Sleep of Reason

"will you sleep with me?" you said
And I laughed
"we hardly know each other!"
"this will tell me all i
need to know" you said
And so we slept together
Chastely as children
I brought a nightdress
You wore pyjamas
I made cocoa
You read a book
I watched you
Liking the look of you
In glasses
Smelling of toothpaste and soap
And something else, daring
To lean against you
Hearing your heartbeat
I wake in the night to
Watch you, breathe you in
Urge in a whisper
Your heart to keep beating
For our sleep of reason

Deep Water

You tell me you cant swim
I tell you I can
Hold on to me
You say you will
To keep me happy
But your trust is sinking

A heart as big as yours
Should not be so easily drowned

Read in Tooth and Claw

I was as trusting
As any creature with claws
As vulnerable as any
Crustacean with a hard shell

When my expansive sea
Became a tank
I could not say, it was agreeable
With pretty plants, sustenance

Then the shock of blind metal
No room to turn or breathe
Rough hands, harsh voices
The hiss of flame beneath

Seared by scarlet degrees
My last thoughts of the open sea
Fathoms of oblivion
Mercy's blessed darkness

Not Quite Out of Reach

When I think of the smell of Mum it
Is not quite out of reach
It is her white cardigan with the roses I wish I had kept
It is the tiny cushion with an embroidered “R”
It is the bottle of Tweed perfume
It is the single red lipstick she had for years
It is the satin bag with the gold chain handle
It is the powder compact never used
It is the green coat she always wore
It is the cinnamon balls she made for Passover
It is the homemade burgers every weekend
It is matzobri at Granny’s and the smell of the gas fire

Mum's World

Mum’s world
was home baking when she was well
and Vesta chow mein when she wasn’t
Granny’s at the weekend
And chicken soup
Mum said I could be a
Bit of a madam sometimes
But she and Granny both
Liked my Mae West impression
Its not the men in my life
Its the life in my men
Mum said Dad didn’t have much life in him
And laughed and granny laughed and I laughed too
Even though I was only six
And didn’t know what she meant


There were different worlds
Mum’s world was about family
We visited Granny on the weekend and
Sometimes Auntie Reva and Uncle Harry
Would come up with cousin Howard
And me and my brother would whisper and giggle
Because cousin Howard talked funny and
Looked half asleep most of the time
And never played with us
No-one said what why except that he
Went to a special school

Auntie Reva was a bit too much
of a grown up for us and she would tell off
Uncle Harry when he sat on the floor
and played Cat’s Cradle with us
We liked Uncle Harry, he was full of army tales
And had funny teeth and a cheeky grin
You couldn’t imagine him and
Auntie Reva kissing or anything
and to this day
I still cant


At home we ate dad’s clumsy stir fries and
Mum’s burgers which
I always looked forward
To and I got upset when
My friend Lisa came up
For tea one night and said she didn’t like them
I didn’t invite her up again

The year I won the Cup in Cheder
I made my Mum proud
Especially since I beat Clara Massie
Mum said, the look on her mother’s face!

At Granny’s we became Jewish again
With eager trips for food
Kleinbergs for eggloaf greedily guzzled
Picklemeat placating me as I stirred the
butchers sawdust into circles with a bored foot
kneidlich floating in chicken soup
matzobri thrilling yellow on the plate
salting before that first saliva-flood bite
cinnamon balls and coconut pyramids
Passover Pesach and the rituals of Hannuka
Egg and the symbolic blood
Matzo crackers embraced in cloth
Grandpa in his yarmulkeh intoning the brochah
The wine passed round and the candles lighting
Up our faces as the ancient tales were told

Tidal

All that we were is gone
And grief ebbs and flows
I try to stay constant
but I am made of sand
drowned and drained
Time and again
By that ninth wave
Time will not loose
these tender memories
Tide cannot wash
These tears away

The Empty Sky

I look for you in a sky
That wont meet my eyes
You are hidden in
A solidarity of clouds
The treacherous troposphere
The rainbow excuses itself
Picks up it's pot of gold
Murmurs a platitude
Leaving me empty-handed
At the mercy of memory
Transient as bruises

The sea, indifferent as always
washes away my tears

Poetic Licence

She imagines
a poet’s wife
With a life
Made pretty by words
Swollen and aching
with home-made desires
her eyes
greedily snatch up his words
Belching breath rich with longing
Small hours spent
Dreaming and
suckling the pen
Climbing nibwards to reach
her fantasy made flesh.

She imagines Ted and Sylvia
She imagines Elizabeth and George

Vanishing Point

Beware of the ones who only want
To do it once a year
On their mother’s birthday
Mine takes the cake

Hadnae laid a finger oan me for near eight months
Willnae talk aboot it
Says there’s too much pressure to be huvin sex aw the time
Shouldn’t be ‘quantifiable’

Comes back wan day seying
that the neighbour’s gone berserk
killed the wan dog
and damn near finished
off the other.

Place was swimmin’
Like a bloodbath
Awful so it was.

He mutters something about it putting things in perspective
And asks if I want to come upstairs
I look at him, mind’s eye alight with scarlet and bone
set down the knife in a drawer full of knives

Granny

She sat
Still as a Matrioska
Small and tender
Head inclined
Patient as my small hands
wound beads in her hair
Her best curtains
Tied about my waist
As the room darkened
We watched the streetlights
Purple then orange aglow
Till teatime
And chicken soup

Strange Days

These are strange days
And I am a strange child
I am missing
an amputated limb
Pain in absentia
You are receding in the distance
tangible as phantoms
I am silent and sore as Skellig
That brittle stalk long since
Snapped from the tree
Waiting to heal without Hope

Love In A Nutshell

We dance the dance
And sing softly of Nottingham Lace
(She wears the moon on her face)
We find our way
Even with my underdeveloped sense
Of left and right
Curling up and unwrapping
On comfortable sofas
Midnight trips and dancing in the aisles
An Angel warming the chill of the morning
Tears in the cemetery and poignant introductions
Instead of the one for you one for me cigarettes
Helpless laughter at Press 1 for-
And falling off at Board Meetings
History anew with smiles
And speculation
Stone cities smiling and
Visitors books inscribed with joy
A hand on my belly and
A bucket of bears and a canonized shrine
Borders explored and Expletives Deleted
Soft whispers as you stroke me awake
My clothes all but ripped
Fucked half asleep by your feverish beauty
Cathedrals and candles for the dead
‘One for your mam’ makes me cry
But a blue stone made me Believe

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones

I will keep you safe
And love you as much as
any man can love a woman
I swear

Don’t think too long he said
As I slip-slid along the laminate
for the last time
And he told me how the place
might look after I left
What’s wrong tell me
Don’t leave me
I’m not going to stay with you
I love you
Remember me
I’m not free
I will love you
and never leave you
Do you fancy him?
I know you like to fuck older men
why dont I give you his number?
Will you miss me?
I’m not in my cave
I don’t think this is working
I give you love and all you do is whinge
Why don’t you sleep?
You won’t sleep tonight
I love you
I’ll help you move
I don’t want you anywhere near my house
You are selfish
You can be cruel
I love you
I’ll be here for you
Do you think you can be faithful?
Send me a text when you’ve finished reading
I love you
You’re full of shit
I hope you die
I’m sorry
Did I let you down?
Whore
You don’t care about anyone but yourself
U never cared did u
U selfish worthless bitch

Cuddy Lane

You were as closed off
As the street
we lived on
Nothing shall enter
Nothing shall pass
You kept elastic bands
in a tub with chalk
And I can still conjure
the smell of mothballs
and Players Navy Cut

You said we should always be prepared
But you never said what for

Mum Was

MUM WAS

Ruthie was a little girl
posing proudly on the promenade
In a gingham dress
Ruthie was naïve once
her cousin asked her
to buy tartan paint and she did
Ruthie knew a little boy who
hid under the bed and said
“A bus ran over ma heid”
But even Ruthie knew
that couldn’t be true

Mum was an usherette in the cinema
She let me in first to feel special
She always wore a green coat
I would tug it if she spent too long
Talking to neighbours outside the Co-op
Mum never wore trousers
and never strode anywhere
Mum knew what I meant
when I came home from school
And said “I’ve started”

After Mum lost all that weight
and her skin turned yellow
I would go to buy her special bread
And collect her prescription
from the chemist, Powders and pills
Mum said she’d like
A new head and a new body
and said I wasn’t to cry over her

Mum’s last letter had shaky handwriting
and said After all the tests
maybe they will come to some conclusion
When Mum died her hair was as black as blood
I wear her rings now
I have lost weight too
They are loose and slip
And twist like lost memories
But I will not alter them

Journey

(I)
Feeling for you
In that demeaning bed
Lost and bedbound
Amongst starch and screens
Clumsy with compassion
Hauling you into worlds
Of nonsense and music
The teenagers’ allies
Bathing your bewilderment
With recipes from home
Swabs of daylight
On raw evening eyes












(II)
Befriending
Black humour bleeding
Curving round kidney bowls
Dry-eyed
Along yearning corridors
Prowling the prison
Past wardens white shoes
Scaling and scanning
The triplicate paper peaks
Of breath and skin













(III)
Your hands long
And pale now
Clasping and running
Against the moon
Of the mercury clockface
Patient to patient
Child to Parent
Falling at the last
In the skin-searing echo
Of your last dreaming breath

(IV)
Now
Ten years later
Rescuing you
From scratchy ink
On yellowed as skin
Foolscap folly
Pocketing close
That softened impermanence
Of indelible soul

The Encyclopedia Of The Dead

I found my Mother
In the encyclopdedia of the dead
They had given her a
Memorial
Where she had none
They said I could conjure
a gravestone;
Love and living wood.
I walk with angels
and stars of David
Blessings and time
heal all wounds.
Discovery, as fragile
as the seraphim's gaze.

Eurydice

Walking underground to reach you
Death from breath separates
We travel alone taking
A twist of daylight from a gift of glass
Black humour bleeds shyness
Corridors curve round the body
Feeling for the vital form,
Realising failures in function
Adjusting with sharps and soft words
Noting on crisp charts controlling
What cannot be contained
Till the inevitable conclusion
The loudness of your last breath a surprise
Swooping seeking release within the walls
I catch it within,
run outside to exhale,

The Bionic Woman, aged ten

When I went into hospital
My brother gave me the free bullet pendant
From his action comic to keep me safe
Mum bought the Wonder Woman doll
I’d been after for ages
Granny said it had “come to bed eyes”
The nurses looked at me funny
When I asked what that meant

The girl in the bed next to me
Was called Fayah she was Iranian
and had polio and hair down to her bum
She always wore it up but
when she got head lice
I got it too and we
got our hair washed together

Woken at six every morning
With white buttered toast and sweet tea
Captain and Tennile on the radio
on the Sunday I said “White Rabbits”
three times at the new month
My classmates sent me a card
That read
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Knights are brave
And so are you

There weren’t many poets in my class

When they wheeled me along to the
Operating theatre
I watched the ceiling slide past
Above me and wondered
With ten year old melodrama
If I would wake up from the injection
And if they’d have a really big needle?

Coming to, woozy in the recovery room
But loving the drama
Gazing at the bloodstained casts
On my Frankenstein feet
I puked loads afterwards
I couldn’t look at Splicer bars
Ever again and the day after
When the dried up fish and mixed veg
Couldn’t tempt me

The nurse sighed and said
“It’s the second day”


Margaret was twelve and
had started her period at nine
She challenged me
To a wheelchair race round the ward
I cornered too fast and fell out
pretended to laugh it off as I lay there
Contemplating my plaster casts

When the casts came off I was
Fitted for callipers
And wore flares to hide them
But secretly pretended
I was The Bionic Woman
After all I had these metal legs
Didn’t I but then
My brother called me
Calliper Cassidy the fastest western spastic
And ruined it

As A Mother Should

I already knew
That you were gone
Before the neighbour told me
I was out at the Hermitage
Feeling the incredible release
Of the end of your life
You had let go
Taken your last breath
It echoed, Dad said
Round the ward
Maybe it was trying to find me
Maybe it did.

And then I was alone
In the living room
No fatherly hugs
No union of grief
No permission for tears
My bones had walked
The earth for seventeen years
Not long enough

I just remember sitting
At a kitchen table
Which had forgotten
The solidarity of meals
Staring at a window
And the indifferent sky
I don't remember getting up

When Dad got back
I don't remember
He found his daughter
Just getting on with it
He was relieved I think
He got on with the practical stuff
Asked me what I wanted
I said her wedding ring
I have it still of course
And some bits and pieces
Fragments that still held her smell

I was tasked
With emptying the medicine
Cabinet. So many bottles.
I only remember the Temazepam
And the Questran.
Probably because it sounds like Question.

I think
No I know
That I am still sat at that table
Waiting
So I walk over to me
Kneel beside me
Look into my eyes
I have lived twenty-one
Years longer than this
Child who cannot even cry
I am old enough to be her mother
I say "oh love, I'm sorry"
And I put my arms securely round her
And tell her it's ok, I'm here, let it all out.
And we stay like this for a long time
She leans against me
And I stroke her hair
Eventually her body relaxes
Gets the message it can let go
I tell her I am here for her
For always
As a mother should.