Express, and in that expression be Jess

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Undress, Jess
An act of access rather than of tenderness. Less than nakedness, unpeeling nonetheless

Caress, Jess
That was the good part, I guess. Sweetness, darkness, love and all the rest

Transgress, Jess
Photograph my breast, carelessness, press against properness

Obsess, Jess
Fester, mistress heart, the hurt that it begets

Profess, Jess
Love, love, passionate excess. You had my heart and all its recklessness

Possess, Jess
In greediness, I tried to eat your soul and scorched my belly on your cautered consciousness 

Confess, Jess
Yes, yes. Bear witness It was me, I acquiesce  

Distress, Jess
We wept. Weakness, sickness, pain, unworthiness

A Mess, Jess
Consequences manifest. Obliqueness reset.  Destiny met.

Regress, Jess
Childlike, I requested fairness, begged without success

Assess, Jess
Shattered shards swept up, balances redressed

Suppress, Jess
Want repressed. The wilderness compressed. Wildness turned to virtuousness.

Finesse, Jess
Stress your blessings. Do not dare digress. It was a test, its lesson humbleness

Progress, Jess
Let out that breath, sever, exit, find an end to endlessness. Egress.

The Last One

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We were made of words
And they were beautiful
Beautiful like nothing else
Beautiful like nothing
They were nothing.
The worlds in words
So famously explored by readers
Since way back before
Way back before
Even Gutenberg
They are all gone.
And only this remains
A solid world
Of fleshy concerns
Of kitchens and courtesy
Of polite endeavour
Of impolite unravelling
Of politic rebuilding
Of poetry unfulfilled
Love rebranded
People slandered
Stains upon us
Light far from us
This is the real thing
The painful truth and cold reality
Of how we’ve lived
Of how we’ve paid
Someone always pays in the end
Usually people like us, you say
Even when we can’t afford it.

I wrote a birthday poem for you once
And here’s another.
You are much older
Than you were before
Peter Pan no more
You have grown up
And life is full of sharp things
Now
Of hooks and crocodiles
Sad eyes, painful smiles
Denials
Vile imaginings
Reconciling
Compromising
Protestant morality
Play-acting normality
An eye on your mortality
A notion of finality
Is all I have to offer
This is the
Last one
My birthday gift to you
Is nothing evermore
Forever nothing
Just like our words before

NB. This is a ghost of Birthdays Past. I’m publishing it now on this totally unconnected date because… well, the usual oversharing…

Suitors take note

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I wonder if my next lover
Will be a prudent sort
Someone with a pension
Someone who overpays his mortgage
Someone who has a financial advisor
Someone with savings
Someone who can explain to you the particular benefits of his savings account
Someone who would always take care to end a relationship before looking for another
Someone who take his risks on French ski slopes
Rather than behind his sofa when the bailiffs come knocking
Or behind his wife’s back when he requires…knocking  of a different sort.
Someone who diligently researches his major purchases
Searches his own conscience when pursuing a woman
Can I afford this?
He’d always ask.
He’d understand
Cost and consequence

He’d be so dutiful with my heart
That I wouldn’t care that he hated my poetry
And thought my tattoos regrettable
I wouldn’t care that I’d have to perfect my golf clap
Or feign an interest in Formula One
I wouldn’t care that he’d paternalistically
Check the batteries in my smoke alarms
When he came round for dinner
I would revel in the safety of him
The round edges of him
Solidity, Stability
He’d laugh at me
He’d call me a
Wild, reckless creature
And I’d allow him that fantasy
Disguise my intense awareness of the
Obligations I hold
That although I dance with abandon
I am not so free with my responsibilities

He might think me totally incapable
And dolly me around a little
Explain the News to me
Read things aloud from the paper
And tell me what to think of them
But at least he’d just take over
Take over this endless list of troubles
I’d fucking bake cupcakes for that
I’d run the hoover round
Get the duster out
I’d wear an apron
I’d probably even have a couple of aprons
Seriously
I begin to understand why so many
Women harbour nostalgia
For vintage, pastel oppression
It’s tough to have it all
When you’re the one with
All the bills
All the childcare arrangements
All the travel
All the meetings
All the decisions
I’m a single working mother
The scourge of the Tory party
And although on better days
I might assess my life
With a kinder eye
Today the savoury-metallic taste of
An untreated chest infection
Lends me a despair that only
A hero in neatly ironed jeans
Can save me from

Not a poem, but about why I like writing poems

For a while now I’ve mostly written poetry. There’s just too much to say, and too much I can’t say, to rely on longer sentences. I need the gap that poetry provides. Poems are always mysteries. Fragments and pieces to poke and rearrange. Every word a clue, to be give its due. Poems do not necessitate straight answers. I like that. There are so few straight answers anyway, we may as well teach ‘em to shimmy. So many people seem to enjoy the conceit of being a plain talker. But really it’s relatively easy to call a spade a spade when you’re talking about a fucking spade. Harder to articulate the complex emotional morass surrounding a messy-ending marriage and a haunted womb, I think.

I try to be truthful, but never to be plain. I’m never going to say: “this heartbroken poem is about my husband” or “this heartbroken poem is NOT about my husband because I am a trollop” or “this angry poem is about SOMEONE taking the potato peeler to their new flat when we had only agreed on them having the fancy knives and casserole dishes.”  (I have written poems about all of those things, of course, the potato peeler one was an absolute scorcher.) But then to tell it plainly wouldn’t be accurate either because there is no shining, definitive version of events anyway. I could say it in simpler words perhaps but I think that would be less exciting somehow. Plain is unadorned, but the truth is naked.

The Account

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Iris died and I was sad.

Sad is too small a word
For the whole world
Going away
And coming back again
Slightly rearranged
Like the sofa
Had moved
A fraction
And I kept
Banging my shins
Until I learned
To walk around it.

I was sad and yet
My ability to
Navigate
The furniture
Was praised
And my limbs
Were deemed
More beautiful
For the bruises.

But then I kicked
The chairs over
Upended the tables
Pulled down the curtains
Smashed the picture frames
And stumbled around
My broken possessions
Feet full of splinters
Hands full of glass
Crying salt into my wounds
Then scratching hard
At the itchy healing of them.

This was not so admired.

When there is no blame,
Grace is easier to come by
Than when you must
Hold yourself to account
For the scars you bear.

To find yourself
Lovely again
Does not come quickly
And neither should it.

When shame and longing
Adorn your house
You cannot happily
Find room for other ornament.

My children are giants

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My children are giants
Looming large
Taunting me with
Uneaten chicken
Underfoot toys
Unexamined statements
About which things are for
Girls and which are for
Boys
They stomp
They growl
They meow
They tell me I don’t love them
But really they just don’t love the frozen peas
I reheated
They scream
That they need TV
And declare that
A show about mermaids
Is the only thing
That gives them good dreams
And now
I am their
Nightmare.
They make me write a list
To share
On the internet
About my shortcomings
As a mother
It includes
Breaking their hearts.
They’re sweet to me
And stroke my hair
And kiss me
Sloppily
And moments later
Punch me on the tit
Or say shit
In front of Churchgoers.

And then
The cruellest trick
Of all
They sleep
And I sneak in to
Smell their necks
And weep
At their beautiful
Faces hands bellies feet
And wish that
I could keep them
Forever as they are
Tyrants that they are
Miscreants that they are
Sneaky, little wretches that they are
They are so glorious
That my only recourse
Is to love them
With a fierce, guttural heat
Red meat love
Mother’s teat love
Complete
My tiny giants
Safe in flannel sheets.

A poem that rhymes and scans. Which is an indication of my dire psychological state.

See saw
Marjorie Daw
My children are screeching
There’s crap on the floor (and I mean that literally. Fucking cats)
It’s way past their bedtime
They should be asleep
I’m downstairs hiding
While upstairs they shriek
(Honestly, I’m just hoping they don’t audibly break shit or do something that requires intervention because – I mean, fuck it – I’m struggling keep a rhyme scheme together right now)
I yelled at them earlier
While combing their hair
They wouldn’t keep still
Now there’s lice everywhere.
(Nits are pernicious little cunts, aren’t they?)

My husband’s moved out
All his boxes are gone
And though it’s my doing
I’m feeling forlorn.
(And eating seven slices of pizza – Caspian’s for all you Brummies out there – did not help AT ALL. I am so thirsty now. I actually have a dehydration headache.)
The clever books went
To his shiny, new flat
If you look at my bookshelves
You’ll think I’m a twat
(who only reads Agatha Christie or things that came free with a magazine or books recommended by TV personalities… or y’know stuff from the English literary renaissance but that doesn’t count, I did my Masters over a decade ago. Also, for those given to pedantry: I’m ENGLISH, flat and twat RHYME in England, motherfuckers)

The things that are left
All seem terribly drab
So I’m reading old love letters
Picking that scab.
(We were so young, so innocent, so fond of daytime drinking…)
This morning I sobbed
At my friend on the phone
I made him feel guilty
That I’m all alone
(And likely to die that way if I continue to alienate people who try to help me. Also, I’m eating A LOT of junk food. No one will ever want to fuck me ever again with this jiggly, bumpy belly. I’m vile.)

And the worst thing of all
The cherry on top
Is this execrable poem
Which now I shall stop
(lucky for you; that’s two minutes of your life you’ll never get back – suckers. HAHAHAHAHA pew pew. Those were gun shot noises. Yeah, I don’t know why I’ve included them here, particularly because I have never even held a gun IN MY LIFE, but let them remain. They make this whole thing just a tiny bit more more awful and embarrassing. Let no one accuse me of lacking commitment. Go big or go home. And other sayings of that ilk.)