The nightmares are back.

I count the time to their deaths.
Women live longer than men,
on average. Mum has osteoporosis.
When I was 6, I gave myself 40 years.
That's how I planned never to miss
them. Children need parents, I reasoned.
We had a close family of 3. Gave up
the rest, like old clothes. Good people
shouldn't keep more than they need.
Then my sister happened- just that
wish for her changed matters. Then
the math became too hard. How much
time does anyone want? How long
to buy me a house with big windows?
The ground doesn't open to take you,
you know? The heart doesn't know when
to stop. Hands- that's what makes an end.
Hands and a cut-throat mind.

I had nightmares.
Big Ben
counting
down.
The terror of screaming out,
with no-one
to come.

When offspring were issue, they were blank tickets

-women hid them, surreptitious, behind their shoulders-

but the eldest of course, that wasn’t your choice.

That was in their polished hands, their pouring legs.




Boys with raucous claim tore whole thrones asunder,

girls in their raw places to bear them more sons,

becoming mothers with laden arms,

bathing in their blood.




Vitality is stamped, tattooed on the womb

and then christened: go anywhere, but leave.

Worse still, if she were a dry well:

groaning chasms of grief.

It must be nice not to eat dinner in silence (or alone),

not to see her crying as she adds honey to oats,

waiting for that spoon to be knocked out of her hands

then hear she butters bread on the wrong side.

Have conversation like stringed balloons, waving,

instead of wrists shaking on counter-tops, spite flaming

on black gas hobs, that clutch with their hot prongs.

Not to gargle sympathies while packing, catching the backwash

of that drink- it’s foul- choked, swallowed too quickly.

Ignore her strong, sombre hints of “stay, bear it with me”,

cradling her elbows. Say: not today, places to go.

And shudder on brass hinges. Grasping at the rail

to support my skidding feet at the ice rink one mild day.

But I’ve got my own life coming,

my own sorrows to plunder.

I live under a train track, lean on rumbling walls
sounds like a thousand chit chats, sounds like a ball
but I am a man who shouts for echoes
or says nothing at all

The world is a whistling place
when your skirt's up
a sharp glint
in a fallen park
when you're alone

but you're a cat
more fur than muscled bone
winding round the world's poles
begging to be owned.