The tunnel

In the tunnel,

are you still waiting for me there

Grandfather?

I cannot escape when

Half-walked beneath

the water wins

my wings are not made for water

you know it,

you couldn't have held it off for me?

you, behind the grey-green waterfall

'you or someone else sweetheart' you say

it's true

'it would have happened'

I missed you, and I've been waiting

who spoke? you or I

Poem 6

Run fast, and tripping through sweet sludge

Digging a deep sandy hole to cower in

Burying  feathers, plucking my chicken-body naked

Ignoring the hatchett, whole and gleaming in the moonlight

I cannot force it down, no matter how the gulps push

Contraction rips it open, pouring out that red 

dark liquid it needs drinking dear and 

May as well while 

Attending to nothing

Waiting for it to hit

Steam, roll and burn

Parisian Cat Haiku

Tortoiseshell squeeze in
Little cat don't jump unless
It is true you fly

The Sea

The deep green sea waves to us as we pull up

Get out of the car and overlook it

Helllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

We call!

Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Mr Sea! We came out here to see what we could see and we see you! Can you see us?

He doesn't speak back but I know from his crash and bang that he's looking up

You always say that I'm still a child

You're the one talking to the sea! I say

I know that I'm the only one telepathising to the sea

Apart from that little girl next to us

I smile at her in a motherly way

She looks scared. I smile again. She wavers.

I sigh, looking down over the cliffs,

No. I am not going to jump.

Even did I, odds are pretty even that I'd end up on the back of an elephant

Standing on a tortoise, standing on a porpoise, standing on the ocean

Standing in the sea.

I don't feel much like standing in the sea today, I tell you.

I want to dive in, for the first time, and have the salt sting our eyes.

You look acrossly to me, and I, knowing that you'll say something rude,

act the fool.

There's a bucket, and a big blazing blue spade.

I dig a hole in the sand for you, drop you in and watch, like Alice,

as you whirl into a tiny point on my horizon

A ship comes in, breaks the line and you're gone.

I sigh, not for the second time.

You're nothing but a drop in my ocean.

You tap me on the shoulder with your spade.

My castle is ready, I lift off the lid, I am, if a little sticky, pretty smooth.

Bonting, the special round smooth stone for whom I knitted that little jumper

Crawls out of his nest and crowns me.

Together, we will rule this rockpool.

Poem 3 - That Day When None of Us Could Speak

That day when none of us could speak

Do they remember? Do you remember? Do I remember?

I say nothing, even if I see the day.

You spoke first, putting a fist and a cork and a toaster for good measure inside my throat.

You were the last of us who dared say a word.

Watching your only child suffocate, and to add

Insult to injury

Measure the shocks of your volts climbing up and out of her chest

Taking their rest upon the sofa where she should have lain

Holding you in comfort, and instead she ran

You saw something, but you couldn't sing after her

Muted, suddenly, by her pain

And now her song has stopped, cut, suffocated and strangulated. Smothered and covered and drowned and dowsed in verbose thick treacle which will not come out even if you 

stab her neck, gauge stab in that cold hard glass tube and and and with hope wa-watch it flow

nothing fl

nothing flo

w

s

Though not for ever, a drop is left.

A faint echo of the thing she was emerging from you worms up from the ground beneath us, and we watch silently (what else can we do?)

Carried by you along this roughest of paths this thing grows

You brought it here, and you will save her with it

Not once but several times

Driving her forward because you know that she must

'I will be your strength'

crying helpfully opening nothing to the gorge of your neck

This is all you are allowed to show

You can speak this, a word of reassurance because it needs no word

You speak nothing.

She will not believe you,

But please

believe us

She will not die on your watch.

Poem 2

The written air of a grey-blue sky,

sinking out from the ground and into my mouth

Stopping my heart as it yellows and dies,

Open to the breeze now

A gash red, harsh, clotted cut of strawberries and cream

Maggots which crawl onto a body

Is that a memory of you?

They told me nothing, cannot tell how you came to be this way; forgive me. I have not yet absolved your sin.

Invent a darkness for less black, less bleak, less pain.

You are the hue of rain, no colour, no sound, no breath, no scent, none needed, no call to you

You fall, lay out flat, clean, and cold. Now you are The Fallen. 

Poem 1

trip-toe on steady

paths, an echo you 
answer and failing the voice who drips
ebbs and slows 
stunted

fall, as a call rises
thin, too, high 

you
I hear you 
but I do not look down