The Hat-Stand Union Page 5
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