The child in the pushchair leans forwards.
Touches the wheels while they move, later this revolves to watching wheels of a bus
and wishing to be
underneath
them and maybe we're all just looking for a way out and a getaway driver,
maybe this room with a view we built to ruin is flooding
and we're pressing our
open lips
to the ceiling, grappling for a last breath
and pushing time for a second more
and maybe that escape route is waiting round the corner, a lamppost with flowers cellotaped to it, a
place away from the place
our parents kicked us out,
drove us to the middle of nowhere and made us walk ourselves home, telling us this is a metaphor of life, waiting for a place for us to rest our blistered ankles and bruised wrists,
a place where there's someone we lost waiting for us, holding our their hand to bring us home,
but I guess,
maybe, for now
we're gonna have to stare at buses and wish for those pushchair wheels and the days we stared at the pavement moving beneath us and wanted to be anything
but a painting on the road.

LIFE

I ask you as I begin, how would you describe LIFE?

For me the word "Euphoria" comes to mind in a weird sense.

Have we become our own narrators forbidden to live our own rehabilitated LIVES?

Does LIFE for some have no meaning, where laws have incarcerated in the hearts of people who declare our own existence?

We somehow fly a flag of nations, of countries what does it represent?

Peace new LIFE or a pushchair war?

Seems to me LIFE has become a class of its own distinction, never knowing its own ending.

Is money the ultimate ruler of our hormonal LIVES?

At the end do we desire what we fear the most?

                                                                                         LAZA 09

The baby is never far
From your thoughts; each
Passing pram or pushchair
Nudges you into looking,
Into remembering, aching.

You try to turn your head
When some mother feeds
From breast some baby in arms,
You hold back the tears, when
Reflecting on how the small

Mouth opens like some frail
Fish out of water and you want
It to be yours, your breast
The baby latches onto, your
Eyes that the babe searches

In wonderment. Often nightly,
You tiptoe to the phantom cot
And gaze at the ghostly image
That ought to be there, never
Far from your thoughts, never

More than a fingertip away
Is the memory of that last hold,
That final gaze, that eased out
Wheeze and you left out in
Grief’s dark corridor and cold.

Wheeled around in a pushchair,
an innocent child
stares out at the world
with a sticky-faced smile.
A day at the seaside
with ice-cream to eat;
how it melts in the sunshine
and drips on her seat.
“Oh no, look at Ellie!”
her mother exclaims;
“She needs her mouth wiping,
she’s covered in stains!”
But Ellie just giggles,
her small gooey hands
are now grasping her bib,
she cannot understand
that one day in the future,
a lifetime away,
she’ll be taken again
down along the same way,
for a day at the seaside
with ice-cream to eat;
it will melt in the sun
and drip down on her seat:
And she’ll need her mouth wiping,
again and again,
when she’s on medication
to ward off the pain;
staring out at the world
with a bland vacant smile,
pushed around in a wheelchair,
an innocent child.

Rolling sky like,
the grey and blue pushchair
became a cloud.

When I was laid in the white place and the giant fly came
I was a tiny thing and it came close to look at me
I wanted to hide and made myself smaller
Then another one came and they fought
Rolling over and over
My first memory laid in a pram outside

She sat me on the table and went outside
I saw her look through the window as I fell

I ran across the room and couldn't stop
So I ran into a chair
Because I knew I could stand up holding on to it
They all shouted in delight at my first steps

Leaning over the side of my pushchair
I watched the wheels on the muddy path

I was running looking up at the blue sky
There were pink flowers against it

She left me alone in the garden and went out
She took my sister in her pram and I wanted to go too
She said I had to stay in the garden
I stayed and I saw a plane fall out of the sky
I cried that the pilot might be hurt
She said I'd made it all up because I'd had to stay behind
At breakfast dad in his vest put the paper on the table
In front of me with a picture in it
Did he die? I asked
Yes he said
But it wasn't in the direction you pointed

Start life in a pushchair
end up in a wheelchair
that
doesn't sound fair to me

I'd like a parachute.

but we rise as we fall
keep our eyes
on the ball and
the game plays out as it will.

If life is a 'Gif'
I wonder if
but then I don't.

So for me
it's back to the Weetabix
the Sticklebricks
and plasticine

and taking forty winks in
the time it takes to
take five
because
I have a microwave bed,
(old jokes are the best)

modernity's killing me
but slowly and in an
old fashioned kind of way.

Lances of evening sun run through trails
Left spearheads of gold behind water rails.
The dene smell that came from a hawthorn on
The turn, had lost all its putrid scents
Of spring. Blown in the night, echoed
By the corpses of snowberries, marble
Spoils of fungus adorned the rorqual’s throat
Of ridged bark on the trunk of a fallen
Tree. Two blackbirds in a drunken squabble
Over fermented windfalls, were just missed
By a pushchair where a low flying toddler
Extemporised words into birdlike cries.
An umbrella was caught up and fluttered
To dry its wet wings like a cormorant;
As mopheads in the shrubbery tumbled
From sky hydrangea to rhubarb crumble.

When you were a little girl
I came to play each Monday
We had such fun as did Mum
Sitting at the covered table
Drawing pictures and writing poems
Cutting and sticking
Our hearts were glowing

We loved the dollies and the flowers
Cuddled up and played about
Barney came and looked around
To see if I had sweeties found
Milo in his pushchair
Dark brown eyes and softest hair
Always gave a smile to me
When I came and stayed for tea.

At your house I loved to be .


Love Mary

Thank you to Daisy ,Barney ,Milo and Katie , love Mummy ,Grandma ***

Mary, mind that man in the old coat
He's limping, there could be something wrong with him.
Peter, come on we're crossing over now
I don't like the look of that woman with the pushchair,
Come on before she blows smoke over us as well.
Brenden, come here please, quickly, that girl just sneezed,
You've got to learn to stay close when we're in town.
Sue, watch out for those teenagers, taking up the whole pavement,
They won't move, let's get in the road for a minute,
Let them come past.
Jim, did you hear that? Oh it's that man over there coughing,
He should be at home,
What's wrong with everybody?

Rolling sky like,
the grey and blue pushchair
became a cloud.