Era

Perhaps we are all born in the right era

growing up regretful we did not come of age

when life was better

the tinge of past tense

greener fields and sentiment

but should we care to revisit them

time shows we are all here when we should inherit our turn

for children of today

do not wish to sit sloppy and long gaited sharing close space

our communication and intimacy has barriers

we have not learned to be comfortable with intrusion

going about our lives unmolested

I could not have endured the proximity

continual chatter and energy required of those

born without headphones and opt outs

they knew how to socialize

crammed on sweating buses before air conditioning

whilst I believe

had I been born in an early century

I’d have taken myself away and reverted

back to the iron age

becoming a mineral underneath earth

where excited hands could pound

their fists of enthusiasm

for I have no wish to be

celebratory or illuminated

more than the passing of one year to next

it is in the quiet avoidance I find most pleasure

those born in times of chatter and noise

rationed by over-head bombs

heralding progress, talking to strangers

you think the world unfriendly now and it is

when it came our time

everyone went quiet

the buses were empty

just a book here and there lay

bent at the spine and unread

for we who keep our windows shuttered

do not wish to join the throng

but sing in lilac trees over looking

the quiet fish pond

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Who built the ark?

It’s your turn to make the second pot of coffee

let’s take the day off, close the computer, shut our doors

silence the voices who sound awfully like 12 and 13-year-old teens

complaining about losing their homework and pointing fingers

when did we learn not to grow up?

I always thought Huck had a point when he tied his handkerchief on a stick and took to the wild

this is not the Peter Pan kind of childish fantasy

when we talk of growing up and growing down we forget

like Picasso once said in order to render abstract we first need to know the techniques of how to paint

then we choose like the 90-year-old who says screw it I will eat what I want, that’s informed consent

childish however, is the absence of reason and consequence splayed like tired kids exhausted from pass-the-parcel

fluttering like a torn flag over a battle field of this and that

the news isn’t objective the screech of complaints sounding like a hen-house on fire

nobody listens nobody really knows it’s not about fact it’s about opinion and who gargles loudest

I think back to the playground of my youth where twice a flasher showed his bits to the girls and they all screamed

ew it looks like a sausage! I never want to eat meat again! and ran off laughing

it is true, me and Donna plugged the girls outside loos with toilet paper

so Mrs Slug would come and tell us off, mushy peas staining her apron

detention is better when it’s freezing out

we had reason behind our madness

and whilst we didn’t see the folly of flooding the loos back then

or how long it would take with stinking mop and bucket to dry off

we learned our consequence and next time feigned illness to stay by the radiator

oh nurse it’s my head it’s pounding! You do look a little green, here read a book

there is a learning curve

lost to generations who think answers are found in the oracle of computers

and those older folk who try vainly to stay relevant and forget their lessons

we would benefit from observing consequence and seeing it through

rather than a sound bite on TV as we spoon feed ourselves snippets of news

nothing stays long enough to take it in, we’re attention-deficit spinning tops

straining to think

would the chilly air of our playground and the closed doors until after lunch is over

wake us to reality? and if we stepped inside, would we attempt to take with us the lessons

we internalized?

or like the hippies of the sixties do we grow out of phases and give away our flares for business suit to rule the world

is death so onerous that we fear anything but power?

is inconsequence so fearsome we’ll make a splash at any cost?

what of all those we know nothing of? they say history is written by the victor, I think often

of all those who didn’t traditionally ‘win’ anything and what they would write

it is said you are bound to repeat history if you do not know it

but what if the very truth we revere, didn’t get it right?

When I was a kid in the playground I used to wish to grow up so I could

avoid being told when to play and when to learn

not knowing then nothing changes as much as you think

I envied the teachers their staff room where they thought we did not know

they smoked and ate hot cross buns and talked of rumors of the headmaster and

his male deputy

who both wore open toe shoes in Winter and I once asked him when ushered into his office for winning a poetry prize

don’t your toes get cold?

and he said

I do this in remembrance of christ I want to feel what he felt

and that Xmas we put on Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat

the drama teacher said candy you can do backflips can’t you? You can be the queen of the Egyptians

and I never felt so good as that day I wore an old wig I once dressed up and played Kate Bush in

with sequins and blankets stitched into approximation I shook my belly and pretended it contained jewels

the headmaster’s eyes teared up and he stole a look at the young junior who

sang along with our ‘who built the ark?’ louder than us all, dabbing his small eyes with the back of his hand

afterward Clement and I climbed up to the roof playground and on the wire we swung upside down

daring each other to fall knowing we couldn’t

maybe that’s a metaphor for the fear we need to feel

the safety net

of all endeavor

how holding hands with a boy in the dark

briefly I was the queen of egypt and everything seemed so real

in a way it never does now

because not once did I need a search engine to tell me

what I believed was true

Greater solace

There you are

picture yourself

standing in a vacated room

the walls are nondescript

from the window comes a little wan sun

hardly enough for warmth

you pull yourself closer

recalling how as a child

sitting on old iron radiators in winter

they’d say you’d develop hemorrhoids

in those days

the sound of scuffed shoes running for class bell

figuring you had a few moments yet

to stare out at brick and cement

stretch out reverie

a voice inside your head

surely this isn’t all there is?

you made a pact with yourself

to get the hell out

whatever it took

gathering your books

mindful of their ticket

you forgot yourself in dream

walking past the classroom

after all

learning is better in the mind

than grind of chalk on board

some boy kicking you in the back

with sweaty socks

you knew even then

this was but a stepping stone

though if asked you couldn’t say

what of the grim facade urged you most

to escape

 

and now

all these years later

more alone than that day

when covered by childhoods vigor

and the smell of something better

just around the corner

hope has been sore in her visits

silence too often your friend

as we fall one by one out of the egg carton

we are without wings

without safety harnesses

all the others found places

in busy lives, babies, families, jobs

the weave and knot of life

whilst you stood watching out of the window

glimmering

expecting to fly

 

now in shallow rooms

artifice has left her scent

they tell you the last one has passed over

you feel it in the curve of your chest

no more hands to scoop you back

from your leaning motion to find

somewhere to breathe

where trees are ever green

sunlight full on face

obscuring all trace of bleak homes

terraced and hollow

where you can hear the flush of

neighbors loud toilet

piercing cry of another

born into fitful times

where you never understood

your own role

just the fallacy of drowning sorrows

sundays in the bar

knocking back glasses of regret

nothing could spur you faster

toward wide open space where

no trace of sorrowful city remained

 

and wherever you go

there you are

still back against the wall

still with the locked door

school girl tights bunched in your mouth

hearing muffled voices

discussing your inability to speak

how long can you hold your tongue girl?

before the need to scream

unfurled

and in one howl you swallow yourself

all the disappointment

all the lost chances

breaking through cloud

fast diminishing in oboe sky

open the storeroom of your mind

clear out those long stored hurts

preserved in obscura

 

you may feel you have nothing

but in the sundering fall of flight

we find again our urge

never to quite escape

perhaps more a reinterpretation

carrying on no more alone than before

for we are born crying in singular pitch

in each step grow further to our end

it is in the humility of knowing this

we find our greater

solace

Seven years

Seven years I let myself formulate excuses

not to return

and on the eighth

guilt had made her way into my closed heart

laying a light ribbon on the frayed part

 

going back was like being reborn

as yourself and not yourself at all

I walked familiar streets, spoke similar words

accent hardly altered

as if no time had passed

and so they said

you look exactly the same

though they were changed and I were changed

all altered irrevocably with time worn stain

as if glass no longer could be relied upon

to give accurately our real prescription

even friends were foreign handed

or I no longer of that land

left behind when things were too sad

I sealed the bottle and set adrift

seven years of absence builds

many barnacles to anyone’s vision

when the damned see the truth

the liars remove their seaweed masks

curtsy finely and pronounce

we did our part

exit stage left

standing on warm boards of the theater of pretend

where dance and energy has dissipated

into cloven wings

hear me now

shadows of my past

the girl with the big smile

her perfect fine figured mouth

and matching dragon tooth skirt

as if we dressed together in the darkness

of one another

except she is a mother and

I have a cut-out womb ebbing in formaldyade

don’t worry I feel no pain now

some of us are bearly hanging on

what good would a child of weakness

bring the sorrow further inland?

I miss her

like I write letters in wax to myself

those over easy days we knew who we were

or felt … some approximation of reality

good enough for then

when she looked at me

unequal teeth smiling and needing

how did the splinter drive that deeply?

wedge like sword between this time and before?

we know nothing of the other

as a blue bottle

cast on green and yellow water

will wait

seven years

to reach shore

when I climbed out and dusted myself off

she was gone

her footprints erased from the sand

nobody recognized me

only the echoes of an angry sea

calling me back to exile

whispering

you do not belong here 

and the white cliffs looked relieved

when I flew overhead

my heart aching with loss

the cheer of relief

like a season

changing from golden red to

brown

Generation

Does the song bird know?

outlined in whiskered light

casting shadow against

bare branches

does the deer with her liquid eyes?

a swath of red touching white fields

sometimes think on this marvel

reducing and turning

as ancestral dough left, will rise

for children who grow on their vine

like the bean and heirloom aubergine

turning from light to dark

all is circular

even the silver wisp of dawn

calling angels from their sleep

listen carefully as first the world

unfurls her sticky catkin

and limber flees into legacy sky

ask not why this movement

so measured like firing glass

so it reflects both future and past

in echo and mirrored song

first you are born

then you become

stars looking down

upon those left

carrying the flame