Sunday 1 February 2015

Other People's Words



I have lived in them for as long
As I can remember
Pulled through, a threadwork
The feel of the embers
Confirming energy, lacking their own.
I have borrowed
Other people’s confirmation
 of home, blended
my speech to the camouflage cloak.

Good girl, I have tendered
My cheek to a tear
And my arms to elope.
Is this the year
I will ‘make things happen’
People give me hope, give me cheer
But only the vowels
-          The noise of a shriek, of a blackness.
I have been piling consonants
Under my nails all week, dragging
Down the board like a chalk.
Anxious anxious
The marks on my face
Are not this anymore
Why do I fragment in the windscreen?
 always the pedestrian
My hands raw
With plastic bags
-          These are the ingredients
For which  you were asking.
A dredge of eyesight
An unpeeled laugh
Grams
Of my hair, my feet
Half-rooted, hacked piece of teeth.

Ripe then
Suspend me in disbelief
Warming, as the next
Proverbial story
I was first ‘success’
And now ‘sorry’.
I cannot conceive of the worry
All feelings florid
They hand me in bouquets,
Liquid pollen, appalling
Why do my hand slip
As if bloodied  and the grasp
Stings – like the fingers
Are convulsed to laugh.
Ha ha

Put this in a vase
It will become an antique

If not a scar.

No comments:

Post a Comment