I might go bowling later, he said. His breeziness destroyed me.
I came back to the bridge, Constantine.
Do you remember that student play we did?
I was your muse and you were my chiselled visionary.
You refused to use the zoom button on the camcorder,
I believed we were making history. Now you work in Cineworld
and I am a seagull – no – no, I am an actress.
But the art we made, Constantine, it was so gritty, it was so real:
‘I worked as an ’ooker daan the East End, me lovelies,
it’s an ’ard life being an ’ooker ’cause punters sometaans
dan’t pay up then who ’as to foot the bill to the ald pimp?
Muggins ’ere. How else cauld me gets ma ’eroin
to inject into me veins? Can’t complain tho.
Where’s me burger and chips?
Where’s me copy of the Sun?’
I can do it now, Constantine, I can act.
Before, my accent was vulgar and stereotyped
but now my hands move fluidly and I flex her pain
through the muscles of my past. Is Trigorin here still?
Has he not gone bowling yet? I love him, Constantine,
I love him more than I used to. An idea for a short story.
There is a hole in the air. A small, perfect hole
in the air and the whole sky is cracked around it.
The gunshot noise came later, in memory. I was
already miles away, getting into character
for tomorrow. I was holding a packet of polo mints
between two fingers, puffing out cold breath, pretending
I was Lauren Bacall, smoking a Vogue.
Who gives a rat’s ass about our creativity now? Curse
the lot of them. My boy is dead from love of me.
I am mad for love of someone else. Someone else
is forever enthralled by what’s-her-face who plays
that Russian bird in Coronation Street.
Mea culpa, Constantine. Under the sapphire moon,
there will always be poets with throbbing notebooks
looking for Juliets with pharmaceutical party bags,
Ophelias in tie-dye tourniquets. Lucrative business –
tragic women. I could have been Portia or Beatrice.
I could have been the eldest of the Mundy sisters
in Dancing at Lughnasa, scattering chicken-feed
on the west coast of Donegal.
The Dry Well
In the dry light of morning, I return to the well.
You think you know the outcome of this story.
Sunshine is a naked, roaming thing like hurt.
A well is a chance embedded in the ground.
The well was dry yesterday and the day before.
You think you know the lot about sunshine –
an early bird knows sod all about perseverance.
Good people, you lay down your curling souls
on the dust and surrender. I swing my bucket.
If the well is dry today I will come back tomorrow.
A Dialogue between Artist and Muse
John Donne A fly is a more noble creature than the sunne,
because a fly hath life and the sunne hath not
A fly I find you extremely patronising
Hey Las Vegas
Hey Las Vegas, can nothing save us
from you? Hey bottle-bins and Tesco Metro,
Monday yawnings, flu symptoms, the station pub
at Waterloo. You’re all Las Vegas
and I’m hooked on you.
Hey Las Vegas, you’re a cheeky sausage
aren’t you? Swapping my lovers while I’m under
the covers watching their tattoo change. Kisses begun
in the city of sin – be it York or Durham –
taste of you, Las Vegas.
Hey Las Vegas, can a Yorkshire lass match
her drinks with you? I built a bedroom casino,
bet my hotel Bible and lost a week. Just one, Las Vegas,
pinch of comatose, powder up the nose
and I’m a queen for you.
Hey Las Vegas, I wore my Elvis costume
for you, a curtsey in Wetherspoons from muscle
cramp: your promise, like a flung bouquet
off Humber Bridge, to break my fall
Las Vegas, like the A63.
Genesis
The people from the London suburbs don’t believe in God.
We read books about slavery on American soil and relate
to the need for mental escape and concur that the homeless
get a raw deal and the kids in the state schools should get bikes,
free bikes or free books or something and we fall in love
pragmatically and suffer consequences like we pay our taxes
and everybody knows how a therapist makes his money.
The people from the British library don’t believe in fate.
We drink coffee at the end of meals and sigh for the economy
and we cut ourselves in high school but now we have more dignity
and liberal education has airy-fairy elements and the newspapers
are wrong and vivid imaginations write ‘Where am I?’
on Ouija boards.
The people from the West End theatres don’t believe in heaven.
We eat bagels with smoked salmon and smoke electric cigarettes
and the afterlife is something cavemen invented to make sense
of death and we drive cars that are too big for us and everyone
gets divorced and we criticise each other’s choices when we love
with all our hearts.
The people from the Oxford drinking establishments don’t believe in ghosts.
We drink mulled wine at Christmas and Dickens
was sentimental and no one gets this far without a square set
of shoulders and pharmaceutical companies created our dysfunctions
and we could think our way out of a genocide situation and we
prove this every day in the darkness of our studies.
The people from the half-bought houses don’t believe in karma.
We play tennis with tanned arms and come out to our parents and
wait for the backlash and never wear the same t-shirt twice
and apply for jobs we won’t enjoy and have sex with our eyes open
and carry burning debts of duty and care about the war
occurring in our partners’ heads.
The people from the city side of the river don’t believe in elves.
We count to ten before we explode and observe the red axes
in the big glass cabinets that say ‘break in case of emergency’
and we walk over wrought-iron bridges with little briefcases and
we never think about skipping and we keep our chins up
without the help of buttercups.
9 Possible Reasons for Throwing a Cat into a Wheelie Bin
The RSPCA has said it will be speaking to a woman caught on CCTV dumping a cat into a wheelie bin in Coventry – BBC News
1) You mistook the cat for a crisp packet.
2) You believe the cat spoke to you and requested a lift to the inside of the wheelie bin.
3) You mistook the wheelie bin for a house.
4) You wanted the cat to relate to your own suffering.
5) The cat was on fire.
6) The wheelie bin was full of cream.
7) Your mother was a cat-lover and she hated you.
8) The owner of the cat put your child in a wheelie bin.
9) The cat was planning to steal your husband.
Day Room
Some crazy people believe they are Napoleon.
I am Alexander I of Russia, enthralled by Napoleon.
I declared, somewhat tardily, ‘We can no longer reign together!’
after my sma
ll friend invaded me in 1812.
You think I’m joking.
Lip-chewing Meg is deluded about being Napoleon
but I am Alexander I of Russia, betrayed, muddled, conflicted.
This is not a metaphor. From my football coach
I learnt Rousseau’s gospel of humanity, from my babysitter
I learnt the traditions of Russian autocracy and when I said
‘The limits of liberty are the principles of order,’
what I really meant to say was:
I give up.
I’m taking my dying empress for a change of air.
Faith
The atheist is good in bed and debates.
Jacuzzis make the atheist uncomfortable, their public bubbles.
Numbers feel more theatrical around the atheist, listen:
TWO THOUSAND AND TWO.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE. We sleep
as if our bodies are bound together with electric cables.
The Christian purifies me much like Klonopin
(or watching a large man ride a tricycle),
plays Spanish guitar with bleeding fingers
and we sleep as if we are hiding beneath a train.
I don’t want to talk about the agnostic.
This game is dangerous and, anyway, I can’t be bothered.
Like a wasp, the agnostic is surrounded
by dying comrades. Hospital beds and normal beds
all travel in the same direction, lugging our mothers
like rolls of Turkish carpet on their backs.
The agnostic lets me bitch about the atheist and the Christian.
We sleep as if we are alone.
‘Do you think you’re God?’ the agnostic asked me once,
‘You swallow pebbles to make your body lighter.
Someone lends you five pence and you fall in love.
You’re like a medieval beggar without legs
pulled along in the dirt by your own needy smile.’
Maybe the agnostic didn’t say that.
Let me sit for a minute quietly and gather my thoughts.
Dolores
Handfast on my other hand, it was
a sad and sinless way strung with
star-proof mirrors: I touched
no one and only a few touched me.
‘Come on!’ screamed the mistress and redoubled
her perfume. She was not prepared to rest
her forehead any longer on that kettledrum,
not unless you popped a tasty deathworm
in her tequila.
‘I miss the way I used to call the shots around here,’
the first line of the ant-farm anthem.
‘Arghhh,’ I said, accidentally out loud
and the fair vast head of love
denied my feast-day.
There Once Was A Boy Named Bosh
There once was a boy named Bosh
who had a Shallow family. Daddy
Shallow dealt in motorcars, his favourite
word was ‘repercussion’ and he always
kept Mother Shallow in pocket if not
in peace. She was a narcissist who’d
perfected the wilting flower. Doctor
Shallow gave her pills for her nerves.
‘We all have nerves,’ said Bosh, but
Brother Shallow was found hanging
in the attic like an off light-bulb so
Grandma Shallow did the cooking
and Shallow neighbours constructed car-pools
to get Bosh to school. Teacher Shallow
collected money for nearly-dead children
in hot places and Bosh was supposed to
say a little something in assembly but
Brother Shallow was all-the-way dead
and where’s his money? The Shallow girls
found Bosh mean and sexy when he got
blind with self-loathing. Mother Shallow
said, ‘Why can’t you play football?’ because
she only cared about external achievements
and Daddy Shallow polished himself in his
dark Mercedes. ‘It’s like they are zombies,’
Bosh thought, ‘Who don’t have any blood:
eating their McDonald’s onion rings, telling
me they’re hurting too,’ so Bosh started
drinking lots and lots of beer and whisky
like an adult does when he loses something
big like a poker game or a piece of paper
with a number on it. ‘My Shallow family
are so Shallow,’ Bosh said, ‘they probably
wouldn’t notice if I was hanged too,’ and
Bosh was wrong about this, but Bosh put
a dressing gown cord round his neck as
Daddy Shallow watched American Beauty
downstairs and Sister Shallow swallowed
leeches in her bedroom to get skinny and
Mummy Shallow wrote in her pink leather diary.
Thoughts inside a Head inside a Kennel inside a Church
I had become increasingly
suspicious of those around me
especially after the kidnap attempt
and two masked soldiers raided my house.
I hid in the grandfather clock.
People noticed my language was no longer
one with the peacemaker of Europe.
I’d become addicted to my paramour’s story,
I had specialist books out:
What My Paramour Thinks About So-called Liberal Reforms.
The Ninety-Nine Sleeping Positions of My Paramour (with Diagrams).
Instructions My Paramour Feels Your Dog Would Obey.
I couldn’t smoke a cigarette
without apologising to the walls.
My friend set me up with sandwiches,
a flask of sugary tea
and helped me build the kennel:
‘There is nothing more relaxed, more tranquil
than living alone in a kennel in a church.’
No more kidnapping scares
nor menacing phone calls. No unmarked jeeps
waiting in the street. I didn’t receive
a Valentine’s card saying ‘no one likes you, love from us all’.
I couldn’t stand up straight
due to the low roof. I’d run out of toffees
and what with no TV,
no Travel Scrabble, no rowing machine,
there was literally nothing to do
but pray.
The Only People in Paradise
Yours are the victories of light: your feet
Rest from good toil, where rest is brave and sweet:
But after warfare in a mourning gloom,
I rest in clouds of doom.
from ‘Mystic and Cavalier’ by Lionel Johnson
I’ll have a laugh with Lionel Johnson in heaven
staying up to praise the plaintive asylum burning
in the first mellow bars of light. What a lovely way
to spend an afterlife, watching dark angels go by,
two players lounging by the ruinous church door.
I’ll say hey Lionel, recognise these visions?
On earth, you made doom verse out of them.
Who knew, crunchy and delicious, they’d be
a tree of innocence with ashen apples on it?
And at the silent disco on Friday night, we’ll whisper
‘D.J. please… Drop. The. Beat’, as the Fire Girls snake
the Twist o Flex of the Seraph, and Oliver Reed gets drunk.
Fantasy Role-Play
You had two children. They were present, like crickets,
too young to do anything but lie there and feel.
Your husband was a reactive blink to an inappropriate comment.
Your house was the shape of a lucky horse-shoe.
There were archways and guard dogs and roses. ‘I love you,’ I said
as you
closed the door, screamed, opened it again, then silently
packed little Lionel and Greta into my car, stuffed your satchel
with apples from the tree you were married under
and got into the passenger seat.
We listened to ‘Dig a Pony’ by the Beatles
and sang, ‘She can penetrate any place she goes!’
while the kids played rock-paper-scissors in the back.
You wouldn’t let me kiss you for the first two weeks.
I had to wear a plastic Spider-Man mask.
One day, we were sitting in the Black Magic bar
of the Dawdle Bug hotel, wondering how to get
Lionel and Greta into private school. You looked so beautiful
drinking a pint of soda water with your big gloves on.
I said, ‘Do you regret dropping your husband like that?
Leaving your perfect life? Sleeping on the road?’
‘My name is Marcella,’ you said,
‘I worked as a maid in the Jeffersons’ household.
The woman you loved was a cold and passive mother
and her husband was needy, disloyal and collapsible.
They were always fighting, throwing plates, cleaning products, fridges
at each other, mushing Lionel’s face into his broccoli,
shunting Greta around like a mini vacuum cleaner.
When you arrived, I saw the chance to give them a better life.’
‘Do you really think I can give you a better life?’ I said.
‘Look,’ said Marcella the maid, ‘Lionel and Greta
The Hat-Stand Union Page 2
