Remains

 Counting down the days and ways that I have missed you.

The moments that we haven't shared.

The times I know that I was scared

but to others it looked like anger.

To others it looked like idiocy, 

like flippant avoidance of serious thought. 

The objects and experiences I bought

after you bought the farm.

It took years

and it's only now,

drowning in the hourglass

that I realise how much time has passed.

And how much 

I have left.

Balance

 The swoop of this pendulum gives me vertigo.

Up I go!

And down.

And how far down depends on things entirely outwith my control.

Slower in the midsection,

 feel those little swings like antipodean inflections;

teasings of an inverted world. 

There must be equilibrium.

What we lose on the objects we gain on the experiences

or so they tell me

 but the distance between stuck and free 

is light years.

And I'm in darkness,

still searching for a light.

Straight outta tha Pondy

It's nice to be down with you Southside folk. 

Got my passport stamped by some Culture Vannnin bloke.

He gave me border grief,
wouldn't cut me no slack.
I'm from the wrong side of the electric railway track.

I live in Ramsey.
It's the place to be.
We don't get your chances or your budgetries.
You've got most of the jobs, most of the bars
and most of the parking for most of the cars.
We've got increasing numbers of unemployed,
pregnant teens and banged up boys.
We've got genteel hippies, restaurants,
Shakti Man and the Mooragh splash park.
We're a town with texture and layers of past
and the odd pool of vomit you have to sidle past.
They've gentrified our heart and installed a Costa Coffee.
The old businesses are closing 'cause the young folk have no money.
We've a working port, a bit industrial.
Still a bit rough; we're Mannanin's rebel.

You've know you've met a Northerner when you meet attitude
and you in your ignorance might think them being rude
but what you're missing is up here we don't have need for graces. We like straight talking, standing ground and getting in your faces.

They've fancily repaved Parliament Street
but that doesn't change the leaking shoes or dogshit on your feet.
You can will a town to prosper but you can't make poor folk spend
and everything's eroded by the pigeons in the end.
You tell us about Anagh Coar and what it's like in Pully
but they all seem bourgeois when you compare them to the Pondy.

In the winter it is crowded in the Library
because it has heating and you can stay all day for free.
The businesses that work up here are all a bit niche.
Old money eccentricities unlike your nouveau riche
high street brand name blandness up and down your old Strand Street,
homogenised and sterilised by office shoe clad feet.
Not happy with two Costas, you've a Starbucks now as well!
And what have we got to counter that?
Leonard Singer, and Alan Bell.

Not to quote Jurassic Park, but -

My dear fellow jugglers 

in the Cirque du Suburbia,
you may think your home impervious
to encroaching adult themes.
But “Nature always finds a way”
and they’re going to learn it all some day
but it’s probably better in some ways than by some other means.

You’ll all be aware of the endless oughts
that contort and constrict
instinctive care.
Single modern motherhood is
a carousel
tersely tethered with knots.
Will nots and spill nots
and hope nots and choke nots
and try nots and cry nots
and eat nots and teach nots.
The most strangulatory
of these tangles is
expose not
meaning: Protect your child from the darkness of this world
and teach them the strength of enlightenment.

The entitlement of access to the hive mind
-by necessity a skill they must learn,
‘cause coding is the future –
shoots my determined obsolescence right in the maternals.
So to detract from external influence
I knew what to do.

We’d get
a pet.

Landlord clause: no fur or paws
no electricity eating heated enclosures,
no live food, no rodents,
no hooves, smooth or cloven.
From amidst this messy mesh
a loophole
I sagely extracted.
No one had said anything
about marine arachnids.

Fishtank purchased, live plants in
filter on and the process begins.
Background danios Spotty and Stripey
soar and chase and are occasionally fighty
but mostly work as extras in the theatre of the tank.
We even had a red-shirt! For his sacrifice we thank him.
In true tradition we set the stage; when he died the first act was over.
Two long months we’d had to wait for the alga bloom to cover
enough of the surfaces to act as a rider
for our new stars: The undersea spiders!
Or shrimp. As they’re also called
or as some people say, “You mean PET PRAWNS?!”

Yes.
is the answer.

Now. After about a month a strange thing appeared,
at first no bigger than a poppy seed
then as it grew I came to realize
there was more than one stowaway snail inside.
Gio was delighted, I was concerned
about intercrustacean diplomatic relations
but they co-existed peacefully and the purpose was perfectly served.

Until the day these mucilaginous interlopers, now numbering four or five
decided to stage a three-day-three-way-sex-show. Live.
Right at the front of the tank they were!
“Mummy, what are they doing?” “Errrrrrr..
I think they’re making babies, Gio.”
“But there’s three of them!” “Yes, I know…
oh I can’t explain it, they’re snails, I’m not sure-
hey, who’s that in the castle with his face out the door?
Is it Blackfish? Has he made friends with the shrimp?
He’s the first fish to spend time in there I think.”

This happy distracting friendship warmed both of our hearts
and we smiled as Blackfish spent more time in the dark
and the shrimp brought him food and he slowly grew fatter
but everything was lovely and nothing else mattered.
The snails population in the background grew and grew.
We lost count when they got past 22.

One morning I was woken by Gio screaming “Mummy!
The shrimp have got Blackfish and they’re opeing his tummy!”
I raced in and slack-jaw gawped. The violence was alarming.
But more than this; the realization that shrimp understand farming.
Two Medium Shrimp held Corpsefish still, while Big Shrimp did the slashing
and then they gathered round and gorged themselves. Gio, big-eyed watched the action.

More generations of snails came. Then more and more and more
until the monopod population was a problem we couldn’t ignore.
We had to get rid of all of them. We couldn’t leave even an egg.
They eaten us out of live plants. We’d had to get fake ones instead!
It took the final solution. We gave the tank a deep clean.
And boiled the snails in the gravel. And murdered their babies with steam.

Then rebuilt the tank from the ground up and so far, it seems to go well.
It’s more like an eight-year-old’s fish tank and less like the circles of hell.

I think it’s fair to say, in this case
my attempts at parenting were a little displaced
by “Nature, red in tooth and claw”
or, transparent in the case of the shrimp’s grinding maw.

I tried to protect my son from his curiosity and an internet search engine,
but accidently introduced him to orgies, murder, evisceration
and ethnic cleansing.

Musings on Time

The time it slips, it slips away.

Handfuls of sand through fingers greying and shrinking inside their skins, knuckles gnarled and buckled through a practical lifetime's abuse.

Decades come and go so slow by day, so fast by year. You blink and find yourself awakening here. So far from then on paper and so vividly recent in memory. 
When understood and appreciated fully they lack that fog of nostalgia by which comforting versions of events are often obscured. Reassuringly, this means pain is also racing in retrograde, flying us away from it in bated breath taken at treacle-light speed.

My knees are mechanical now - gristly grinding each gesture in echoing growls. My barometric blood gives me warnings through the aches of coming rains.

I recognise my lifetimes by the shade of my hair in photographs, my dress size from outfits of mismatched clothes donated by long lost friends. Some I miss, some I am relieved to have had riddance, but all I cherish.

Is this aging?

It certainly feels like growth.

31

My body is my body. I’m not bothered what you think of it.

It’s carried me through all these years no matter what I’ve thrown at it.

The marks on my flesh; the scars on my organs

They’re trophies from my battles with the metaphoric gorgons.

I’m feeling freed from the cycles of love and hate and love and hate

Now I’ve relinquished thinking on self-comparative debate.

Some people get my name wrong and they pronounce Georgina

But I’m not diminutive in stature or demeanor.

Dubbed as weird, mad, aggressive and crazy

Because the clarity I see, to them, is hazy.

Censored by illiterati, told I’m inappropriate.

Asked if I was born with bollocks, labeled frigid, called a slut.

I’m conscious of all my decisions, chosen to remember them

At times when I am finding out if they were right or they were wrong.

I don’t claim omniscience. I hold intelligence in awe

I’d rather know I’m ignorant and perfectly flawed

For the journey’s earning’s learning in its absolute form

And it gives your seasons reasons for your earthly sojourn.

They say “Don’t get her started” and “Not again, here we go”

When engaging in discussion and opinion of their point is low.

This is my elixir, though. This heady mix of raw debate.

With sowing of seeds and the joy to watch them germinate.

Frustrated by the limitations I cannot see

That seem to bind most others to a life semi-free

With their worries of decorum or etiquette or saving face.

I’d like to rip their blinkers off, put Technicolor in their place.

You’ll never know what you could be if you never try

And then you’ll blink and you’ll be at the end of your life.

I’ve seen too many dreamers go to holes in the ground

And damsels in distress choosing to wait to be found

By princes preoccupied with kissing the seeming dead.

I can’t understand why they don’t rescue themselves instead.

I love Lara, Xena, Tank Girl and Janeway

For standing up and counting, for doing things their own way.

Ignoring real heroines, a culture habitual.

The women on that list were completely fictional.

I’m not sold on the Lady myth. Keep your expectations.

Sell them to someone who’ll accept that degradation.

Do you want your daughters to grow up with choice?

Then encourage them to speak in an authorative voice.

Teach everyone to accept that “no means no”

But it also means “stop asking” and “leave me alone!”

If someone cannot answer it’s still not consent

And you don’t get to decide what unconscious people meant.

Those lines that you claim are blurred beyond compare

Are clear as Autumn air, no matter what clothes you wear.

Attraction’s not a circumstance of pink and blue

So stop trying to squeeze a right foot in a left hand shoe.

I stole that line from Carroll, from the Man Upon A Gate

But unlike him I know that there is too much to relate.

For the journey’s earning’s learning in its absolute form

And it gives your seasons reasons for your Earthly sojourn.

There is too much to discover for to ever be bored

And you’ll find its only you who is even keeping score.

So accept your physicality and mistakes of the past

For your time here is limited and goes pretty fast.

Do you honestly want your last thought to be

“I didn’t spend enough time just being me”?

Rum Goings On

Once upon a rum soaked night
The boy with scars external
Met the girl with scars internal.
Her asbestos heart was set alight.
The scars began to fade.

They shared a quiet privacy
Public personas shed like skins
Intimate darkness lets light begin
A moment stolen in the dawn
Her tarnished soul was saved.

The first in years to know her past.
Midnight black and blue regrets
With all the memories he forgets
The die of loss is long since cast.
With sorrow this road's paved.

Once upon some rum soaked laughter
The girl with scars internal
loved the boy with scars external.
They shared a happy ever after
Brief but pure and sweetly grave.

Call To Arms

Every day I read the news with growing trepidation.

It’s regression on a massive scale. The end of civilisation.

We’re not punishing those that caused this mess with lies, with greed, with ego.

But blaming folk who’ve nothing done and warring with nations we don’t know.

What year is this? Who’s in control? Where is Lady Justice?

She’s bound and gagged in a divan bed. Ransomed for the fame of her captress.

Of equal weight (or so we’re told) to celebrities, diets and twerking.

The blood on her sword is only her own so clearly, this system’s not working.

The children that need us the most,

Tragically fall through the ‘net

And children are taken when good parents seek help and hysterical healthcare objects.

Open your eyes and ignore the damned press! They have profits to make, don’t you see?

Horrors that happen go unreported and affect us – that’s you - and it’s me.

I do not believe it is really so hard to lay aside neighbourly spite

And just keep an eye out, get involved and speak up if something just doesn’t seem right.

Notice the pensioned! They are people too and their stories are going untold.

As we focus on disposable incomes of youth and deny our own growing old.

I don’t have the answers. I’m not the Messiah (or even a naughty boy),

I am just one person, sick of the nonsense and sick of acting coy.

I’m not asking for money, or a signed petition, or change in far flung lands.

I’m saying your community needs you before it ends up in God-knows-whose hands.

Get involved. Take an interest. Speak up! Go out!

Disenfranchisement is dead.

Earnestness is the future!

And without it?

Total extinction instead.

Recipe for Disaster

A handful of sugar.
A penny of salt.
A pinch for your thoughts,
your light and your faults.
A tight squeeze. A light squeeze.
Freshly squeezed orange
and you.
We squeezed into my single bed:
room enough for two.
But only room for one
in my heart and in my head.

Freshers Love

You tongue your way to my pleasure.

Fist claws cotton.

Breath escapes.

The film plays on -

Unwatched.

Sunlight plays on your spine.

Life continues below.

Our world is now.

If only I could remember your name.

Lazy Dreveries

I blow chains of momentary beauty
But they cannot capture the moments with you.
Watching the world hurry past
I saunter through thoughts idle and unworried.
I know that you will still be as imperfect
as the day you lent me your coat in the rain.
The old dog smell of wet leather
still warm from your body.
In death our flaws are in perfect perspective.
Who cares that you were always late?
now that you are.
 

Hiding

Long sleeves. Long legs.
These lines are too telling.
I wish I could explain
how this pain helps that pain.
But language is limited.

20/03/2010 Dear Gio (but not for Gio)

Surrounded by vices as strange as sliced toast
Interacting with many half-living, half-ghost.
Some glowing brightly, some dulled by life's blade,
but everyone wants something from you, I'm afraid.
Some want your body, some want your mind
Some of them only want you to be kind.
The best are the ones who want you to be you
and the ones who just want you to smile.
The ones who will paint you with custard and glue
To away a fun little while.
Who'll help you survive, help you to say no,
teach you things about Glasgow you never would know.
Ride bikes with you, share with you, get you a job.
To share a good joke with, to share with a sob.
To drive one way round Nottingham, eight or nine times (!)
and hypnotise randoms with powers of rhyme.
A gallery cafe, a man in a dress
and all of the time at Paisley Road West.
The long walk home never seemed so long
when walking at five forty-five
And shiny posh bars never seemed so wrong.
You'd rather be seen in a dive.
And if you find these friends my boy, hold them tight.
They're rarer then wormholes, more precious than light
and all of the time that together you'd have
would be sacred, remembered, occasionally mad
but thoroughly lived - and that's the whole point.
In life's murky waters, I urge you: anoint!
Your life may transport you to a Dear Green Place
of culture, catastrophe, darkness and grace
and then, maybe then, you will make friends like these,
my long lost and ever-beloved Weegies.

Per Luciana Zapparoli - L'Anniversario D'Oro.

This

I drew this for my mother-in-law on the occasion of my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary.

It is an image of her on her wedding day.

The "50 anni" on the top right is a dream, not even imagined to her on her wedding day.

All the things listed on the top left are the things that came to pass in their life together - the things she could have forseen: Children, love, problems, work, happiness, hard times, tears, grandchildren, friends, dreams.

The road she is walking is moving her from the past to the future.

The roots under her feet are the roots of their strong relationship, the things that have made their relationship work: Love; Family; Strength; Experience; Luck; Hope; Patience; Determination; Sacrifice; Humour; Morality; the Church; Propriety; Life Education; Faith (and faithfulness - the word is the same in Italian)

I know my sketching skills leave a lot to be desired, but hey. The idea was there, just not the technical ability. Perhaps with practice this is something I can work on.

Christmas 2002

Once there were three:
The magic number-
3 witches; 3 wishes; 3 wise men.
Maiden runs away; goes to see a crone.
The witch of the East
My, my - how she's grown.
They smile and compare notes
but will scars tell the whole story?

Then there were four.
Ugly; clunky; boxed.
4 sides. 4 corners. 4 angles.
Parallels everywhere.

There are no witches in mathematics.
Only mother's apples pi.

He Says, She Says

He says I'm not the me I was,
That I have changed irreparably.
He says we argue all the time.
Ironically, I disagree.
He says he looks at others now
And admits it's hungrily.
He says that there is nothing wrong,
then dredges fights long-dead to me.
He says he wants his favourite food;
My single staple kedgeree.

I says he spends no time with me.
I've substituted him because
we spend our evenings silently.
He is not moved by beat or rhyme
or language - aural gold to me.
I know I've changed, but badly? How?
It's all improvements I can see.
Does someone always end up wrong?
Or is it plainly sad to see
That Jude is our saint-patronly.

Speaker Celebrity

Three years of ridding myself of my rage
left me bellaputrescent and old for my age.
I appear to you now as a mere wizened spectre;
A wrinkled and cynical regret collector.
My most squalid and heartbroken version of self.
Insurmountable walls built on negative wealth.
Don't judge me on all of my confident bluster.
The truth is so human, severely lacklustre.
The best metaphor is that I am a pearl;
A wist-wasteful woman in guise of a girl.
Layers of glamour, a heart made of sh**;
My place in this world an uncomfortable fit.
Now hollow of eye, of cheek and of heart
I fantasise daily of ways to depart
and romanticise leaving no remnant behind;
Of wiping all memories of me from all minds.
Don't get me wrong, it's not my own demise
that's driving me now - I'm no suicide.
I want retrospectively not to exist.
I would never have chosen a life such as this,
knowing now what I know. If I knew then
that my life would be guided by follies of men
so selfish and cold they can't even admit
when they've lied. Would I want it? Not in a fit!
They tell me that if I pretend long enough
-at happiness, love and all of that stuff-
that one day I'll wake up and I'll feel content
walking this finite and f***** firmament.
They tell me that life isn't really so bad,
that I am environmentally sad,
that all will improve, given hope, given time.
"It's just circumstantial. Try going outside."
So I straighten my face and strengthen my defense
And once more construct my perfected pretence -
That I'm choosing to live, I've the world on a plate.
That I'm not just a selfish and boring ingrate.
And who knows what will be in the days still to come?
Not me, if I freak, chicken out and just run.
Now I bid you good day, tip my hat, flash a smile
and invite you to wander this path for a while
and keep walking until we emerge in the sun.
For my life in the shadows is near enough done.

Surely?

Life as a Legal Drug Dealer

Daily I hunch as a pensive Paolo
Upon the stool of derailed dreams.
Bathing in burning garlic fumes
and the stench of chip fat
long since past its best.
Squinting at the scores on miracle cures
purporting to prolong a painful life.
Apothecary's emanuensis.
Tightrope ballerina between
The Junky
and
The Medicated.
I paddle in their suffering,
bailing out water where I can.
These dosette boats only float for so long.
When they finally drown
I step out.
And carefully dry the skin between my toes.

Lorrainespotting

Choose existence. Choose to talk to your firiends. Choose to get the fuck on with it, even if it means you'll have bad dreams. Choose to give affection to those who deserve it. Choose to tell the others to fuck off. Choose to ignore paranoia. Choose to dance. Choose laughter and 6AM eternal.Choose reality. Choose yourself. Choose to remember the choices you have made. Choose not to regret. Choose hope over nostalgia. Choose everything. Choose to be fabulous.

Choose Lorraine.

Return from Sonar

The signs above my head read thusly:
It is 18 degrees C.
It is 4:42 AM
It is prohibited to smoke.
I must wear a seat-belt.
To my right, Americans who are in a pissed off mood with each other.
To my left, the speedy retreat of the Spanish countryside and the lights of Barcelona.
It is now 17 degrees C.
It is now 4:44 AM.
I still can't smoke.
I've taking my seat-belt off.
I am listening to E talking and contemplating my joyful life.
My arse is getting numb.
Bloody rock hard coach seats.
And me with no padding.
My mouth is as dry as a badger and twice as furry.
It is 17 degrees C.
It is 4:47 AM
I really want a fag now.
Fiddling with seat-belt instead.