Because of you
I'm all here
Buried all the pains
Dug a new chapter
Imported new feelings
Seeded hope
Exported all the grievances
Took hold of the promises
Watered the heart
Cementing the broken pieces together
Laminated the smile
And on the wall I nailed it
Began a tireless journey
Wishing for the best
Trusting the eyes
Enjoying the sweet melody
A lullaby I need for a lifetime

Remember those days?
Acting silly and stupid
The ignorance we entertained
The confusion we embraced
Embroidering the hatred
An the mist of pain we got lost
Turning our backs on each other
Anger reddening our eyes
Silence that became a graveyard
Silence that almost murdered our hearts
Intoxicating our feelings
Destroying the taproots of our future
I remember that days
Buried now

Now I smile
For we hold it
In our hands we are molding it
Together moistening the clay
That long ago cracked
With no hope of being a palp again
We have it
We repainted the wall
A new dawn of hope
A beginning of a new chapter
The chills of winter all gone
Summer says hello
With its rain we will puddle
In the mud together
Yes the mud of love we will ***** ourselves
For we buried the past

E coli colonies
And clusters of blisters
Pink clusters of blisters
And scabs and lice
Do they taste good your cockles?
Do they feel satisfies your mussels?
Do you feel alive, alive, oh?
Candid she is ah
The women of the water
Of beds of sand burrowed deep
Shadows under rocks
On the corners of streets
A parasitic mass
Not the proverbial grain of sand
A fluid called nacre
Or mother of pearl is
Deposited
Layer upon layer
Until a pearl
Is formed
The product of an irritant
A cluster of blisters
Opalescent blisters
Sweet pink satisfaction in
The labial palp
The entrance way to the mouth

‘I’m so cold and I’m so scared
And I’m so alone’


I just
So, a pearl fisher needs to wear waders
There’s no dignified way to put on waders
And when it gets cold you have to **** yourself to keep warm
You also need a set of tangs
Mine are hazel
I got them from the wood
I cut it down but first I asked the tree if it was okay
The tree is part of the river too you see
It nourishes the peat
That filters the water that
Drips back into the river
That is filtered by the mussel
That the salmon and trout swim in
Then the mussel
The larvae attached to the salmon and the trout
And it forms a symbiotic relationship
Where the mussel filters the water and
The salmon and the trout
Spread their offspring
The way you can tell the difference
Between a male and a female mussel
Is that when you pick up a male it's
Literally dripping in *****
A constant *******
The females all spawn at the same time
A mussel is an indicator species,
Which in ecological terms means
That it is a species that will
Be
The perfect indicator of the health
Of the river
The other things you need are
A river speculum
I haven’t made mine yet
But we used plastic ones
With glass cut to shape
But it enables you to see the river
The secret part of the secret river
It’s red down there
And it’s cold
The women of the water
They hide in the shadows under rocks
And burrowed deep
They can move very slowly across the river
Bed
A colony of mussels
A family
When you find mussels
When you f
When you find a beautiful
When you find lots of them it’s
Called a
Good crook and this is where
You’ll find pearls
If you ask me the man who takes them is a good crook himself
Bad crook
And it’s I’m looking at it now and I can see
It with the moonlight on it
And it just it
Keeps going
But it’s tidal here it’s not fresh
I’d have to distil it myself
With copper pipes
Copper tubes
Copper coil
When copper ages it turns blue
And you don’t weld copper
You braze it
Soldering at a high temperature
A Heat
Mussels can live up to 150 years old
I held a 120-year-old one
And it was so wise and venerable
I didn’t know what to do
I couldn’t speak
This mussel
She was alone
Down there in the red
The angry red water
She lived through
WW1 and 2
And women’s suffrage
My grandmother was alive two
I wore silk because it’s pure
And women are supposed to be pure
Don’t know
Freshwater nymphs
I can see it right now
And it’s just like little tiny mirrors
Little tiny mirrors that are reflecting light back
Speculum is the Latin for mirror
Maybe the water’s a mirror
But it’s tidal here so I’d have to distil it
Saltwater mirrors
Saltwater speculums
Spectators of atrocity
And mussels they grow
With annual rings
Annually
They reach maturity around the
Age of 30
Like tree trunks
Like the hazel
That helps me to keep them
Catch them in its tangs
But I want to protect them
I am one

Little plaster shells
But I cracked one
And it wasn’t plaster
Split her in half
Not with tongs
With silicone
Pink flexible
Gooey silicone
Their linings bleed every month

It was a dark orange
Red colour
Because of the peat that was draining into the water

But I have to protect them
Cause I am one.

LET'S FACE FACTS

The mind is like a sponge
absorbing the spilt ketchup

of the moment gone
horribly wrong.

Or if one were
to rub two atoms together

they would burst
instantly into a poem.

Or
not.

Words go to jail if
they fail to capture

the state of mind
of the person who

believed writing was merely
putting pen to paper.

The writing untangles itself
and word for word reenters

the tip of
the pen.

The brain is made from
papier mache

but can be cast in bronze
or set in stone.

Some people don't even know
they are host to a brain.

A man whose name escapes
me now

but was an anagram
for toilets

cried that he could connect
"nothing with nothing."

I envied him and
was jealous of his seeing.

**** my doppelgänger who
autocorrects everything I

(dognapper leg
engorged palp
glopped anger
"Grapple Ogden!")

have strived to
manifest here.

I am an atom short
of a universe.

being just the flesh eyes
make electric,
blue that
the sky
occasionally will be,

or wooled over
in grey,

and A house will
suppose a window

before which
(being just the flesh)

skin will
zing
electric

over from
the palp of winds;

the hair will,
****** between by
some air,
bumble and ******;

the scalp will rejoin
with wine,
spilt uncarefully
in sips
through the gullet,
and the cheek will
renumber the blossomed
heads of capillary and vein:
being cloaked in pallid rouge.

LET'S FACE FACTS

The mind is like a sponge
absorbing the spilt ketchup

of the moment gone
horribly wrong.

Or if one were
to rub two atoms together

they would burst
instantly into a poem.

Or
not.

Words go to jail if
they fail to capture

the state of mind
of the person who

believed writing was merely
putting pen to paper.

The writing untangles itself
and word for word reenters

the tip of
the pen.

The brain is made from
papier mache

but can be cast in bronze
or set in stone.

Some people don't even know
they are host to a brain.

A man whose name escapes
me now

but was an anagram
for toilets

cried that he could connect
"nothing with nothing."

I envied him and
was jealous of his seeing.

**** my doppelgänger who
autocorrects everything I

(dognapper leg
engorged palp
glopped anger
"Grapple Ogden!")

have strived to
manifest here.

I am an atom short
of a universe.

**

Yet another "thing" brought forth from me by or rather cast out of me by the wonderful Kim Moore at her Cheltenham Poetry Festival writing workshop. Don't even ask! It was to get us to write and write I did and this...is...eh...what came up! Jaysus!

It was a 7min. exercise...just write with no taking the pen off the paper hence when I stalled I started anagraming the word doppelgänger in order to keep the words coming. And as it was my doppelgänger who was shapeshifting all I was saying I thought it was only poetic justice that doppelgänger itself should be the word to get anagramed...serve it ****** well right.