Dutifully muted we wait in our bubbles, looking at ourselves looking at ourselves smiling, looking for clues in book shelves, potted plants, interiors.
Sid’s iPad is a shadow. Patrick props a stepladder. Magi’s tablet belongs to a Ragdoll with blue eyes. The third row shows bearded minimalists in grey.
The cool ones are sipping tea from chunky mugs. The patient ones are still holding hands raised while their rictus grins slip off screen to scream.
Three minutes to write a poem about the sea. Try to recall how the sea looks, sounds, smells. Time rubs out. One by one our bubbles turn black.
Something is wrong. A grey fog stinking of wet wool hovers above my bed when I wake. I hit reset and instantly a citrus glow permeates the Sense-o-Net. Lemon scent cuts through the fug. Bitter-sweet, my six naked limbs dissolve like butter on hot toast. I hit open and the view unreels; a newborn sun rising from the sea, a debonair yacht with a white sail, a labrador chasing a beach ball. Let’s get this show on the road, I hit extraterrestrial to transcode.
What if each breath was a cloud, each tear -drop a rainstorm, each word forked lightning and eyelids conjured hurricanes, would your world be desert or ocean?
“The poet’s job is to translate unspeakable things on to the page…”
“Poets don’t get into poetry for money, they do it for vocation – I feel like that anyway. Poets can touch hearts and minds; they can translate trauma into something people can face. Sometimes there’s a cost for the poet to do that as it takes looking at the trauma right in the face and then allowing others to bear the idea of trauma safely. That’s why I write poetry. Poems are empathy machines.
Racism is a system that keeps propagating itself. It wasn’t the bankers, millionaires or computer magnates we turned to in the crisis – it was the nurses, garbage cleaners, supermarket workers; I hope those people will be valued more.”
She has never seen so many of them, diving in ribbons, mercurial as the heart of a virgin. She opens her mouth to cry out, joyful her hot mouth expects a fierce Atlantic roar.
She taps an elegant rhythm as the rocks tease. Not surprised, they reflect the enduring equivalence of a human. Five liquid bodies hurl into the waves. She’s eager to slip
a knot around her wrist, slide into the silver gaping mouth. She believes she will fly underwater, melding like angler fish, one into a luminous other. Love lingers
under the scalloped tongue and her smile disappears into a cave. Words are the agony of a different folly, wafer thin, hankering for the heavenly parts of this world.
My therapist’s room has lofty ceilings and a view across rooftops to the sea. A row of potted geraniums line the sill and a tribal mask hangs over his desk. My therapist says I must remember.
My therapist likes to shop. He’s a snappy dresser. Today he wears orange trousers with a button down shirt in lemon. He sips tea from a turquoise mug. My therapist says I remind him of his dead grandfather.
My therapist composes poetry in his head as he walks along the seafront. He recites a poem about a man sleeping rough outside Habitat. My therapist suggests a poem about planting a seed of anger.
My therapist has green fingers growing houseplants with pink flowers. He displays a cactus with fuschia spikes that remind me of my dead mother. My therapist says I am a rose without thorns.
My therapist has cold sores and doesn’t feel like talking. He missed his train, feels stressed. I suggest homeopathy. He asks how I feel about him. I say he is amazing. We are both wearing yellow jumpers. My therapist says
we are synchronised and sends photos of tulips. My therapist suggests letting go, forgiveness and voluntary work. He says my perception is flawed like rippled glass in a old window pane. My therapist asks, are they out to get you?
Our last session he complains of food poisoning and a dodgy meal in Chinatown. I suggest ginger. My therapist says I have too much empty space in my head, sniggers at my leopard print hoodie. Perhaps you’ve shot yourself in the foot?
We follow the signs, white on blue autumn clouds shifting. Slings and arrows show one way to exit. We follow the twisted pitted road down the line. We avoid potholes, broken tarmac, pines felled by storms littering the verge. We drive slowly around those tight bends. The road south unspools an old home movie. In Golspie the doors burst open, the sun breaks gilding the moss, the dry stone walls, the sycamores. The paramedic with kind eyes wishes you breath. Magic moss crumbles gold dust between your fingers until only the scent of earth remains.
rose from the sea at dawn as sun funnelled across Burrigill Bay. Her long black hair trailed a seine net slack from her fisherman’s cap. In the shadows of the stacks she bore down on the eastern shore casting off wrack and bilge water. Her feet, bloodless as starfish, spiked the shingle. The life of the sea spilled from her oilskins. She ran dead ahead up the hill through meadows glazed with dew and sheep, passing the busted creel boat aslant and hulled with bog myrtle. Clouds frothed on the horizon in a herringbone breeze as she ran to the crest where an old hen waited by the gate and one wall of a ruined croft pointed skywards like a prayer.
(This poem was published in Northwords Now some time ago.)
It can take most of your life to see the large car park at the end of the line. There are no instructions on arrival. You circulate widdershins and search
the large car park at the end of the line for a space that suits your personality. You circulate widdershins and search a familiar face in the day-glow crowds
for a space that suits your personality. Some of them are smiling and holding a familiar face in the day-glow crowds. How many coffee beans in the jar?
Some of them are smiling and holding hands. It’s important to guess how many coffee beans in the jar. Green sunglasses are optional, reflective
hands. It’s important to guess how many miles to Land’s End? Green sunglasses are optional, reflective blisters on the soles of your feet.
How many miles to Land’s End? You might travel naked and grateful for blisters on the soles of your feet. It can take most of your life to see.
NB:- John O’Groats is a popular tourist destination in the UK. It is located on the north coast of Scotland and is wrongly believed by some people to be mainland Britain’s most northerly point.
Everything is more beautiful in retrospect. Sometime between the sepia past, the grey today and the flash of tomorrow truth slips away unseen, a tangle of electric eels squirming in an underground stream.
We look back and see only clear skies and carefree picnics but never the cold. We look back and feel only tender kisses and the soft caress but never the blows. We look back and remember nothing.
