The Hat-Stand Union Read online

  In the morning, flower women

  washed our feet in tin bowls.

  The captain looked so happy

  he wanted to be married

  ’neath an awning wrought of silver

  like the colour of his sword.

  ‘You are…’ he said, ‘You are…

  rest your foot upon my heart.’

  ‘I am what?’ I challenged him,

  ‘A liar, a waste of space?

  Are you calling me a whore?

  Are you calling me a rat?’

  ‘You are…!’ he moaned in panic,

  squeezing love juice from his eyes

  as the girls waved sprigs of magic

  that honeyed on the tongue,

  the native men crooned quick-time

  but the lie had met the light:

  the goat, the coins, the beggar prince,

  this captain and these fertile dreams…

  Where was my favourite wooden stool?

  My smallness and my plan?

  So I declined my promised land,

  I flipped my God one last ‘You are…’

  I took my seat at the bar.

  Say When

  I’m not a fan of red wine

  but I’d drink anything with you.

  A pint of bleach. Perhaps

  I’d spit the red wine out

  into a plant-pot? I can’t drink

  anything with you. Nothing.

  A truthful drunk face will tempt

  a guilty tender kiss. I build this

  on nothing with you: everything

  depends on wine. I won’t kiss

  anything on your truthful face,

  a pint of lies, just do nothing.

  You like red wine or white wine,

  anything. I am something to you.

  I am not nothing, but

  Kissing

  Like two teardrops racing down opposite faces

  of the same hypocrite, their separate fabrications

  form a single pool of clothes.

  They are kissing to share the blame.

  They are kissing to confuse their dental records.

  If not tomorrow,

  one of them must wake to be the one

  unpicking from the plan, sliding out

  from the tower of anniversary cards

  onto the flat road. They are kissing to delay

  the string of paper dolls asking to be real boys

  and real girls. They are sucking the sting

  from the lips that someday

  will blurt

  and, like surfacing from a cinema in mid-afternoon,

  will meet the daylight scandalised.

  What Shall We Do With Your Subconscious?

  I’m tired of watching the riots and knowing

  which young boys will be bodies by sundown.

  I saw the bomb growing in the womb. I saw

  you run and run and run while you kissed me.

  I’m tired of playing cards with money that’s

  already gone and the drugs kicking in during

  an exam I’m bound to pass and not just pass

  but take charge of. I was and am a golden girl

  in the past tense of the present tense, the drink

  will lose your mind and there’s no such thing

  as a pre-emptive strike: can’t you see the ash

  falling on your yellow omelettes? It’s a kind

  of gift, they say, but callings are supposed to

  call you somewhere. I’m tired of schoolyards

  chequered with pre-pubescent bankers who’ll

  attempt to hang themselves once. This plane

  has many dangling oxygen masks like a tree,

  like a crashing tree. Do you understand me?

  I saw prostitutes in wheelchairs by the pool

  but this city won’t burn, it will refuse to burn

  for the sake of occasional happiness. Blimps.

  Pistachios. Holding hands. I cannot foresee

  you holding my hand yet I hear the evening

  cockerel and I’m tired of the singing graves.

  Limerence

  n. Psychol. the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically involuntary, and characterised by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.

  Our criminal career was little more than

  a series of movements.

  Medicine

  My head says soon

  My heart says, when?

  My head says one

  My heart says ten

  My head says skin

  My heart says soul

  My head says stuffed

  My heart says whole

  My head says willing

  My heart says slave

  My head says risky

  My heart says brave

  My head says breathe

  My heart says snort

  My head says saved

  My heart says caught

  My head says mend

  My heart says lie

  My head says policy

  My heart says spy

  My head says addict

  My heart says, who?

  My head says cynical

  My heart says true

  My head says fed

  My heart says fat

  My head says insecure

  My heart says prat

  My head says episode

  My heart says life

  My head says lover

  My heart says wife

  My head says children

  My heart says, how?

  My head says ambulance

  My heart says now

  My head says telephone

  My heart says please

  My head says hands

  My heart says knees

  My head says miracle

  My heart says, when?

  My head says snort

  My heart says ten

  My head says telephone

  My heart says spy

  My head says caught

  My heart says lie

  My head says stuffed

  My heart says fat

  My head says risky

  My heart says prat

  My head says ambulance

  My heart says please

  My head says policy

  My heart says knees

  My head says breathe

  My heart says brave

  My head says cynical

  My heart says slave

  My head says addict

  My heart says soul

  My head says soon

  My heart says whole

  My head says lover

  My heart says true

  My head says insecure

  My heart says, who?

  My head says children

  My heart says wife

  My head says miracle

  My heart says life

  My head says mend

  My heart says, how?

  My head says willing

  My heart says now

  Izzy

  Everybody in the village was weaving baskets

  for the annual basket fair.

  Izzy was sitting on a bale of hay looking at her basket.

  There was an old woman weaving next to her

  with a shawl over her hair and oversized

  wooden clogs on.

  This old woman was absorbed in her basket-weaving.

  Izzy looked at the basket she’d just finished,

  then at the woman, then at the sun,

  then around the square at the villagers – young and old,

  in their clogs, lost in their basket-weaving – then

  back at her own basket.

  She picked it up and set it on her knee.

  Conqueror

  Do you remember, darling, the time

  when no one said ‘No’? But they did,

  you know, in private as you stole


  the show in another town, they said

  ‘No’ to themselves, they abandoned you

  repeatedly in the long halls, they said

  ‘No’ to their well-being, they found a way

  to hide their ‘No’s’ behind great smiles

  because they loved you, but love,

  you know, is not the same as ‘Yes’. Yes,

  they let you win because your need

  to win was vast. They felt your flag

  in their heads and the blood making

  pictures but their eyes weren’t shut,

  you know, and their eyes, their loving

  eyes were saying ‘No’.

  Atheism

  I got down on my knees this afternoon –

  I’d banged my right knee on the bed frame

  the night before so my bruise twanged

  slightly against the floorboards.

  I entwined my fingers

  like people do in church and I closed

  my eyes. I said, ‘Hey’ and I said, ‘Please’,

  and I suggested a deal.

  I said, ‘I’m not trying to mess with you,

  I’m just asking

  because this is all I want.

  Give me this and I will

  believe in you. I will chuck my bottles

  in the bin. I will help the needy.

  I will live a healthy life in the grip of truth.

  Just let it happen tonight. Let me do

  nothing and let it happen to me, because

  I’m beyond the point where I can

  make a single move. Thanks a lot. Please.’

  Then I said, ‘Please’ a few more times,

  then I stood up and went

  to brush my teeth before I left the house.

  I’m Sorry This Poem Is So Painful

  I was treated for fairy-godmother dependency.

  I arrived with a crate of leaving presents:

  a cling-film sculpture of fog from Mother Urge,

  a permanent-marker of smoke from Mother Longing,

  a murmur in a Tupperware box from Mother Promise,

  and five skinned prawns from Mother Hope

  (in case I got peckish for a bite of almost nothing).

  The first thing my healers did

  was confiscate my hamper.

  ***

  They sat me with a group of human protégées.

  Their skulls like mine bore fluorescent scars

  from the tap-tap-tap of magic wands.

  Mother Numb made the best aspartame cheesecake.

  Carcinogenic, it tasted like heaven.

  ‘Is there Sweet’n Low for my coffee?’ I asked,

  ‘I just need a pinch of Sweet’n Low.’

  ‘We came into these rooms,

  broken by desire…’ said the speaker,

  pale behind a black lectern.

  His facial skin was slack

  with protruding beige teeth-marks, like his brain

  had grown a mouth and started chewing its way out.

  ‘Can I please have some fucking sweetener for my shit coffee?’

  I asked again.

  They spoke of hands briefly leafing through their hair,

  a kiss on the cheek that might have been the wind,

  ‘These are our honeyed moments,’ they said,

  ‘and they are not enough to live on.

  They are not enough to keep us sane.’

  The Stock Exchange

  You can have my body, that’s the least of my worries.

  I gave my body to the awful and the sanitary

  in the hope I might get something for my mind.

  Just a peanut.

  She offers her mind, that’s the least pressing concern.

  She gives her mind to the intellectual rugby club

  in the hope she might get something for her body.

  Just a thumbprint.

  He chucks out his safekeeping, that’s the least of his talents.

  He gives his safekeeping to a city of hollow trees

  in the hope he might get something for his gut.

  Just a bead of sweat.

  I gave my love, that’s the least empty of my reserves.

  I gave my love to the pretty and unhealthily pink

  in the hope I might get something for my heart.

  Just a companionable moment to myself.

  The Last House

  At the last house on the block, we smoke religiously.

  We Google who we were in previous lives.

  I was born in ‘the territory of modern North Canada’.

  You were a shoemaker in AD 375.

  At the last house on the block, we talk of romance.

  The loves outside these walls had misty breath.

  We are demistified and now our breath is lonely.

  No one ever saw the pain we couldn’t feel.

  At the last house on the block, we snack on pretzels.

  Our nonsense is the source of much debate.

  We sit in groups and rave about the boredom.

  I’d a sweetheart once who swore by the human will.

  I have a kindness hidden in my gym sock.

  It’s all I have to barter with your feats.

  The intellectuals and whizz-kids back in London

  think I’m frozen in amber like a fly.

  But I have snared a person in my future,

  a person who knows the secret knock

  and the password which is just a cough or splutter

  outside the doorway of the last house on the block.

  At the last house on the block, we all have kindness

  unused, in perfect nick, hung round our necks.

  This kindness is our key back to the garden.

  When our noses finish bleeding, we’ll head back

  with a message from the molehills: ‘she was wrong

  and he was wrong and I was wrong’, and death

  will be poured in moderation and my good side

  and your good side will join with slight abandon.

  The Fun Palace

  (Commissioned for the Olympic Park, London)

  One

  It is a love story. Joan and her theatre workshop.

  They found a crumbling slum in E15. They slept

  illegally in the eaves like ghosts. She created

  Oh, What a Lovely War. She shovelled rubble

  from Angel Lane. She said, ‘Let the waters close over me.’

  She was an outsider. She grafted. She changed the world.

  Two

  It is a love story. Joan and her theatre workshop.

  They rehearsed in a graveyard while bombs were falling.

  She loved a ripper. A ripper is a miner who breaks new tunnels

  out of stone. He almost got a lion cub into Ormesby Hall.

  Gerry stood in front of bulldozers to save the Theatre Royal.

  She tore up scripts. She guffawed. She changed the world.

  Three

  It is a love story. Joan and her theatre workshop.

  She directed Macbeth at school. She plunged

  the fake sword into the hidden butcher’s meat,

  the Mother Superior fainted. Joan wanted a university

  of the streets. No cup and saucer hats. She chain-smoked.

  She said, ‘To hell with them.’ She changed the world.

  Four

  It is a love story. Joan Littlewood and her theatre.

  She was blacklisted from Broadcasting House.

  She knew that two tons of coal equalled more

  than two ounces of cheese. The Fun Palace was never built

  on the banks of the River Lea. She almost cracked it.

  She kicked the bucket. She changed the world.

  Marriage of Equals

  You hated the theatre and I hated the museums.

  I didn’t notice the butterflies.

  You didn’t notice the homeless.

  I felt oppressed by Auden’s old boy
study castles.

  You planted sapling projects in grey rockeries.

  I got obsessed with poignant lines of graffiti.

  You understood Oyster cards and booking in advance.

  I had to wrench my head back from cauldrons of wine.

  You had one beer in contentment.

  My friends were idealists who started off yodelling.

  Your friends were realists who started off hissing.

  Your world was steadily increasing.

  My government didn’t exist.

  You felt the bank balance of the nation in the tips of your fingers.

  I bought rare, coffee-spoilt poetry books with crippled spines

  from extortionate magpies in Iowa.

  You saw the good in Thatcher.

  I watched Ken Loach films in a dark room warmed