Dead on the Table

Dead on the table

(or it hurts when you’re rumbled in workshop)

(this poem goes with a blog post here)

Standing staring,

faces down around the thing

distorted washed-up

jellyfish insides of a head

mostly dead

but still able to sting.

Prodding

with their sticks

flipping withering edges

but saying little

‘is it us?’ they ask

‘no, but it could be.’

Contempt and loathing

floats in the room

trailing its tentacles.

A prowler enumerates

sharking over ‘what I like’

to frenzied feed.

The next breaker

deposits loaded foam

This organism needs structure,

imagery and invention and

raises issues, ‘is a creature a fish

just because we say it is?’

Eyes stung with brine

ears ringing

at the sound of the sullen sea-cage

clanging

into position.

Muting response.

Well

my jelly ideas –

you won’t get me my

degree. I can see you -

crouching listening

So

here’s the deal you see:

You have to start

to work and craft

something that will thrill

Or

I’ll tie you up in stout

twine. Tote you to the shore

line. Swing you round my

head a time and throw

you in the sea.

Back with all the other bottom feeders

Where you can’t come taunting me.

Another Human Being (pantoum)

(This poem goes with a blog post here)

How would it feel

if you saw another kind of human?

maybe a Neanderthal when

you were out walking or


if you saw another kind of person,

hunting or whatever it is

you were both out walking for -

that proper humans do


hunting or whatever it is you’d do

Would it be like when,

as proper humans do,

you were an artless child and you saw


would it be like then

when an Indian doctor looked after you

you were only a child when you saw

for the first time, or did it feel


Like an Indian doctor

seeing a gorilla with knowing eyes

for the first time, or did he see

a gentle orang-utan


seeing a Gorilla with knowing eyes

at the zoo and did he think,

that gentle orang-utan: ‘is he

wondering what I’m thinking too?’


At the zoo. And thinking: ‘Is he,

that mild Neanderthal man, or whoever

wondering what I’m thinking too?’

How would that feel?

What I've Learnt

I've only recently had it pointed out to me that, of course it was in the last place you looked, it'll always be in the last place you looked. Why would you carry on looking after you've found it?

20+ Things

1. My favourite book is the Rachel Papers by Martin Amis and I know he hasn’t got any of his own teeth; but I still would.
2. I don’t like to see Neanderthals depicted as shambling, slack-jawed scarecrows because they wouldn’t have survived an afternoon in ice-age Europe if they didn’t breath through their enormous (air warming) noses and groom nicely so they weren’t riddled with parasites – like all primates for sod's sake.
3. I used to be a nurse.
4. I married myself in male cast; except his goodatmathematics gene expresses as fondofshopping in me. We hardly ever fight, not because we never disagree, but because we’re both too emotionally stunted to mention what’s bothering us.
5. I can do a headstand.
6. I once slept in a tent in Africa for four weeks.
7. I’m very fond of mass extinctions; especially the Permian-Triassic event.
8. I always feel intimidated in libraries. And hospitals. And most shops. I never know where the proper standing-place is.
9. I studied human evolution and I see most stuff on a geological timescale and in evolutionary terms. Consequently I can’t take anything properly seriously; or maybe that’s because I’m an emotional dwarf too.
10. I could die of jealousy because my friend has a publishing deal. http://www.jennashworth.blogspot.com . She’s a staggeringly brilliant prizewinner and witty author and she’s written a novel; I’m not and I haven’t. Doesn’t stop me being envious; I do try to bask in her reflected glory though.
11. I wish I’d dieted earlier, I was a homely teenager and I’m sure I’d have been a lot more confident if I’d been thinner.
12. I am doing a creative writing MA.
13. I think to be kind is the most important thing; but I’m frequently mean.
14. All my five children are all funnier and cleverer than me. I'm pleased and proud but a bit jealous of them too.
15. We compete at looking for the grave-stone of the youngest person in churchyards, that's right - dead babies.
16. My favourite rock is Shap Granite, but the Whin Sill is a bit good.
17. I’m crippled by superstition. I know it’s loony nonsense; but just to keep me safe, I talk to Magpies, don’t put new shoes on the table and would never get married in May.
18. I...... Oh no, I can’t tell you that one.
19. I’m irritated when people say, ‘these days’ as if it were self-evident that everything has degenerated. Statements like ‘we all know what young people are like these days.’ It make me mad because it’s said as if the person speaking isn’t responsible for their own moment in time; as if they can somehow take credit for the past but not the society they occupy now. And because what they're saying is often untrue anyway. I wouldn't willingly spend two minutes in the company of someone who says, ‘these days’, (Jackson Browne is exempt; he can sing whatever clichés he likes).
20. I was about 27 before I was able to read. And I’m still a bit crap at it.
21. Films of real babies being born always make me cry.
22. A was a Greenham Common person; only for a day and I went on a coach. The military police gave me a hard stare though, as they took up the planks that had been put across a boggy bit for us to circle the perimeter fence.
23. I like the taste of black pudding.
24. Haven't bought Nestlé’s stuff for 30 years.
25. Can’t think of anything else.
    
    
    

Long line of times

Slide of scan over a belly’s domes and angles.
She speaks:
‘There’s no activity’.
But there’s a chance?
Comes out as: ‘Oh, thank you.
For telling me.’

Into the corridor
time to pass it on
First of a long line of times
Oh my God. What have I done?
Comes out like: ‘can’t detect a heartbeat.’

Another’s grief shuddering
against a useless chest
Still and quiet and still and it will go away
Comes out like nothing
Nothing else to say.

‘It’s a question of indemnity; you must ride in the chair.’
I chose to walk somewhere like this
one last time.
Comes out like, mute intent.
Then insolent acquiescence,
gliding, hands in lap
staring on the windows
to the hospital roof below -
bulbous structures, like cartoon saucers,
what good do they do?

Afterwards in the monitor blue lit room
place of origin and end.
The defiant compassion of a midwife
giving morphine for pain in a body already numb
Comes out like oblivion
before what remains of the long line of times.

girl like I was, playing at a nurse:
‘Sister likes you to sit out of bed for your breakfast.’
Fuck Sister, do you know what I did yesterday?
Comes out like: ‘sorry, ok.’

The long line of times
All the pieces of life
All the people who see
and the Polish man with the dog
and the girl on the Booths’ till
and the garage bloke’s wife
and the chemist – I was there, it was me
in the blue lit room, there at the hecatomb
it was me.
Comes out like: lost, still, too soon, not meant to be.

Payback time in that long, long line
The acquaintance, hardly ever seen
Quick, animate, untroubled, eugenic, well bred:
‘Hello, where’s the little one, what did you get?’
‘A little girl. She came out dead.’