Now I’m gone tell you a story
‘Bout a short bald man in a suit;
He liked everything to be neat as a pin…
Who knew one day that man’d go crazy and end up in the loony bin?
So this little bald man had a family
And a pretty daughter named Mary
She was coming out that season…
Her Daddy thought that day’d never come - now he felt it was beyond all reason
Well this man’s name was Jerry
And he was mean as a snake
Folk say he’s ex-military…
‘Cos of that one time he stuck a dog with a rake
Well now this stout bald man liked duty
Said he wanted to control nature
To be like Moses and part the sea
That’s why his garden was on the cover of country life magazine
Now it wasn’t hard to find a husband
For his little grown up girl
When men queued up twice round the block
To catch a glimpse of Mary in her favourite frock
Now here comes the end of my story, an end that I'll soon tell
It happened the day before the wedding
When Mary’s old Daddy was going through a real mean spell
On this day he went to the Barber’s
To smarten up what little hair he had
But that Barber didn’t cut it quite right…
One tiny hair stuck up and Jerry’s face went white...
At the sight of that blonde hair crowning the top of his head
Jerry whirled around and struck that Barber down dead
It was safe to say poor Jerry’d seen red
And when they found him?
Well Jerry was drowning
In the sticky sap the Barber had bled.
Now that’s the end of this tale, apart from the “Where are they now?”
Six months down the line Jerry pleaded guilty
Now he’s locked up in the state penitentiary...
You can visit him one until three.
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 6:12 AM UTC
When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass
Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.
I long for the baby to wander hither to me
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,
Cool like syringa buds,
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 10:54 AM UTC
I remember that Day when we sat
(side by side)
On those Stairs
(Waiting for our Train)
And you bought us Miso Soup
(It tasted like Tears)
The Sun hit my legs
(With all the force of sepia toned Nostalgia)
Covering them, bathing them. glorifying.
The traffic was the push and pull
(To and fro, magnetising, Synchronising)
Of waves.
Harsh, solid, mechanical waves
(Full of the force of Human Atrocity)
Japanese Culture was "in" and everything was "kawaii" and sweet
(With the underlying disturbance of Sexualisation - *** takes pride of place in our Civilisation)
I thought I was eating the sea.
(I could see the tiny fish Nibbling us that time we went snorkelling. We saw a Sting Ray that reminded us of Steve Irwin: Danger; Barbed Wire)
The Snow-flakes
(Fish-flakes)
Swirling in the snow globe of my Polystyrene Cup
(A new kind of Fish Bowl, A new Exposure)
And they swam around and around, Hiding
(Cyclical, controlled by Lunar Activity. Natural?)
If I stared hard enough I would, no, could see myself
(Floating, Filleted)
Amongst those Ribbons of Sea ****
With each Salty slurp
(That tasted of you, of the bitter Crust that Crowns your body in Heat)
I expected saltier Bladders to Burst in my Mouth
(Drowning me in Poison; Poisson)
I imagined the Japanese fisherman Catching Sun-Warmed Sea
(In a Polystyrene Cup)
The thousands of fish, tiny eyes that Blink, tiny gills that Palpitate - Suffocating in Air
(Aboard his boat, that Famed boat: "Daigo Fukuryu Maru")
Harvesting Silken Strands of Sea **** that Clung to its Crate
(In the same way that his Wife's Freshly washed Hair Twines about her Body. Static, Electric, Alive)
We didn't finish the Miso Soup;
It tasted too much of the Tears that I Cried.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 9:52 AM UTC
Sylvia Plath was always my Favourite writer
Ever since i Realised i was Esther in Disguise
with my trembling bambi-legs and great doe-eyes.
Ruined Bloodied Ruptured
by my First Embrace
The rings of His love-bites held me in place;
they looked like Chains of lace.
i look around me and wonder what people see.
Do they see the same girl that i see
Preserved in the amber bud of His eye?
Shrunken Bruised Browned Buried
Under the mountains of His lies
'Here she lies, Esther in Disguise'.
Or do they see the girl that can't ever make up her Mind?
And just won't Decide
Who she is and what she wants to be?
How did I get here, under that same Bell Jar, like thousands of other women before me?
I'm Cut
Off by the Sea.
And in my Isolation,
(On That island of Desperation)
All I can hear are the forlorn Kisses of the Tide
Stifling Suction on a Sandy Shore
Replacing the musing mewls of knife-beaked gulls
"I am I am I am"
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 5:07 PM UTC
I never felt such Hunger
As when I looked at you Tonight
Your eyes burnt Bright
Two shining beacons promising me the Delights
Of a Lifetime with You
But in this one Instant
Instantaneous Fleeting Gratification
Of pleasure-pumping Limbs
I will memorise Each Scar
Each Blemish
Each Story
That is told in the rhythmical Waves of your Love
Rolling over me, Under me
Like a piece of Glass smoothed and Rounded by You
Your touch Consoles and Desolates
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 5:27 PM UTC
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a **** lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 5:00 PM UTC
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----
Not God but a ********
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the *****
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you ******* I'm through.
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 5:00 PM UTC
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 4:53 PM UTC
her face her face
i fall into her gaze: she pulls me in with the sombre gravity
of her eyes those soft brown eyes
that close and open
open
close
shut tight
the petals of a daisy flinching at the night
harsh bright light flinching delight
as she bites
pink tipped strawberry tongue surrounded
by the white gates of Heaven
or maybe my Hell
A Hell that could take a bite of my lip
Will bite tight
snap
Shut
lips closed eyes open
I am open
she opens me like a Daisy opens for the sun
I am searching searching searching
for something
for anything
I am a lost sailor drowning in the salty tears a mermaid cried
all the men she loves are lost
I search for her
My light house
But she closes
Bud-like
she is the End of summer
the eternal Summer of her gaze
I wilt
droop
die.
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 4:48 PM UTC