I shall never get out of this!  There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was

Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints.
I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold.
I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer.
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior!
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist.
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her:
She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages.

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain,
And it was I who attracted everybody's attention,
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed.
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up --
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality.

I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it.
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience:
She humored my weakness like the best of nurses,
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.
In time our relationship grew more intense.

She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish.
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself,
As if my habits offended her in some way.
She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded.
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces
Simply because she looked after me so badly.
Then I saw what the trouble was:  she thought she was immortal.

She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful --
Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse!
And secretly she began to hope I'd die.
Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case
Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water.

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her.
She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp --
I had forgotten how to walk or sit,
So I was careful not to upset her in any way
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself.
Living with her was like living with my own coffin:
Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully.

I used to think we might make a go of it together --
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.
Now I see it must be one or the other of us.
She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit.
I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her,
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.

The pillows are arranged
the chairs all un-sat in
my bedclothes pressed
as if no one has slept in them

My desk is tidy
the pens in a jar
notebooks stacked
as if I never struggle

My shelves are full
novels organized by author
the remote next to the TV
as if I never indulge

The floor is spotless,
the carpet is straight
the shoes in are rows
as if I never go anywhere

My bedroom, newly cleaned
stares at me
with wide blinds
and an open door


As if I am a stranger

It had been a long day, an early start, a hundred mile drive, and he was going home, back to a quiet evening before another busy week.
 
The January afternoon was the wrong side of three o'clock, but the relentless wind and rain of the morning had subsided leaving clearer skies, thin high clouds. He had driven a few miles out of town, metaphorically shaken the dust of its Sunday streets from his shoes. Either side of the road vistas of vast fields stretched into the distance. There was an 8-sail windmill, a sign to a doll museum, the occasional church spire rising above trees. He found himself looking to turn off the main road: to wander into unknown country, to stop the car and walk a little. A few miles further on he saw a promising turning and left the main road.
 
The house stood on its own a 100 yards distant from the road. In front no garden, just an expanse of cropped grass, where one could imagine croquet being played on a summer's day. The building was probably early Victorian, a balanced structure, a porched front door separating two large rooms with French doors leading out to a gravelled drive. The masonry was painted a subtle mustard brown, the window frames and doors a brisk white. A gentleman's residence of another age; perhaps the former vicarage of the redundant church he had strolled to explore a little further up the road. There, he had peered into the locked building to see an expanse of black plastic sheeting hiding the once pews, and at the end of a side chapel an arresting stained glass window glowing in Mediterranean blue.
 
From the churchyard unfenced grazing land lay unanimaled, sheepless, and cattlefree. Large oaks held singular positions against the steep fall of the sky to the far horizon. In the nearer distance woodland stood in a general air of managed tidiness.
 
A little further down the road a fallow field beckoned his interest. Its grass winter-bleached in a ten-acre square, fenced, and before a wood. He took out his camera and composed a shot. The image held stark simplicity: the field, the fence, the wood, a touch of sky.
 
He realised these environs into which he had wandered were quite unpeopled, empty of life. Only rooks swirled around the church tower. And silence. No cars on the single-track road. No tractors in the wind-parched fields.
 
He felt himself rest in the peace of it all: the house, the church, the fields, the empty road. At his feet yellow aconites graced a shallow ditch: a  grateful sudden colour in a washed out landscape. It was all of a piece this place, nothing and everything. He had come, stayed a while, would get back in the car a little colder than when he'd left it. Was there some story here he would never know? A village-less church? Or was this a place to trigger fiction, on which to bring the imagination to bear. He thought himself into the gentleman's residence. Sitting at his worktable before the almost French windows. She would enter, only the rustle of her dark dress a welcome disturbance. She would place her hand on the back of his neck. He would close his eyes in gratitude and in love that all this should be so.

Minimal
Live could be more optimal
If you let go of things, trivial
And focus on the real capital
Time and space, the memory
Of experiences, friends, and family
Nice gestures and charity
The joy of clarity
The depth of sanity
A better grasp of reality
More options through more money
By spending on what matters

Minimal
To love people and not things
To be who you are and not what you own
A tidiness in hindsight, in the mind
A sense of being light, feeling right
Another understanding of freedom and slavery
The slavery of things
When you don’t own things but things you
Because things hold you back and therefore
Freedom comes from less stuff, not more

Nostalgia?
But here is the thing
Memories might die
If you cut off their wings
If you capture them in things
And lock them up in dark closets
They live in your mind, not in items
They need to be free
Fresh, revived, preserved
Through presence, not hoarding

Memories live
Through pictures
Digitized in devices
Always in your pocket
Cherished in your mind

Memories live
Through words
Written by you
In diaries worth keeping
Which take you back in time
But don’t fill up your space

Memories live
Through stories
You tell others and others tell you
Face to face and soul to soul
With some coffee in-between

Minimal
Clutter is not optional
Get rid of worthless stuff
Boxes and countless little toys
One zillion paper clips
Sad chairs and old clothes
And all the dusty things
That occupy your life
And turn it into junk

Spend less
Less things
Think more
Be free
Live life
Minimal

to air and store, to host
the mouse that eats the soap.

no longer . it is stored in tins,
now, even the chewed bits.

it left the government soap
alone, that just dried out slowly.

in the tidying we lost
the bandages and rattling threads,
found remembered handkerchiefs,
starched, boxed with pins.

oh joy of tidiness, so much could be
thrown, so much can be kept.

these are the falling days.

sbm.

The small dinner party had gone
Off well, Hazel thinks, sitting at
The dressing table, gazing at herself
In the mirror, seeing her hair done

Up just so, the way her maid, Dunne
Painstakingly did it for her. She begins
To unpin her hair, placing the pins in
The small glass dish, her fingers unused

To the task. Dunne is down in the kitchen
With the temporary cook, helping to clear
Up, tidy things away as is her want, her
Tidiness part of her character. She sits her

Hair unpinned, staring at her features,
At her eyes, the mouth slightly open, the
Teeth even and white. In the mirror she
Can see the made up bed, the covers

Turned down, the china hot water bottle
She knows just under the covers, put there
By Dunne. She’ll be there soon, Dunne,
Her maid, her lover, ******* her and

Herself. She has her own room and bed
Up in the attic, but she seldom uses it unless
Guests are there over night or are staying
For a few days. Tonight she will be here,

Hazel muses, rubbing a tongue licked finger
Over her brow, and they will snuggle down
And talk of their day and then make love,
Then sleep. Since her father’s death and the

Truth of his deeds and what he made Dunne
Do and the forced ***, she feels a mixture
Of anger and grief mixed into a compound
That makes her tired and confused. She waits.

She wants Dunne there, wants her fingers
To undo her zips and buttons, brush her hair,
Feeling the fingers on her skin, in her hair.
She wants to feel Dunne’s lips on hers, needs

Dunne’s fingers moving over her body, wants
To know each aspect of her maid’s body. In
Her mind she can sense the feel, remember
The point of high sensation, as if her whole

Body was taken to the limits of exhilaration
Of passion, as if she might explode and all her
Being be scattered into ***** of sensuality.
She can’t find the exact words to express it.

She sits and waits, waits sitting, breathes
In, breathe out. Dinner had gone very well.
The evening guests talked of this and that,
Had their laughs and jokes. Mr Phibuster

Had lectured to her on the economy, how
Some upstart in Germany was stirring up
Trouble. She couldn’t have cared less. Her
Eyes kept going to Dunne, watching her

Coming and going with dishes and glasses.
She sits up straight, Dunne is coming, she
Hears her footstep in the passage, her voice,
Some Mozart aria is tunefully humming.

Curious and uncomfortable
here is the tidiness, a lack of nostalgia,
a mutual waiting, spacing out,
reckoning a future past
that naturally would run its course.

All around still green and too gray
ruling a no man’s land
where to stand on toes,
holding my breath over the level
of time, when coming to a standstill
it always leaves his deepest mark.

Downsizing, justifying
what I have and what I have not.
Never I was left without my only gift
the carefulness of the loving sun,
that hint to refract inertia and will
for I live the light across.

If through one rainy night
It sounded like you changed it all.

Father James took
you and Gareth
and George
postulant monks

to a convent
in Newport
he had mass to serve
and confessions

to hear
so you were all
shown into a parlour
with the smell

of home bake bread
and starched sheets
and a young nun
came in

carrying a tray
with teapot
and cups
and sugar bowl

and jug of milk
all in a dull white
and as she set
the tray down

on the table
her eyes moved
from each one of you
taking in no doubt

young novices
in the training
the plain clothes
the black and white

the neat cut hairs
the shaven chins
and then she smiled
and went her way

no wiggling of hips
or female sway
carrying the tray
and Gareth spoke

of Wittgenstein
and the Tractatus
Logico Philosophicus
while George took in

the tidiness
of the room
the ****** smell
the taste

of aging flesh
while you half listened
on Wittgenstein
and the scent

of passing youth
remembering
the young nun’s smile
awaiting truth.

If I were watching you now
sat at your lap
desk bare and clinical
like your sharp eyes,
if I were watching you now
I think I would look right into you
and I would see the war scars
that you buried in orderly dysfunction
and raging fits of tidiness,
I don't think you walked away
from those burning screaming
German towns bearing your name.
You ran. you ran hard.
back to your horses and simple fields,
back to a life that was entirely too chaotic
in its gentleness.