My secrets soft and hid.

Red headed and vibrant
wrists as delicate as glass
the nape of her neck a tideline

Flicking back through the pages
the italics hidden in plain sight
it is no revelation
But at the time
that girl took me by surprise

Draped in men's clothing
her lips were petals
the slip of her body a pale ribbon
A long-limbed confusion

She was a complete stranger to me

An element of.

That boy took me by surprise.
Curdled cream gets washed away
and he's a complete stranger to me.
But by his question he says he
doesn't just look, but sees.
I'm elbow-high in suds, wide eyed.
And he took me by surprise.

That boy took me by surprise.
He stopped what I was going to say
and he's just that one move ahead.
He pulls me out from under the bed,
see the path I've lead.
I'm under a lit match, wide eyed.
And he took me by surprise.

That boy took me by surprise.
I'm dressed in black today
and he's noone I'll ever know.
But he's pulling me against the flow,
where I lead, he'll go.
I'm frost-bitten, wide eyed.
And he took me by surprise.

she built a blanket fort

So I have an edit for you - my blanket fort poem, now complete with a photo! Elou from ElouCarroll Photography, also known as KeyChild, helped me bring my poem to life. The "blanket fort" was constructed, the fairylights strung, and the red balloon aquired. And Elou added the magic :)

in a blanket fort constructed from fragile sheets of securities,
padded out inside with cushions of collected comforts,
the little girl curls in the love-light of the lamp through the fabric
and puts her hands over her ears to block out the rage of reality.
if she squeezes her eyes shut in her creatively constructed cocoon,
bites her lips together and hums a childhood lullaby,
the notes will add a throbbing bass of bars to her security.
she's hiding from the adult road to adolescence,
the years of awkward promised pretence before a foothold is found.
in her childish dreams she doesn't have to walk that way.
she thinks she's found a safe-place, and so she sings in her sleep.
tangled between her fingers she holds the string of a red balloon.
her gift to her grandchildren. if she can hold it that long.
the fairy lights above her head pretend to be stars.



<3

So sensible.

So polite, so sensible, so
how did you find me?
Except, for someone so sensible...
I attempt missions.
Misguided travels.
Mutual ground is a safe bet,
don't you think?
I'll be wearing something blue.
I'll be carrying a bowler hat.
I'll be humming that song.
Casual, accidently-on-purpose.
Something like:
Oh, I'll be Here on the 17th.
Wouldn't it be funny
if I bumped into someone
Someone like you?
What a laugh.
Wink wink.
Nudge nudge.
Nod nod.
Or code. A sly mention
to catch attention.
Mutual ground is a safe bet,
don't you think?
Then tippy-toe-nervous
w a i t i n g.
I attempt missions.
Misguided travels.
Unrealistic planning.
Incomplete idea-starting.
Too polite, too sensible, to
try to find you.
For someone so sensible...

And counting.

Twelve miles away
(that's forty-eight less than before)
and now it's over and I know.
A day too late.
You stood so tall, and walked so proud;
a black and white photograph
amongst graffiti bright currancy.
So admired. So beautiful.
And I didn't see
how much easier you found it til now.
A day too late.
The nightingale, still singing,
(for hope is the thing with feathers)
is replaced with a thing of gold and gems
and forgotten even to be forgotten.
Your life so busy, so bright,
it blinded.
You step on my collected;
beautiful, cracked and fading stills.
Walked right past my door.
Twelve tries away
(that's fourty-eight less than before)
and now it's over, and you know.
A day too late.

Time.

Would you rather pass away
and let time stay
or watch time pass away
while you stay?

Halfway up the stairs.

The stairs in this house are one step too few. On both flights. In our old house there were fifteen steps. I counted them one day. And then forgot what number they were. Then counted them again to remember. I used the number to make sure that when I was going up them in the dark, or while I was carrying something big so that I couldn't see my feet, I still got to the top/bottom of the flight without falling over. Now, after at least fifteen years in our old house (how nicely the numbers coincide), my feet are so used to fifteen steps that I'm constantly falling over myself at the top of these fourteen-step flights in expectation of another step, or ending at the bottom of the flight in a jarring thud as my foot hits floor sooner than it expects. Dammit.
Ah, but having fifteen steps was important for another reason. Not only because it's a nice number (a comforting number, a kind of comfortable number), it is also odd. An odd number of steps when I was a child was important. I assume you know AA.Milne? The author of Winnie-the-Pooh. Delightful writer. He wrote a poem, that my family used to sing when I was a child.

"Halfway up the stairs
is a stair where I sit.
There isn't any other stair
quite like it.
It's not at the bottom,
it's not at the top.
But this is the stair
where I always stop.
Halfway up the stairs
isn't up and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
run around my head.
It isn't really anywhere,
it's somewhere else instead."

I've got the structure wrong, but the words are right. Or right enough. Memorised as a little girl. It took a few years for that song to sink in, but when it did, I stomped my way up and down those stairs, counting and then counting, till I was sure when I'd found the half-way-step. Then that is where I would sit. With a book, curled up against the wall out of people's way. Or with a notepad and pencil, scribbling nonsense. Or just for a minute to peer through (and later over) the banisters, just in case there was something worth seeing.
Now these new stairs don't have a halfway up. There's just that moment, for a split second, when your foot is suspended in midair between the seventh and eighth step, with your body wavering in space, when you're exactly halfway up the stairs. Not a particularly easy place to think.
And now that I've realized what it is that makes my body feel that tiny bit uncomfortable while going up and down those stairs, I feel like I'm missing something. I'm missing a step.

Third wheel.

She lay between two duvets.
Legs still tacky from last night's
alcohol-sweat.

Ever tried to forget that she's up there
with her man
in the double bed above yours
in the arms of someone
unlike you?

She has a tissue in her hand
and her cheeks are wet.

She pressed music into her ears.
Volume still too loud from the afternoon's
escape-dancing.

It's hard to forget that you're resting
best as you can
in a double bed that's "spare"
borrowed from someone
but not yours.

She has a tendency to ignore it
and save it for later.

She watched the paint swirls on the ceiling.
Palms still raw from the evening's
emotion-restraint.

Think it's time to forget you're labelled
selfinflicted
in a double bed half empty
lacking that someone
all yours

?

Cracks.

“There are hundreds of people in this [place]. Thousands maybe. People who come from here, or people who have fallen through the cracks.”
Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere.

“There’s a crack in time in the wall of your bedroom. And it’s been eating away at your life for a long time now.”
Dr Who.

“There’s something up there, it slipped out the cracks in my lips.
There’s something up there, it slipped through the cracks.
I saw it from the corner of my eye…
It’s not just in my head.
Noone believes me, I can’t even trust me.”
VersaEmerge.

I know they’re there.
The cracks in my fabric,
The faults in my path.
Below my feet, in the space above my head.
Watch my lips follow your words.
I know I don’t create you.
You’re hiding behind each layer,
Day-to-day life in a mesh of fractures.
Can I shatter the invisible walls?
You live where I cannot follow;
Dive into your underworld,
Up above my reach,
Yet you tease me, desired and despised.
Ribbons of shining-dark fabric.
I only entangle myself tighter,
Pull closer the insanity fractured mind
Rocking speaking swaying
Vibrating out the silent screams.
Even in my quiet moments
I hear you. My mind readers.
I see you. The slivered colours in my eyes.
A fantasy life. Fractured mind.
Sandwiched between fiction and lies.
I know I don’t create you.
Where’s my reality?
Can I remember my truth?
I know you’re there.
Speak to me stop your noise.
Take refuge in my melody,
the clouding of my mind.
I need your confusion, your clarity,
Leave me oh let me follow you, let me follow
Though the cracks.
I know they’re there.

“…His small time’s end. His time-
Who saw Infinity through the countless cracks
In the blank skin of things, and died of it.”
A.S.Byatt - Possession

My Alice.

There goes my Alice.
Blue eyes and tumbled hair.
The hunter and the hunted;
the unfinished story.

I recognise her, even as she hides her face.
A mirror child of distorted lines,
clear, but incomplete.
The truth is hidden under the layers of blue.
Here be dragons.

See her dress with lace edge
and yet her legs bare and stained,
grass green and mud smears.
She’s half hidden behind the dark trunks
in the crowded forest in my mind.
Sly smile and shy gaze.
Come and play.

A mismatched tale of broken words,
formed in the shadows.
A white rabbit and a blue bird.
And I know she thinks she’s dreaming.

Follow me into the dark,
even as she’s falling, falling,
into yet another life.

There goes my Alice.
Blue eyes and tumbled hair.
The hunter and the hunted;
the unfinished story.

A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Emily Dickinson.

Absurdity.

At a distance, you're a memory.
Or a photo that shifts and blinks and smiles.
Or typed words, somehow in human form.
In this crowd of strangers
I'm acutely aware of the few I know.
They glow.
You don't. You're a brown haired memory.
As you pass me, greet me, you're my imagination.
A part in a play I've enacted
over and over and over.
In this mess of conversations,
I see you fulfill your part.
They shine.
You don't. You're my dusk imagination.
In a room of laughter, I catch you watching me and
oh god. You are real.
Our silence fills the noisy room,
and the absurdity is a jester with a pointed stick.
Laughable. Painful. Ridiculous.
My fluttering fingers
against a coffee mug.
In reality, you are no different.
And the drama is a scene on a stage.
Or a page in a story book.
In this place of busy bodies,
I feel other characters shift like the tide.
They ghost.
You don't. You are the only person
in the over-full room.

The night after.

The not-yet-familiar warmth
against the cold white starch of
someone else's sheets.

Lost.

Pure white in front of me, let me see, let me see.
Follow those skipping feet, down through dark streets
and over grass green. Blue skirt, shoes cream.
Earth dirt swallows me whole. A distorted reflection
confuses, takes, engulfs my sense of direction.
Let me sit pretty, blonde haired little pixie.
Teacup in hand, I don't understand.
Stop the spinning, crying, growing, shrinking;
catch me with a labelled bottle and a door too small
tell me your poetry as I fall fall fall.

When all the lamps expire,

and I know you've got it so wrong,
and the conviction that you feel
comes out in your song,
and your music is so haunting
because I know exactly what you mean,
and your words cause a wound
because you're singing them right at me...

I'm still so proud of you.

My answer.

I’m hiding behind all these words
I cannot afford to say.
Answers gone ungiven.
Questions left unasked.
They’re holding me captive.
I’m not the answer
for all the questions you have.
An argument with no end,
that stretches in my minds eye
into all eternity.
This isn’t how I want to remember you.
The interrogation is building up.
Brick by boring brick;
a wall of question marks.
They keep me occupied,
they keep me alone.
The answer you wanted,
but I’m long gone.
I’m lost behind all these words
I cannot afford to say.

Last one.

I wrote you a letter in blue ink.
It sits under my mattress,
between the pages of a Wallace and Gromit annual.
The tones and subjects clash rather.

I imagine them fighting it out,
like all the thoughts did,
round and round my head, conflicting with each other.
I think Wallace and Gromit won.

I'll hand the letter to your sister.
Then she can hand it over to you.
Then you can read it and argue it and throw it away.
I'll sleep on it tonight.

Fifteen years in the making.

The family that's closeted in my heart.
I close my eyes and your images appear on my eyelids;
Photos at the top of the stairs.
I haven't seen you in so long, but I can now...
The family that's tied tight to my heart.
Blonde looking after three brown heads:
two sons, one daughter; two who I've loved,
one who I've left, one who I never knew at all.
The family that's pulling at my heart.
You've been through your joys and celebrations,
your pains and battles,
But fifteen years in the making,
this storm beats them all.
The family that hurts my heart.
I close my eyes and your troubles grow in my chest;
crumbs trodden into the carpet.
With a shrug I could push them away,
with a careless smile I could laugh them away,
But your family is too close to my heart.

Blackout poetry.

So I have some poems! Wow. This was really quite difficult to begin with - the blackout method (see post below) is not easy. You're constantly getting distracted by whatever it is the article is on about..! But after a while I got into it and started enjoying finding the story within the story. Here are a few that eventually ended up being extracted from the text:

Advice.
research shows/ that 85 per cent of/ advice
has been/ Rooted in/ Acknowledging the facts/
from the comfort of your own home.

Technology.


















technology/ is called/
the/ bitch/ Drug/
of/ endless/ men/ in London.

Red hours.
Red/ hours/ wrote/ my/ trouble/
in/ to/ A/ letter/
you read/ it/
You knew/ i/ mattered/
But not/ how disillusioned/
i were/
you/ Red reader/
how/ Will/ you/ help/ me?

Holy Grail.


















There you are. 'Holy Grail' and 'Technology' both came, believe it or not, from an article about cosmetic surgery. I also have another one, not posted, that was made from an article about a woman's obsession with food. I turned it into a 'poem' about her love for her grocer. You can get the strangest things by doing this. I'd recommend it to anyone. Even if only for the laughs.

Austin Kleon.

Austin Kleon is a poet-of-a-kind. He 'writes' by blacking out passages from newspapers. Click the links to have a look, I've picked out some of my favourites.
Deborah reminds me of my KeyChild. Replace the name "Deborah" with her name, and we have an almost perfect description. I'm sure many other writers out there feel the same way. Home Alone makes me smile, cause I know exactly how that feels. And Fireflies is almost a perfect memory in a few words...
I've been challenged by my Little Black Book (a gift from KeyChild) to create a few of my own. Only problem is, I have nil newspapers in the house. Will a magazine do..? I shall have to try it and see. Some of my attempts will be up here soon enough, I predict.