Aylan

I wrap his body

In the finest tabloid paper and

Tie quality strings

With tight little knots

What else can I do with

My celebrated son

But send him to your better world

Filled with food, shelter and toys

I whisper a last goodbye

As I place him on postal scale

Weighing him heavy against

The price of hope

But we both know

He’ll grow cold this Christmas

Under plastic needle trees

With their fake magic dreams

 

Flowering

-->

It was my older Sister

who inspired me

To say, fuck it

I’ll not wear a bra

Today. My mother never

Could have, for I

Was afraid

Of the way hers sway

My Great Aunts

Let their mouths stretch

As they laugh

About how lewdness is their

Art. Shaking their heads

Like cudded cows

With nothing better to do

Than fart.

But my Grandma

With her wiggle on the dance floor

A kid from

A street called

Rough. She was

The one who

Stirred me up

To really strut my stuff.

Riots in Reflection

Is our custodian of calm,

Time?

So elastic and plastic and thin.

Or is it purely a technique for keeping track

When we want something looking back?

Perhaps she’s a gentle nurse,

Tucking souvenir tickets into our pockets.

Tender times spent waiting with children,

Unwilling to urge them into any rat race

Or when I pulled you from beneath a truncheon

moments before it split open your girlish face

The day you wanted something from me but I gave you only words

Wasn’t it you who said it is time we grew up? With

Time a lighthouse blaring warnings of imminent rocky ruin.

Tumbling through hourglass figures to settle on the underside of our hips.

Scorching moist elastin into a salty dry skin that cannot be rubbed young.

Time never stretching languid again

nor preening in the heat wave of unlimited opportunity.

She’s truncating, cooling and separating,

Breaking us like flotsam floating away still.

My nemesis moving fast forward

Intent on her kill.

Queening

I bet the queen wishes

She was someone else

Entirely, a postie or a

Poet or even

A genuine retiree

So many things

She’ll never feel

Like what it’s like to be unknown

Or beaten up

Or sent back home

I wonder if she dreams

Of saying goodbye

To that waving work

Then just going down the boozer

And acting like a total jerk

But why do I seem to need

Celebrities and the VIP’d

Them up on pedestals

Me sucking my thumb

Waiting for mum?

All Love is Opportunity

I’m lost in this

thickening fog of Expectations

 fermenting beyond their prime

On who said what to who again

And when

As though if we can just

Uncover the blame thread

We can each hold up our own head

And cry righteous tears about our undead love

Still the only the thing we both know

Is what we can’t let go

Because once it was the only show

We wanted to watch

But now it is a stale rerun

Of knots that have been undone

Longer than either of us wanted to believe because

All love is opportunity

Even when the sheets are clean

Never to get dirty again

And all this linen we keep trying to wash

Is stained indelibly with us

But even so I fear

Our hearts will never be reopened

After all this vinegar soaking

 unless we stop provoking

All that we ever had will be tossed

Like leaves plucked off in summer

Never to let the tree recover

And if I don’t want to be lovers

It doesn’t mean

I don’t still

Love us

Hollow

Victory has a spineless sister

Whose skin she filleted

When their childish games turned sinister

Not content with slapping face or breaking bones

They blew their mother up

In a race to live without a home

Now Victory stalks the streets

Searching for clean sheets and pillows to weep on

But everyone is dead and gone.

tweet poem about world war two.

Pushing through earth to find, blood of mother’s sons feeding my veins. I cannot weep for I am but a flower, but I can blush.


I'm grateful for my prize book token with which I bought "the paying guests" by Sarah Waters
 Maj x