When did it happen?
‘It was a while ago’.
Where did it happen?
‘It was not far’.
No, tell. Where did it happen?
‘In my heart’.
What is your heart doing now?
‘Remembering. Remembering’.
Category: Poetry
Words are all we have
How To Be A Man
Scene 1
too young to know anything of death
get sent upstairs when someone
knocks on the door on a Saturday
Scene 2
too young to come back down until you’re told eavesdrop
auntie are you sure you’re OK?
dad I’m fine
Scene 3
see your dad return from hospital after overdosing
the kind of overdosing where the body forgets itself slowly
how to walk how to speak how to swallow
Scene 4
watch your sister hugging the would-be futurefather of her child
go to the other room computer television
a comedy impressions show and a joke
about someone’s stature
laugh harder than you should have or wanted to
Scene 5
go back to the front room
recount the joke about stature to the seated family
dad I know we heard are you OK?
say you’re fine
see your dad’s face like an empty box
Background character notes
you thought you knew how men
were meant to grieve
you thought all men were punished by their fathers
you thought all men grieved like small Greek women
in black who say the bread still needs to be baked
you thought men simpy carried on
when your dad unfolded in front of you
nobody had taught you how to fix him back together
and then he died
Finally
a day will come when
woken by the xylophone
of sunthroughblinds
you’ll realise
that the beach was not the place
where horses tore the sand
to ribbon
that the scent of her has lifted
from the last of the sheets
that she isn’t coming back
and that you don’t want her to
that it hasn’t rained
but the birds are pretending that it has
so they can sing
Slam
isn’t this how the best of it should be?
or the worst?
taking the body to the point at which
it almost breaks and then returning
having had your faith restored
in the miraculous fragility
of the self
the morning we almost ended
it was your sobbing brought me back
after the endless smashing of glass
we talked ourselves together
and the next day still wearing the mark of your hand
on my chest as you slammed me to the bed I found I was struggling
to swallow every mouthful
was a labour I became aware
of the mechanics of my own body
could feel parts of myself that would
usually go unnoticed
after your hand had slammed into my chest
I learnt the pain in possessing
capacities that are never
quite fulfilled almost being broken
almost leaving but deciding
to tough it out
until it broke
The Package
I listen to us saying goodbye
without taking off my coat.
Your voice breaks.
No need to say it again and again.
I come home and hunt for brown paper, scissors, glue,
if i work fast nothing will be lost.
Not the way you held my face
perhaps turning it to the light,
a precious stone you had to value.
Not the weight of your hands
upon me
their restraint natural as gravity.
The package will be sealed
so light can’t touch it,
safe on the dressing table in the bedroom.
Then we will have said goodbye
and I will have said, look,
it is not destroyed.
If you don’t believe me
I will post it to you.
I Will Not Think Of You At 2 A.M.
I will use lists as my defence,
each item a stone in the barricade
keeping you in your place.
The easiest comes first –
capital cities, Shakespeare’s heroines,
names beginning with E.
You hover over me
waiting until I relax or forget,
fingers drumming on my chest.
I’m running out of categories:
dog breeds, prime ministers,
lovers who left me, lovers I left,
authors with unusual names,
English counties, types of cheese.
Nothing helps.
You’re waiting for me
in the contents of rock pools,
red hair mingling with anemone’s tendrils.
And I Always Thought
And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone’s hearts must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself –
Surely you see that.
– Bertolt Brecht
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