Your heroes march for human rights and the future of the planet. Your heroes are millions of school children protesting for the climate strike. Your heroes write graffiti and poetry. Your heroes are everywhere, they walk among us. Your heroes are waking up every day, skint and underpaid and busking it, your heroes are making work, beautiful books and music and art that you cannot see or find or read as is drowned out by all the propaganda and noise and adverts and the fear-mongering and the performative cruelty of politicians.
It is your job, your only job, to seek out and support and nurture heroes, this is all your responsibility. We can all do our part in the chain, to help others to help others, to help the others who help the others who inspire and help the others. Find the others! You are losing your libraries, museums, galleries, independent bookshops, pubs and music venues, so the beautiful spaces where thinkers and writers and artists could meet and share work and gather and blossom and dream are being erased. The survival of the hero is up to you all now. It is important, now more than ever, to fight for all of this, to fight for your rights, for your freedoms, for your art, poetry and music. Because you all need to be heroes, to step up, to speak up, to support each other. It is all about kindness, and you need the doers and the creators. You must pay attention to the ones who listen and hear and do and can and will and share. And to the people of science and art, books and music, otherwise what is the actual point of all of this? What was the point? Why are you all here if not for that? You are here for love. To share the love.
When hate is rising, then love can only rise higher.
We stare deeply now into the charcoals of winter and watch the last flames lick the chimney. The fires leave the sky and dance into the everything. All the warmth and all the joy is boiled in a soup of memory, we stir the good stuff from the bottom of the pot and hold the ladle up, drink, we say, look at all the good chunks of goodness, take in your share of good times, good music, good books, good food, good laughter, good people, be grateful for the good stuff, life and death, we say, drink.
Mrs Death: Black Star
I found David sitting on the sea front
He was perfectly calm
It was the perfect day for it
It’s time . . . I began to say
But he was already seated
It was as though it was his idea
Some people come as if it is their will
Elegant, measured
As though they know it is just a ride
David sat in my carriage of hawthorn
The morning sea in the distance
Shimmering silver
As blue as January
As the carriage jolted and rocked
He blew a kiss to the horizon
It was as if he knew it was his time
My horses galloped along the sand
And David sang about the hawthorn
The hawthorn isn’t in blossom yet
The hawthorn isn’t in bloom
It was as if he knew
He wouldn’t see another spring
It was as if he knew
Living was all a dream
And not many people do.
Wolf: Purple Rain
PRINCE
opened his secret show with
PURPLE RAIN.
I wasn’t expecting that
it knocked me for six
tears sprang to my eyes
as soon as he sang
I cried
I heard the words for
SIGN ☮ THE TIMES
and tears streamed
down my face
I don’t know
what it is about
PRINCE
yes I do
it is
everything
about
PRINCE
my love for
PRINCE
is bigger
than ever
it hurts
it is hard
it is difficult
to hero-worship
we don’t write
about love
and respect
for an artist
until they die
we don’t tell people
what they mean to us
we don’t say
I LOVE YOU
until it is too late
and they are dead
and then we write
RIP on social media
this is not a review.
this is not a poem.
this is not a letter.
I don’t know what this is.
I guess this is a confession:
I love you
PRINCE.
I LOVE YOU
Even. More.
Now.
Wolf: Let the Worms Chew the Fat
Nightingale Hospital, Marylebone, London
The staff at the Nightingale tell me they need the bed. They discharge me and let me come home. I apologise for all the drama. I am stupid. I forget to breathe sometimes and panic. I told them, I don’t need to be in a hospital and I think it was just a bit of a panic attack, I said, sorry. They tell me I must go home and rest. I am suffering from depression and exhaustion, an iron deficiency and anaemia. But then one doctor told me they think I’m developing bipolar disorder. I don’t understand what that all means? I cried my eyes out when they said that. I think the doctor said that because I told them I feel like I am on a rollercoaster. I have been very high or very low and very manic. I sometimes have blackouts and dizzy spells and coloured spots and shortness of breath. I forget to breathe sometimes. They asked me if I have been eating? I said I eat eggs. They asked me if I drink and I said yes, I drink wine. They asked me if I have been on impulsive spending sprees and manic episodes. I told them I impulsively bought an antique desk with my rent money. I watched as they typed that – bought an antique desk – and my heart sank as I felt some of the magic of The Desk shrink and slip away. They have put me on an eighteen-month waiting list and they said I have to return for more assessment. I have to take pills that I believe will numb me. Corks for my bottles of feelings. Dream plugs. I don’t want them. I don’t want to be a zombie and take these pills that might close the doorway to my visions. I won’t take pills that might make my dreams disappear and my thinking neat as shopping lists.
I had to fill in a form:
On a scale of one to ten are you depressed?
On a scale of one to ten are you restless?
On a scale of one to ten are you a danger to yourself or others?
And I had to play along and promise, No, I promise I am not a danger to myself and others. I smiled and nodded like I understood it is protocol and they have to ask you these things before they send you home. And I smiled and nodded. Yes. I am suggestible because now I don’t know if I am a danger to myself or not? I just kept nodding. I said that I fully intend to come back in eighteen months’ time. I smiled and nodded all through it. I smiled and nodded and smiled and nodded. But inside I was screaming. On a scale of one to ten are you silently screaming? Then they gave me a mental health pack with leaflets with helpline numbers on it for suicide prevention. I also have a copy of a letter from Doctor Delano with details of a place in Ireland where poets can go to write. She told me it is a writers’ sanctuary in a village called Cushendall in County Antrim. Doctor Delano has written this very kind letter of recommendation for me. It is worth a try, I suppose. I cross my fingers and hope that I can go there one day.
Outside and walking I go: left leg, right leg, one foot in front of the other.
On a scale of one to ten I feel exhausted. My legs are leaden, I ache all over. On a scale of one to ten I feel alone but mostly very relieved to be back outside and breathing real air and shivering. The sound of my own feet in my own boots on the icy snow. Crunch crunch crunch. The wind is icy, the pavement slippery. I pull on my black beanie hat which is stuffed in the pocket of my coat. I pull my hood up. Double protection. I look up to see white snowy plastic bags s
trewn in bare-branch trees under a grey shitty sky, and a one-legged pigeon picking at a discarded chicken burger by a frozen dog shit in a pissy bus stop – and it is familiar and it is London and I am glad of it.
I walk from Marylebone towards the bus stop near Baker Street station, dirty snow, city snow, black slush in the gutters. I have had such a weird heavy time lately. I think my hormones are out of control. I have been hypersensitive and hyperemotional. I have been having dark unwanted thoughts. I’m in an emotional washing machine. How do I navigate this? How do I stop this escalating? How do I cope? This session at the hospital felt like being fourteen again, puberty, riding a plane wreck through turbulence and the bad weather all my own self-sabotage and my own stupid fault. I kinda got sucked in by the doctors. I should have kept The Desk secret. I feel like I have grassed myself up and Mrs Death too. I was chewed up and spat back out by my own self.
I will be OK now, now I am free and on the outside. I like my own company best, I always did.
The only thing that scares me is this has reminded me that I do not get the same diagnosis every visit. I cannot get a straight answer from anyone about anything. All I know is this: I had a panic attack in my therapy session. I forgot to breathe. They made me stay in a bed and they gave me funny pills that made me have massive zombie sleeps, and now it is silent and lonely and I cannot find Mrs Death. I cannot hear her any more. The silence is deafening.
And isn’t this what they do? They make you think you are the mad one? I think the doctors are mad. I think dentists are mad. I think the butcher, the baker and the candle-stick-maker are all mad. I think people are all mad, the way people all over the world are getting up and going to work every day in a job they all hate; it is all mad. I think eating chlorinated chicken is mad. I think not kicking up a fuss is mad. I think walking past homeless people like that couldn’t be you one day is mad. I think the world is mad, mad, mad.
But what if this passion and fury and all this writing were always just the ramblings of an imbalanced mind? What if everything I ever wrote and created was just my mania talking? What is real and what are just feelings? And which are real feelings or just hormones or chemicals in your body? And pain and anguish, anxiety and grief, joy and jubilance, are these just imagined? And are you not really real and genuine in these emotions? And more pressing and to the point, what if Mrs Death isn’t real? And what if all this time I was not a passionate person at all, but these experiences and feelings and poems have been nothing but the rants of a mental health issue? Hey, there is nothing wrong with that, you say, but we all know there is a stigma attached to it.
What if I made Mrs Death up? Is Mrs Death real? Where are you when I need you, Mrs Death?
I jump on the bus heading eastbound. It is dead quiet and empty upstairs. I sit down and lean to let my forehead touch the glass and I watch the city from above. The window pane is cool. There is frost and snow on the dome of the roof of Madame Tussaud’s and I exhale slowly and empty my lungs and my breath fogs up the window and then I suddenly cry. And once they start, the tears won’t stop. Hot tears on my cold cheeks and the cool glass. There is a hurt and a pain in my chest. I feel broken. I don’t know what time or day it is. I don’t know where I am. I am guessing it is time for me to go mental in Doolally town. The doctor has arranged to send me for further evaluation. She thinks I’m developing bipolar. I looked it up and I found out that bipolar and hormone imbalance and PMT and menopause and being an empath and being a human who gives a flying shit all share similar symptoms – mood swings, hyper- sensitivity, restlessness, insomnia, extreme highs and extreme lows, suicidal thoughts, restlessness, catastrophising and crying alone on buses. The world is in chaos, the earth is in climate emergency. There has been another shooting, this time a racist white supremacist Islamophobe burst into a mosque all guns blazing. We should all be crying on buses. What is wrong with everyone? I am not catastrophising. This is a fucking catastrophe. That doctor thinks I might be bipolar and every time I think about that word bipolar I start crying again. Look at me, that’s me, Biracial, Bisexual, Bigender and Bipolar. That’s my labels and my boxes, that’s me, I’m the one you can see all alone crying upstairs on the bus. I am crying because I am afraid. I’m crying because this is probably the saddest and loneliest bus ride ever. I’m crying because maybe I am a bit mad. And maybe I am crying because you aren’t crying with me right now, because you just aren’t mad enough.
I close my eyes and listen. Nothing but the bus engine. Nothing but the wheels of the bus in the icy slush. Nothing but the city buzz. Nothing. Where is she? Where are you, Mrs Death? I cannot hear you any more. I am worried that the doctors dulled my senses and severed our connection. Sing to me. I am so alone without you. I no longer know of my life before you, before these real dreams. I long to sleep, and to stay asleep so that I am always with you. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know anything any more. If I try and die tonight, will Mrs Death be there? Will she come? If Mrs Death is there, I think I will be alright. If I try and sit with The Desk and die a little tonight, maybe she will come back and talk to me and remind me to live and save me? When we die, do we still think inside our heads? Can we talk to Mrs Death or does it go black and silent? Lights out. Close curtains. Shut down. Pennies on your eyes. A penny for your thoughts. And all is still. And will the approach of death be a numbness? Is death all feeling going? The feeling is going, the air is leaving us, emptying, we are like a deflating balloon. All lost into the wind and gone. Nothing but the flabby shell of who you once were remains. You are a fleshy carcass rotting away. Your bones, your teeth, all mulched into the earth. The soul departed. The heart stopped. The urgency over. No more rush. The silent song. No hunger. No noise. No rapture. Just gone. Lifeless. An empty bag of bone marrow and calcium and rotting proteins. We are nothing and nowhere.
Or do we sprout new shoots like potatoes? I hope so. I would very much like to be a potato. I would be a good potato. I like new potatoes and fresh mint. I like chips. I like mash. I like baked potatoes with beans. Yes. That sounds good. I would like to be pushed under the mud, to sprout new shoots and make new potatoes. New new potatoes.
Or will my soul soar? Will I fly and leave my body behind? Will I leave my body a bit like an overcoat, hang my flesh on a coat hook, kick off my bone skeleton shoes and watch my soul go, let go, and get up and dance with Mrs Death?
Or is it more like the curtain on a plane between economy and first class: they close the curtain for the journey, so you cannot see all the good stuff the posh folks can eat on the other side. On the other side of the curtain there are the dead souls in better seats with nicer meals and free drinks. The VIP red-rope barrier: if your name’s not down, you’re not coming in. The golden ticket to death. The vast divide. Those on the edge, separated by a curtain, the outside and the inside, the living and the dead. Is there ever a blurring of the lines? Is that what this is, am I half dead? Half alive? Am I both Martha and Marsha?
The bus stops at King’s Cross station and an old lady boards. She has bags and bags of empty plastic water bottles. Hundreds of plastic water bottles, enough to build a raft. She takes ages to climb the stairs of the bus, clumsy and heavy-footed, and she sits at the very front. I stare at the back of her matted dreadlocked hair and woolly hat. I can smell her – it is a bad smell of stale beer and drains and rain and urine. She wears many layers and many colours, threadbare and filthy, several coats and scarves. She has ripped plastic bags tied onto her feet. Slowly she turns to smile at me. I know her smile. I smile with relief. I know her, that broken soul and those sad and yellow eyes. She smiles and I see she has no teeth. It is she. She is here with me. She hums a tune.
Oh, where do we go when we die, Mrs Death? Where will I go when I die? Will you come and see me there? Will they lay me down in a box and bury me under the ground? Mrs Death is here with me again. I close my eyes to listen.
She closes her eyes and sings: Just let me lay down, where the dead lay, in the summer, in the mor
ning, let me lay down, where the dead lay, in the summer, in the morning.
Mrs Death, sing to me, sing.
Mrs Death: The Remembrance
Let me lay down where the dead lay
In the summer in the morning
Let me lay down where the stones are cool and grey
Let me lay down where the dead lay
In the summer in the mourning
Where the dead sleep may I lay my head
And what are they dreaming inside the cold earth
And what are they thinking we think of them now
Let me lay down where the dead lay
In the summer in the morning
Let me curl up in the graveyard to sleep
And what were they dreaming
And what were they hoping
And what were they wishing for us all today
And would they be proud of the messes we’re making
And would they still die for us now
Oh I’m so tired, so tired
Of fighting and wishing and
Hoping we’ll be something more
So let me lay down, let me lay down
Where the dead lay their head
Let me lay down, lay down
Let me lay down my troubled head
And would they be proud
Of the messes we’re making
And would they still fight and die for us now
Let me lay down where the dead lay
In the summer in the morning
In the mourning
Wolf: My Grandmother Rose Willeford
Wolf dreams a childhood memory
Wolf has an empty jam jar. Wolf looks up at Grandmother Rose and Wolf asks, What are the three most important things in life? Grandmother Rose is peeling potatoes at the time, standing at the sink. It is about to rain and the washing is on the line. Rose wonders if she should fetch it in or wait and chance it. The potatoes are muddy and old, the skins as thick as shoe tongues. It has been a long life for the potatoes, for the rain and for Grandmother Rose too. She sighs and feels tired, very tired of her curious grandchild’s questions, tired of the house, tired of her shape and the shape she must be to fit in this world. She is so tired. She is tired of the curve of her back and the curve of the earth.
Mrs Death Misses Death Page 11
