black would thickly flow
from brush to paper,
from gaping mouth
to angry wound
on twisted limb .
and yellow melancholy
grows cavernous as
lunate tendons present.
like broken-birds
their hollow tubes in evening sky
force weightlessness .
the blue underneath
(contained)
in wires of life,
invites imagination.
it begs to break out pumping
arcs of red and Pollock
splashes across the wall.
or better still,
a dark unfurling ,
more beautiful in slow motion ;
the blooming in water
of pretty flowers .
feed me
-
This is how it is ,
walking through the woods,
a summer daydappled makes me hungry
for you .
I want your words, the ones you use
for me,
to lick me on the forest floor,
split beech nut shells
marking my back, arched
fingertips sinking into moss.
Watch my lips
as they eat the words
straight from your mouth,
raw and wet.
I went to a dinner party
which didn’t quite fit me,
I couldn’t eat the edginess
or the cynicism,
it gave me heart burn.
And when the pudding came
of clever words debating
formative years,
I found myself drifting off
with custard thoughts
and sticky fingers.
When I was very small I thought if I closed my eyes , if I covered my face , I would be invisible.
I remember the bliss darkness afforded me. Under covers , undercover. Perhaps things aren’t so different now.
Unseen. Unwatched.
But more than that. It was an escape from the outside and a retreat into something I felt I had some control over. I could shape stories in my head, twist meaning with words to suit myself. Essentially and alone , I could create my own world. The seen world, the one full blown, thrusting and rolling before my open eyes left me raw and vulnerable. In small things I sank my heart , I was easily bruised.
The journey to school held horrors and marvels. It took me down a dark country lane, flanked on one side by a high wet wall . I wondered about climbing its height and touching the black arched top-stones. I imagined the other side as a lighter, pale-green unshadowed place. With knees pressed to the roadside and my back to the wall, the tarmac made patterns on my skin. My lips tasted of sweet sharp apples as I ran my tongue-tip in concentration . I picked up frail washed out blue eggs shells. Ten year old fingers with small perfectly bitten nails, gently holding half shells, so light you wouldn’t know they were in your palm unless you looked. Some days I felt like a witness to an atrocious crime. Days when the path seemed littered with tiny baby birds. Their naked , unfeathered bodies laid out with stretched and twisted necks. Thrown from nests, pale translucent skin covered heads too big with shut swollen eyes and beaks still soft. Those fallen birds took something from me. They were cold and broken and dead and yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
I picked them tenderly, placing their limp bodies on curlicues of bracken . The bigger boys would laugh as they tramped past with their scabby knees and trailing laces. Adam Jacks was the strongest of them all. I lowered my eyes as he passed, I was intimidated by his dark brown gaze and the way the other children listened to his words. One morning, he stood before me , the wall at my back as I knelt to stare inside the shadows . I looked up and saw the light brown downy hairs on his legs. The A shape they made framed the road and the fields beyond. He smelt of school, of damp earth and snapped branches. For a moment, with my eyes half shut I thought I felt the heat from his body. Inside those closed eyes, I wasn’t scared, I was enthralled. But suddenly, cruelly, he brought his foot down. There was no real sound , but I heard the splinter and crush of tiny bones, I felt the membrane of skin , pulled ragged against rough tarmac, and his laughter flooded my ears. When he turned to go, his foot gave a final pirouette and my insides twisted. There was no bird form left, just a contorted broken shape; spread like chewing gum, smeared like butter, its tiny entrails, red to the world , like cotton threads.
That night, when I closed my eyes everything had changed.
Instead of words , instead of walking invisible and thoughts of stories , all I could see was a broken , fallen bird.
For the first time, I had to open my eyes to escape.
