Anthology

Nancy

Gliding out in to the glistening, starlit garden
Beautiful and bereft
of all understanding.
Hot air heavied her audience
Watching, wordless
As her madness moved through us all 
Like a forest fire
Flames not dancing but stabbing Stripped my summer bare
And left me grown.

Grey Matter

Sledgehammer

Chisel maybe.

Anything cruel, hard.

Just here - if you could just break my face

Loosen off the ivory grip.

Can you slide your finger between incisors?

And yank down the flesh?

Ugly and uglier to come.

Hideous words will dribble out and punctuate pathetic tears.

You can disregard the tongue and heart; they’re useless now and have been no friend to me.

So, trying not to make me gag

(even in bitterness I have my conventions) onwards and I feel upwards is the proper course.

Here you’ll find the messy truth of the grey matter

And somewhere there amongst the floodlit brilliance and the shopping lists and amidst the lovers and the liars you’ll find your place,

Where you fit in to this ‘piece, bit, bird, tart’.

And of course you do.

Sorry to f*** up your clean shirt,

I can be ‘such a bitch’

Funny that!

Mad Fantasy 

I could enjoy going mad

Smilingly sliding into my immoral pit

With each slice of sanity disappearing

Another care

My hair

Filthy and shameless

I’d eat shit and spit

Out the bits, which, for whatever reason,

Displease my madness.

I’d wear my skirt so short

And my stockings would be wrecked with holes, some hopefully stitched

Stares as I stumble, mindless and happy

Down the street, are distorted in my madness and perceived as desire

My twisted red lips promise something other than decency

‘I wouldn’t mind having sex in a toilet’ they say

‘smeared with other people’

Some dirty, drunk stranger would suit my demeanour now

And we’ll fall out of our cubicle with a post coital can of Special Brew to share

But not our names.

Or I could call myself Sue

I could quite enjoy going mad.

You?

Time Enough

His things looked pretty much the same

A room filled with ghosts of other people, their trinkets

Picked out from dereliction

A year’s dust naming them now as his own.

I wrote my name in it

On a happier day

And waited for him to notice

And waited

But a year had passed since I’d been there.

He was still leaving the door on the latch

I had warned him of unwanted guests

Never thinking I’d be one in just a year

 - just a year?

Time enough for the dust to settle cosily

Like the someone else’s knickers on the floor.