays, but there are a ton of historical and literary meanings: The mesage itself. The concluding part of a literary work, esp. a short stanza concluding a poem written in certain verse forms (e.g. the ballade or sestina); (occasionally in extended use) an author's concluding words, dedication, etc. The mission or errand on which the messenger is sent. Letter of envoi (envoy), from the French lettre d'envoi, which can mean a letter intended to accompany another (especially diplomatic) document (basically a covering letter), a letter formally opening communication between individuals or institutions, or even a letter advising of the dispatch of goods.



2. The Lethe is a river from Ancient Greek mythology, where the dead go to drink to forget.



3. Le mot juste is a French phrase which we use in English to talk about the right word at the right time.



4. And Tantalus was a Greek king condemned after death to never be able to quench his thirst or satisfy his hunger, as justice for what he served up at a feast for the gods (purportedly in one version: his own son).

Jump back up to the beginning of the poem.

20 - Post-Truth

#NaPoWriMo Day 20 (technically 25, but hey – what’s a little writer’s block between friends?) and tonight I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by the prompt “Donald Trump is rushed from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner after gunshots fired”

Talk about fresh inspiration! This only happened an hour ago! And just in time for me to dash this off and submit to Rattle!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the nineteen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/post-truth-156566308

---

Chaos layers on confusion;
contusions are few,
groups of suits,
unsuited to action,
stack under the boards.

And he looks… bored, while
scores of silk-clad reporters
pour their accounts into
news desks from vantage points
anointed by shiny shoes.

Writer’s block unstoppered by this,
I slip the headline into the
discord, grimly nod at
insomniacs echoing my
disquiet: is this real?

Can we trust anything we read?
Greed has cast doubt on
the clout of journalism,
that prism has cracked, and
not all hacks are even human now.

Will this turn out to be an accident,
an act of defiance, an
alliance of those who serve history,
a mystery twisted, or an ideal
diversion from the traditional roasting?

Who knows?

“Post-truth-era 03”. Photograph from the POST-TRUTH ERA photo series by Heikki Leis. Glass negative, 2017, via Wikipedia

2022.19 Carnival

CN: social camouflage, metaphorical depiction of #neurodivergent behaviour.

The thing about cleverness
is that it’s easy to fool yourself
that this deft reconditioning
of your social vessel,
this precious crowd-proofing,
is the truth.

The thing about successful camouflage
is that it can hide you from the fellows
you never knew existed,
all of you mist-wreathed,
cheating the predators
of their next meal.

That thing where you look askance
at the loud ones, those who’ve cast
their leaves off, breathing freely
(if they ever hid their feathers in the first place)
is not what you think it is.

(None of this is what you think it is.)

The first time you climb out of your
diving suit in full view of company,
shrug off its weight to say:
here I am, those submariners who’ve been
signalling silently can join you,
stretching metaphors around the
galley table, saying “I feel so light!”

No longer over-interpreted, you are
translated into colours that make sense,
tumbling into wonder that the
lack of filters brings.
Me too, me too, me too;
a ringing chorus of validation,
or just company in peculiarity.

“There was never any of this when I was young!”
you say, and it’s a celebration of
the discovery of new words, the right words,
diagrams drawn by those who trusted
in the illogic of being alone.
And you are not alone.
And that is terrifyingly wonderful.
And vice versa.

And you’ve always loved new words,
hoarding them like sweets,
like boy band posters that left you cold,
like old dictionaries,
like clothes that coded you as okay,
like places where you could be barefoot,
like bookmarks,
like knives,
like interesting bits of wood,
like pebbles for the pocket,
like receipts rolled into soft-edged pills,
like facts about 17^th Century vegetables,
like intricate finger shapes,
like rocking softly,
like people who didn’t scoff,
like breakups,
like pain.

And your intricately implemented assonance
has drifted away in the face of the
remembered happiness and
what it feels like to stay up late,
timeblind behind the scenes with the other
creatures of peculiar plumage,
talking and diverging, and gesturing,
and saying sorry, and not saying sorry,
and speaking in parentheses (and
nested parentheses, and footnotes),
gleeful in water that takes your weight,
salted with memories of the near-hits
of your soggy past,
and this sentence cannot last,
but it’s good enough for now.

Tomorrow is shoes and modulated vowels
and eye contact and sitting still
but also not apologising.
No more apologising.
Maybe wearing a scrap of bright feather
nestled against your neck
or in your hair, talisman against
the difficult days, the normality,
the sweetness of seeing another
pair of eyes lighting, the small nod,
the awkward laugh, the chance to
seek out sweetness in the aftermath.

Image from a blog post from Hult Business School, entitled
Thinking differently: Researching neurodiversity in the workplace

I promised you a more cheerful follow-up to the last one, didn’t I?! Pandemic has been a living nightmare in some ways, but in others has been amazing for finding tribe online...

2021.14 Rank and File

Image by @DianaVanDamme from @artstationhq

I do not want to write a love poem.
My walls crumbled twelve months ago,
desert winds blowing a blast of superheated
malice to strip me to my core.
They had always been there,
circling, twisting, piling drifts to
Trickle into my foundations through every
crack; they were the reason for the walls,
after all.

(I wonder about my foundations.
About who cracked them in the first place.
Whether they were built crooked,
or whether it was only nature taking its course.)

I do not want to write a love poem.
I want to soothe my bleeding, sand-burned
surface, submerge in cool waters,
trust my weight to kindly, liquid fingers.
But I was not made to float,
must fight to the clinging surface, gasping,
too stubborn to drown, too unwieldy to glide,
ill-equipped to strike for mist-thick shore.

(I wonder about the weight of sand,
the stone in my bones,
the fire that will not let itself go out,
for fear of never reigniting.)

I do not want to write a love poem.
I do not want to wade through every element
in search of some meaning,
patterns neat and replicable,
inscribing something mirroring truth,
reversing my fortunes in the name of normalcy.
I will seek hope, bright in the margins,
because the only thing that seems clear to me
is what I can never have.

I’ve been trying to follow my own prompts. And you know what? I managed to snooker myself with #14. Turns out I did not want to write a love poem. So, in the end, I followed the advice I often give other writers, which has worked for me in prose before: I lampshaded it. Sort of. I can’t tell if this is finished, and, in a way, it doesn’t really matter. Not this month.

Okay, look, it’s basically like this: I went looking for “misty lake” images, but Google thought I was still looking for TV Tropes, and before you know it, The Lady of the Lake turned up, and she was so angry and gnarly, and unlike any image I’ve ever seen of Nimuë that I thought: Yeah, okay!

Image by @DianaVanDamme and downloaded from @ArtStationHQ.

2021.9 Impington

This is where I stopped before,
left leg trembling, hip socket whingeing.
“I, er, just need to sit for a bit.”
No need to tell him this was the furthest
I’d walked in months,
running the gauntlet of fears
known and unknown,
just to leave my house.

And now, solo, I’m crouched on this
misshapen heap of concrete,
luminous with several types of safety
(and the vasodilatation of the seriously unfit),
having spent the last 15 minutes
waiting for the 20 minute timer
to signal my retreat,
too fast for my own good,
It seems.

Birdsong twines with cut grass,
conversation courts a
cutting engine of some kind,
the Busway hisses with tires
large and small,
and some offshoot of the A14
grumbles with an unaccustomed
rush hour.

Normalcy sidles closer.
I am gross with inactivity,
this venture exceptional
where it used to be my daily
(later check reveals it’s half as far),
waiting for my cycling muscles
to grudgingly unwind
where they used to fly me,
prompted to this pass
as an excuse for poetry,
too conscientious for my own good.

Before I opened these notes
a dog trotted by,
good boy,
vest emblazoned with Best Friend,
tended by a man carrying his
every possession,
sleeping bag a flag
as he moved a well-worn groove
to semi-rural safety, off-track.
I no longer carry cash.
He never asked.
We nodded.

Soft drops dance on this screen
As the manual saw picks up
Its master’s cough
And I remind myself I’ve always liked
the glottal taste of rain,
trained myself to enjoy its
caress as a blessing through
many years spent second-guessing
Welsh weather,
too stubborn for my own good,
too good at making virtue of necessity.

But it’s time to go home:
to boxes
and still air
and silence.
I won’t mind it
this time, creaking to my feet.
Besides: I’ve always worn a mask
For this.

The prompt for today was to take a walk and write about it. I cheated and cycled.

The Busway, Impington. Bicycle poet’s own.

2021.1 Home Made

What with one thing and another, I'm making a slow start to NaPoWriMo this year. Howbeit, I thought I'd follow my own prompts, at least to start, so here's the first, from the Lemons prompt:

It starts slowly;
dawn over a pitted landscape,
a drape drawing into
puckered lines,
nothing Puckish, just a rough
reflex, gene-deep.

“Too much?”
“Er…”
“Spit it out…” Too close.

Coaster sought, you set the glass down,
frown flickering between
Polite and
Concerned and
Uncomfortable and
English (so English).

“It’s very… refreshing…”
you venture.
A sigh.
“Fine, I’ll add more sugar…”
“Um, thank you…”
“Next time just say!”

A long spoon, the
accusation of condensation
trickling onto twitching fingers,
the drifting clumps of
grumpy addition,
all clatter against convention,
conversation’s gape glittering
in the pause.

“So. Lovely weather.”
“Yes. Lovely.”

2020.14 Baking. Grounded.

Inspired by the Silver Leaf Poetry prompt for Day 16 (“Write a letter to an inanimate object”), but actually following an exercise by @tina_sederholm where you address a person as though an inanimate object, I decided that, for once, I would write it to someone I actually liked:

You are a terracotta flowerpot,
Sturdy, not particularly large at first view,
But surprisingly capacious.
You define yourself by the things that you produce,
Acting as though your largest,
Longest project, green shoots sprouting
In all sorts of glorious (and troublesome) directions now,
Will naturally overshadow you.
Multifarious nutritious things
Owe their starts to your solidity.
Even when you appear empty, you resonate
Potential, making a glorious chime
When something strikes you,
However gently.

You are, by dictionary definition,
Porous. Absorbing many things.
According to Wikipedia,
Terracotta is only named for practicalities
(Pipes, tiles, pots, things to take the weather),
Never the things to touch the
Potter’s wheel, to dance and whirl,
Then sit still forever, martyrs to dust.
Sometimes glazed, sometimes rough,
Surprisingly tough, taking a variety of shades,
Sometimes brightly painted,
Other times revelling in your natural hue,
You exude brightness, even in the darkest times.

You have known earth, and water,
Lay quietly for a long time.
You were brought into the air,
Given shape by clever, loving hands,
Come to your first strength
By going through the fire,
Your colour coming from the iron you carry
In quietly busy hands.
I once told you about your steely core,
Your blush proving that
As much as your ringing tone.

In your time you’ve rescued
Many living things that would otherwise
Have choked or starved,
And doubtless will again, and again,
Lending your strength and curve
To preserving and lifting the burgeoning
Into something wonderful.
There are many plastic imitations out there,
That do their best,
But they are not you,
Would never survive what you have,
And – you hope – will never need to.
And when it comes to the next fresh, green thing,
Sometimes flowery, sometimes fruity,
That you bring forth,
I look forward to telling you:
It’s beautiful.
Because it will be.
Because it always is.
Because you are.

Image source: The Worm That Turned

2020.5 State Not Trait

After a conversation earlier with an Australian friend on @discord struggling to put the day behind them and go to sleep.

“I’m a terrible human,” you say.
And maybe it’s the age difference,
But I don’t see it that way.
Not off the back of one frustrated error,
Anyway.

See, I’ve encountered some truly
Gruesome humans,
Seen people who take every gift and
Turn it to shit,
Toxic at each turn,
Burning the ground around them,
And salting it with their piss.

Even them I’d struggle to utterly dismiss,
Just strip them from my own life,
Never expend any thought on them
Except as a template of How Not To Be
(Warn others if necessary),
And move on.

That’s not you.
You can tell, because we’re still talking,
And I’m all too old for indulging shitheels
These days.
You can tell, because you still have
Real friends: ones who’ll let you know
When you’ve fucked up.
You can tell, because they’ll
Lend you the tools for the next step
Tell you they’ll be there for it.

While I don’t advise you
Ever stop striving for betterment,
Set the baseline in the right place:
Gracelessly neutral – doing no real harm
On the daily, averaging out at…
Average.

That’s it – now weigh yourself honestly,
Consider the things you do
To leave the world a better place.
Consider the things you do that
Leach the world without net benefit,
Then do the sums.
Consider everything,
Be compassionately brutal,
And choose what you’ll do next.

Any truly terrible human will demonstrate
How greedy, solipsistic spirals look,
How even their most “community-minded”
Actions are actually
All About Them,
And how the line between
Perfectionist and despotic is…
A tricky one.

In the course of writing this
I’ve had to pause,
Audit myself at each verse,
Consider the implications
And how I might reverse them,
Curse the nature that sets
Zero so impossibly high,
While keeping an eye on my
Most egregious excesses.
(That honestly wasn’t fun.)

Nonetheless, in the absence of
Post-mortem corroboration,
My conclusion:
I am not a terrible human.
And neither, my friend,
Are you.

The statue of Herodotus in his hometown of Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum, Turkey.
Source: Wikipedia

2020.4 Driven Fast

Using the @PoetrySyntax prompt for Day 5 of “drive by” we have this curiosity (probably more drive-through than drive-by, but hey):

We were a casual thing –
Light touch, sunshine-fleet,
Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.
You said it was for the best.

I agreed. It’s in my nature –
Once a waiter, always a
Waiter, deference like a
Reflex, asking, never telling.

You ordered white bread for the table,
Sparkling water with a wedge of lemon,
Scanned the specials board
But stuck to the hunter’s chicken.

I couldn’t help but crave
Something slower,
Time to savour,
Rich flavours given their own space.

My mouth watered for
Mezze, citrus and pomegranate,
High notes combined with the
Dusk of game meat.

At night, I’d dream
The squeal of tires,
Awake singing Big Yellow Taxi
As I started circling in attendance.

Full, but echoing, missing nutrition,
I listened and nodded,
Wishing and waiting
For something other than snacks.

The day I realised
The menu held more options
Was otherwise ordinary
But a stranger’s smile ignited revolution.

Living in the endless expectation
Of your say-so,
Alert to your every message,
Was never fun, but unjust punishment.

I will seek out gastronomic
Experiences, fast and slow alike,
Put in my requests with a smile
Dial my own whims in my own time.

2020.2 Buzzing

“Humanity at one of its finest moments, in the pinnacle of creativity.” – YouTube user Turtlefeathers, on the 2010 video “Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque (Virtual Choir)” as quoted on page 197 of “Economies of Collaboration in Performance (More than the Sum of the Parts)” by Karen Savage and Dominic Symonds.

I have language issues, sometimes –
They arrive on the back of processor lag,
Me gabbling, attempting to parallel process
All the remaining words to say;
Turns out the human larynx
Doesn’t work that way, tongue tangled,
“Wurbs,” I say,
You nod gravely, parrot it back.

They flock, soaring and diving,
Sometimes outlining with crystal clarity,
A dance that changes,
Echoes in heads –
You forget the sense,
Retain the sensation;
Other times derailed into chaos,
Panicking at the claxon,
Unbuffered by Maslow.

Eat a sandwich.
Get some protein down you,
Eat a biscuit, drink some water.
Listen, if it was that easy,
I’d’ve done it already;
Instead I’m unsteady,
Rushing through on our old friend:
Adrenalin.
Because that always ends well.
And yet. And yet.

I can categorise the people I like
On several factors:
One: I can speak quickly enough
In front of them that my mouth
Can keep up with my brain.
Two: when they shoot for the blank
In the stammer, they land it
(by a broad majority).
Or three: stand back and let me
Catch up with fluttering synapses,
Humming gently to fill the silence.
That’s nice.
Three: three: three: thhhhrrrreee…
Four: they don’t take offence
At clenched fists, missed eye contact,
Never grab me by the wrist.

(Never grab me by the wrist.)

Sometimes there’s a big, blank space
For the word because there’s too many
Candidates, all circling, clamouring:
“Me! Pick me!” as I…
[I… what’s the word, the perfect word?
Cup left hand, clasp air, flicking eyes.
Something of wheat and chaff…
Yes!] winnow for perfection…
Except the moment’s gone, the rhythm
More than syncopated,
And dehydration doesn’t help –
Brain pickled in its own unhealthy juices.
Useless, useless, useless.

Shhhh…
A breath. Take one.
Don’t hush me.
No – not a gag, an amplifier,
A byproduct of the silence
Is that the words can ring in it.
I grumble, unconvinced.
Eat a sandwich, you glorious idiot,
Switch off your alarms,
And charm yourself to sleep with
Cheese and bread, forgetful of regrets.

(I agree, but type this up instead
As birds chirp, sky silvering into Saturday
While I softly splinter.)

2020.1 Luxury

We are searching for candles
Drawers are rifled and rejected,
Corners inspected,
Best guesses anyone’s for the making.
Maybe this is not the time
But shining is important, so we dig quicker.

We are searching for candles,
For the first of two birthdays
Ticked off in swift succession,
Successfully silent, cardless
Except for, in each instance,
A different, solitary, stubborn gifter.

We are searching for candles
Tiny, delicate, beckoning heavy breaths,
A gesture against this… situation,
The one we stopped naming –
Another small wall against the sign
On every site, the flash panels dimmed.

We are searching for candles
And I neglect to mention the job lot
Bought before anyone else could get them,
Seeing in myself the excesses rendered
By a different childhood, remembering
Water shortages and powercuts the others dodged.

We are searching for candles
And the big ones – tucked into a corner
Of my tiny study, sturdy, quarantine
Against panic and not yet welcome,
A bet placed against ever needing them –
Weigh, plain and ponderous on my drifting mind.

We are searching for candles
We don’t have forty-five
(If we have any
(We must have some – I’ve met me))
And, even if we did, there would be
More wax than cake, more flame than flavour.

We are searching for candles
Three people who want to sing forth brightness,
Post positivity,
Eager to confirm that this is unique,
Frantic for fripperies,
Scintillating colours to cover reality.

We find the candles
Stuffed among the cloth napkins,
A full drawer that no-one ever moves,
Choosing to eschew using something
That smacks of pretension,
Trousseau to impossible parenthood.

We light the candles,
Nine in total,
Sing, hold breaths,
And wish,
And wish,
And wish…

2019.9 Imparted

Putting the explanation at the beginning this time as this one made me cry and might make you cry too. For trigger warnings, check the labels at the end, below the text (I should hopefully have set this up so you can’t see the end of the poem if you click on the link, but you may need to scroll down slightly for the tags).


There’s a hole in her heart,
Or maybe just her torso,
A phantom organ that
Squeezes and kicks,
Dances in frustration in the
Soft places between.
She apologises, sometimes,
Knowing it will never see the light.

She hopes it’ll shrink,
As time and hope slope by;
She knows it can’t be filled with
Other things, and busy-ness,
But maybe they can
Crowd it down,
Wear at its hard edges,
Muffle it somewhat.

It wriggles, digs in sharp fingertips,
It has a trigger for every season –
Presents unbought, traditions unshared,
Snowballs unthrown, slopes unsledded.
There is blossom not to fondle, soft and sweet and small,
Birdsong unidentified, wingflight not pointed.
There are beaches not to run on,
Shells not to clatter in sandy, seaweed pockets.
There are conkers uncollected, fireworks uncooed,
Sharp scents of brown leaf missed, and bonfires unlit.

She knows she could only be
Even more tired, even more broke.
She knows photos and friends and
Values and poems and families-of-choice
Can be legacy, can write her love
Into eternity.

She also knows that knowing
Does not soothe the kick and squirm,
Can’t sing it the lullaby she’ll never write,
Won’t rock it, rocks herself instead,
Sweet and bitter and utterly alone.
Just for a moment. A long, long moment.
While near, small voices pipe and skirl, contented,
Through the first warm sunset of the year.






































Top

Trigger warnings: childlessness and regret

2019.8 Glitch

If your body is a miracle
Then your brain is the next step up.
Combined, they dance through time,
Glory in the stretch of senses,
Caressed by music, soothed by scents,
Blessed with the fine detail in
This palimpsest of... everything –
Picking up the fine Baroque flourishes
Where some only get the broad swish of
Primary colours.

And then there’s the other end
When things only you can discern
Are pinscratch discords across the
Chorus of creation, discolouration
Staining paradise,
A dissonant stink that threatens safety,
And all this a myth to the majority.

Even those who choose to believe you
Wince only with embarrassment’s syncope,
Where others take offence at your
Fist-clench, flinch, rock, tic, and mimicry.
They are only eating,
Only breathing,
Only crackling,
Only drinking,
Only being.

And you, guest attempting to rest on
Fathoms-deep mattresses,
Have no choice but to suffer,
Or dig out the pea,
Or leave, fleeing back into the tempest.
And yet the world will continue
To test you, never call you Princess,
And if only you could sleep,
The details of this ever-present soundscape
Could be a gift again.
Rich and rare as silence.


I’ve here written before about having synaesthesia. Among my other fun neurodiversities (neuroadversities?) are hyperacusis and associated misophonia. Another poet with misophonia reached out today on Facebook while I was deep in Write All The Poems mode, and this, rather unsurprisingly, turned up. I vividly remember my grandmother reading me the story of the Princess and the Pea. I hated it, yet kept coming back to it. It felt wrong on so many levels. We can certainly level a lot of feminist criticism at it, and betrayal of the ancient code of hosting strangers, but the deliberate torture of someone of a sensitive nature in order that she prove her assertion always seemed wrong to me, even if I didn’t have the vocabulary for it at the time.

2019.7 Amphibious

We were looking for ourselves,
Flicking over pages
Bright with gold –
The certainty of the light,
The heritage of those born to
The winning lineage,
All straight lines and shining faces,
Sword-girt, sunlit,
Indomitable,

We sped, too, past the dark,
The depths of the woods,
The unlit caves,
The places where the cold
And dispossessed lure
Innocence to be consumed,
Transformed into dinner or symbol.

Nothing fit.
We saw only funhouse mirrors
Fracturing us further.

It took a while;
We didn’t see you,
Stepping between the rays of sun
At the forest’s edge;
Standing on a bridge
(or under it);
Inhabiting the banks
Of the pond.
We saw you transform –
Small to large, smooth to hairy,
Vulnerable to scaly.

We were taken in by the suggestion
That only one state was the
True one.
We watched them break the spell,
Return you to your
Rightful shape:
Goose to brother,
Mage to dragon,
Fox to wife.

And we, who loved the liminal,
Found our eyes drawn, repeatedly, to you
Who, settling, unsettled us.

And, decades on, we finally re-write,
Breathe easier,
Gift the selkie back her skin
The swan maiden her shift.
The faun runs again in dappled shade,
Chain about his slender neck,
And the frog settles into the
Churning cool of the Springtime lilypond,
Raising his voice in chorus for a while
(just for a while),
Astride the twilight margins,
Until the palace beckons once again.


I’ve already reached the point where I’m asking for prompts from anyone nearby. In this case, my partner, clearly casting an eye about the room, said frog (did you look at the stuffed frog on the bookcase? Shh!). This is where my brain went.

2019.4 Ghost Tour

“Will you cover for me?” I’m helpless, delving into a set of well-worn expressions, shunning the stutter he beckons, projecting: Yeah, I reckon. “Listen,” he says, “I owe you one.” At this point, more like twenty, a reckoning that’s chasing propriety into an early grave. A new voice: “Step lively,” says Greg, head a conspiracy tilt past the fire hatch and we scurry, him stubbing, me shrugging, Greg’s gaze a spinning speculation I nudge from him. “Madame’s on the march,” he confides. I sigh. “No closer to the prize?” My turn to roll my eyes, grab regulation headgear, unprop the door while trawling for witticisms. Zilch. “There’s always next time.” “Sure, love. Sure.” We watch as he darts ahead.

Tip-toeing upstage,
We are mismatched murderers
Longing for a break.


Over to our old friend the random line generator for inspiration for this not-very-strict haibun, Words generated were: cover, march, listen, tip, upstage, point, chase, ghosts.

2019.3 Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows

She’s been told, over and over:
It’s easier to regret something you have done
Than something you haven’t.
She’s thinking, in particular, today,
Of the near misses.

The declarations of affection a breath away,
The errant gust tucked behind her teeth.
Likewise the cutting insult,
The coup de grâce to a parasitic union,
Forever spiralling on staircases.

She thinks of the last-minute turns
Not taken.
Country lanes still ravelled.
The road that’s more than familiar,
The route engrained in synapses,
Waking and sleeping, unrested,
Until all she can do is visit and
Revisit – shopping list of the
Undone accompanying the miles.

The house unbought, the home unmade,
Its neighbourhood now a maze of gentrification and
Soaring investment potential.
The hand untaken, the
Toe-tucked farewell,
Breaths pluming, backlit for all time in
Green, amber, red, beep, beep, beep…

She is thinking of the monuments unvisited
Today. She should be thinking of
Everything else. Everyone else.
She is thinking, instead, of skin untouched,
Lips untasted, breath unshared,
Knows how Too Late feels in the
Monthly crossing-off, the floodplain tedium.

She is thinking about the
“Actually”s unsung, clutched in her gullet:
Actually, don’t touch that
Actually, that’s not his name
Actually, that’s racist
Actually, she wants you to leave her alone
Actually, I want you to leave me alone
Actually, I want you to leave
Actually, I want you

She is thinking how close
Habit is to fear,
How she inhabits a groove laid out
By so many – too many –
Before her.
Whether or not this is her path,
She’s knee deep in other people’s
Straight and narrow.
It will take a miracle.
It will take a more than careless conflagration.

She finds herself hoping, for once,
The words spilling fresh from her lips,
Hearing them for the first time in years
Of repetition, no longer smooth.
Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Mundus tecum.
Benedicta tua. Benedicta tua.
Benedicta tua.


Fragments of this haunted me all evening. It’s been a funny sort of day.

2019.2 Ishqbazi

They call it husbandry.
He watches the coterie tumble and
dance, flirt with air-currents,
a smile on his lips,
even as he trains them,
directs their pairings,
with an eye for their offspring’s fortune.

He exhorts them to lean into
the best of what their God gave them,

discarding the careless practices
of his fond but feckless forebears.
Each feather is a treasure,
ribboned ankles a flash of pride
in the heart of his court.

Ringed with gold, fed only the best,
they test the Charkh and the Bazi,
fling themselves into contention with
gravity, pull praises from him,
trust to the truth of his love.
And even after their brief twirls are done,
they grace the zenana, pecking painted grains;
perfect specimens forever.

Pigeons feeding near a golden pigeon cote on a hillside, Mughal, Kashmirmid – 17th Century © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

Ishqbazi means “love-play” and is what Emperor Akbar used to call pigeon-flying. This is either adorable or slightly creepy. Probably adorable.

Charkh means “a lusty movement ending with the pigeon throwing itself over in a full circle”

Bazi means “lying on the back with the feet upwards, and quickly turning round”

Zenana “contextually refers to the part of a house belonging to a Hindu or Muslim family in the Indian subcontinent which is reserved for the women of the household.”

2019.1 Articles of Instruction

Step One: Start As You Mean To Go On 
Pour all the pieces on the floor,
It is important to ensure that the ground is
Unprepared, uneven,
Littered with a palimpsest of
Previous attempts.

Step Two: Organisation 
Sort the pieces into piles of what
Feels Right. Your intuition is more powerful
Than the prognostication of
Experts. They have no real passion;
They don’t know your life.

Step Three: Motivation 
Talk loudly about how great it will be
Once you’ve built this…
Thing. Talk of the joy you’ll feel when
Those extraneous little… jiggledy wotsits
Are out of the way.

Step Four: Focus Your Energy
Do your best to fish out the little bits
By yourself. They don’t look like the rest.
They’re not strong and proud and straight
Like the rest. Too many complicated
Twirls and curves and fussy edges.

Step Five: Key Perspectives
Ignore your neighbours.
It’s at this phase that they will lean, smiling,
Over the hedge. Offer examples.
Gesture to their own grand structure. Yours will be better.
Fling the fiddly bits into their garden when you can.

Step Six: Critical Path
Your children are asking what you’re trying to do.
Tell them that kind of attitude
Wouldn’t have served their grandparents.
Your father comes around. Tells you you’re doing it wrong.
What does he know?

Step Seven: Safety First
The rains are coming. Cover the pieces
With tarpaulin. Your partner is asking when you’ll be done.
Ignore them – you are working on the
Important things. Like what to call… it.
More small, fiddly things are turning up.

Step Eight: Reviewing
Your other neighbour is complaining.
Says she won’t be able to step over the fence
For a cup of tea any more if you build… it there.
This kind of stirring won’t help anyone.
Your partner has that look again. Ignore them.

Step Nine: Requirements Gathering
Your children have written you an email,
Asking you to stop. They only want you when
They want you. Ungrateful brats. The image
On the top of the box is blurred with rain,
Bleached by sun. Take your time to get it right.

Step Ten: Resource Gathering
The neighbours are no longer smiling,
Say they’d quite like to talk about other things
Like subsidence, unruly pets, what you’re going to bring
To the barbecue next week. They’re getting fed up of gammon.
When you ask for help, they keep telling you the same damned thing.

Step Eleven: Prioritise
The garden need work.
The tarpaulin rattles in the breeze.
The pond is clogged, the fruit gone unpicked since
The kids stopped minding you. If you’d only
Got rid of all those “screws” and “bolts” you’d be done by now.

Step Twelve: Establish Timelines
Your partner shows you a diagram
They’ve come up with. Too little too late.
You ask the neighbours. They tell you the
Same damned thing. Talk about how six of
Your relatives don’t want… it. Don’t cry where they can see.

Step Thirteen: Review
People keep talking about recovery.
You’re fine. Stop fussing. If you can just build
It. Doesn’t need to be perfect.
Not any more…
Not any more.

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 

2018.10 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.)