Skinny's thread

Yeah I know I said I wouldn't do it again, but I am....

Enjoy and please feel free to comment in this thread!

Skinny

 

My hands
help me to understand the world I'm seeing.
My taste-buds are not always so helpful
in my quest for understanding.

But then again, my thirst for knowledge
should not be confused
with my wonder at solid food.

Contemplation
Takes so much effort and concentration
And I'm so frustrated at the fact
that my eyes refuse to stay open!!

I don't know these words yet
and by the time I do I'll have long forgotten
all the things my early childhood had to say.

 

Two days before D-Day a young man died,
in an accident, on a road, in Kent.

He never saw the littered beaches
or the sacrificed French towns that marked the route to liberation.

He never posed with a captured swastika
for the photographer with his new-fangled colour contraption.

He never handed his girl nylon stockings
and her heart's only desire.

 

The city is gnarled. It stares inwards, listless.
Resignation painted all over the tall, dusk lit buildings
which stand uneasy like old teeth.
Busy roads run over exposed gum between the gaps.
The rain washes over everything like palsy saliva,
forcing bacteria and umbrellas into the buildings and under the ground,
to futher the decay.

 

The rosebud dances,

Sways alone.

Its latex leafwear entrances,

as do tiny red lips poking through the restraints.

 

White Lightening and Marlboros
(purchased by the boy who looked oldest)
were distributed. All set.

We giggled and swaggered and swore our way
to the great iron gateway outside St John's.
With hard-earned skill we overcame this daunting man-made boundary
and with foreboding that never seemed to go away,
we shouted and hollered,
overcoming the spiritual boundary that surrounds a graveyard at night.

Michael tripped over that branch again,
we laughed ourselves senseless and clutched our guts.
And when the roaring of cider-soaked teens subsided
we hissed at each other to shush,
whilst watching the windows of the parsonage
for the flick-on of lights.

None came and so we continued our stroll,
smoking like movie stars and throwing things
making our way to our usual spot -
the memorial slab of Jacob Mallory, departed this world 2nd June 1945.

Imagine our shock as we approached
to see a figure huddled there.

Guilt and vomit. The parson? A tramp?

We froze.

The figure unhuddled and turned to face us.
White as the label on our cider bottle the figure shimmered.
We sank to the moss.
The pitiful figure sobbed and said "Do you know what I am reduced to?"

Becca, (who knows nothing of these things), whispered, "you are an angel!"

"No longer an angel"

The figure shrugged and to the ground fell feathers and sinew and bone.

"I am destined to carry more than my weight in flight.
I am human now and must carry the weight of the world"
With a heavy sigh, the angel curled up, and Jacob Mallory became a pillow of despair.

We gulped, as one, a chorus of gulps. Then we upped and left it there.

 

You joke over beers
assuming your demise never crossed my mind.
I see sandstorms have re-clogged your emotion filters.
Well, you should know that mine overflowed lately
and I fell short of breath,
not helped by my rib-cage being three sizes smaller,
since my lungs expanded to accommodate grief.

The weight of not knowing was an unwieldy burden,
strapped every day to my thorax on waking,
and now you laugh, having never considered
that if I was lucky, I'd be told by a newsreader.

'Where-ever I fall, just leave me there - these memorials mean nothing to me,'
It is true: what use has a dead man's carcass for a carved slab of stone?
But you fail to realise, on your island of self, that it isn't about you:

it's about those you leave at home.

 

Scampering demons,
abacus particles,
latch onto one another,
growing infinitely in long combinations
and shrinking indefinitely in meaning
to the unintitiated and unprepared.

We religiously trap them behind bars:
each one has its own cell,
in wings called Debit and Credit and Balance.
Somehow they always manage to clump together in Debit wing,
having fled from Credit
and seeking exile from Balance.
And we can only watch in despair as
they reproduce in a devilishly calculated fashion.

 

I had no plan today.
No plan for the whole weekend.

Half a jar of Sunpat lines my stomach because it is protein.

I resist the free broadband connection,
that open invitation to
parties of imaginary friends
and forums where literary good fortune abounds.

(Oh! I love it!)

I'm growing immune to the vague smell of
dead fish
that floats under the door of my
calm and tranquil living space
when the rubbish bags pause en route to their final decomposition.

Listening to other people's
specifically homosexual problems through
single coated walls.

Relishing that these aren't my problems
and that I can return the favour
throughout the duration of my self-imposed house arrest
by playing downloaded metal mayhem.

Thereby undermining the music industry but also the
calm and tranquil living space
the architect intended.

I feel blackheads bubbling on my nose and on the walls of my shower.

As I lie lamenting the uneventful whiteness of the ceiling, my
calm and tranquil living space is
devoid of life.

 

This purple jumper once seduced like the night.
It clings to me
as you did
on the hard cold earth beneath that bush
when the wet nosed mutt investigating
caused us to freeze
and stifle giggles.

This purple jumper just about fits me now,
I have grown plumper
as have you
since those frivolous days when we frolicked in hiding
defying our elders and wisers
trying not to be caught, yet
completely shameless.

This purple jumper has faded and thinned.
We are both colourblind,
immune to its charms.
The associated memory of teenage exuberance
has been lost over time
replaced by homely pottering,
by shepherds pie and comfort.

 

Swollen plastic bags containing ash
and dead pizza patiently awaiting
a trip down the garden

kicked in the gut by a boot
expounding false understanding of how
the pyramids were built.

Bubbles clouding on mugs
and fingers and pans from last time we
bothered to cook over

a week ago. But this is the last
obstacle of Sunday morning
and then Sunday is mine.

I heard you both step off the train
a mile away and your chitter and bravado
disturbing the weekend all the way back

to 300 yards from the house,
where I hear you inhaling
cheap smokes and coughing.

Cursing the binbags you hunt
down your keychain. Scratching
the door through lack of concentration and

all the time, baritone explanation
of hauling chunks of rock
uphill. Armies of slaves.

 

I'm struggling to plait the sinews back together
in my sunlit bedroom
where you lie on the memorial slab
you said you didn't want.

Well
they gave you a symbolic send off.

Draped the flag over the ply box to suffocate you
and over the altar to suffocate God
and I was naked standing in the centre of the nave
and someone wrapped the flag around me too
in case I was cold and missing the warmth of patriotism.

It burnt me, my shoulders, my breasts.

I ran to you past the politicians sobbing
and over that abominable noise I heard
your elbows striking the walls of ply as you

turned and turned and turned.

I heard your silent scream in my sleep
I hugged my scorched cheeks and limbs.

I answered your silent scream and found you and brought you home
which is all I ever wanted. And I can see in your eyes
you admit now
that's all you ever wanted too,
to be at home, in my bed, in my arms.
And I see the anguish in your glassy stare
that I got burnt.

It won't be long now. I found your books
that tell me about surgery in ditches and village medicine
and see, I may not have an egg whisk, but I do have
knives and needles and thread!
And although the pictures are hard to follow, I think I've got it
I'll soon have you patched up and right as rain.

You just lie there a while and recover. I'll get washed and hold you again soon.

 

I have carefully burrowed myself
into the sand and scrub,
I am well dug in, camouflaged, comfortable.
I have allowed the elements to give my armour a tan.

I stand proud in obsolescence,
immune as scavengers pluck used parts
from my backside and belly,
silently waiting as passers-by pose for photographs.

(the foreigners only.
The resident goats no longer notice me.)

And all the time I point to the sky
waiting for the moment
when I can shoot down the Prophet
and have my revenge.

 

That parting kiss
took my breath away.

Smiling, I stumbled backwards and bade you farewell,
pushing the door to behind you,
and sinking down onto the lino, to sigh awhile.

When I awoke from my reverie
I summoned the verve to get up and on,
and sighed once more, one last time.

I felt my lungs freeze
split
I choked on the liquid that seeped into my throat.
I couldn't see the lumps
that came out of my mouth
for the mist in front of my eyes.

I picked up handfuls of this excrement to look closer
only to drop it
and gaze at my black swollen fingers
with nails fake from a halloween party.
My gut was swollen and yellow
heaving in nausea at my state.....

....a mental projection onto my physical being
no more reactions as my nervous system stopped

but not before I had time to see the wistful loving smile
with which I bade you farewell
projected onto the wall before me
as a death mask.

 

I have been looking forward to reading more.. you don't disappoint... you have a smoldering sensuality in your writing. You are lyrical and humorous as well... more please!

Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you for reading StarGateKeeper! I'm glad you enjoyed the trip so far...I feel all warm inside....

 

Miss Drydock was confusing
to the boys in my school.

Prim glasses, worn sometimes on her nose,
sometimes on her tightly pulled back forehead,
were the hard-earned mark of her profession.

Bony and brittle
and veiny, she was a dried leaf
on the soil she would get so excited about.

Soil, her great passion, would make her trill
and flutter, forcing her glasses down her nose
until it became beak-like, and we became worms under the blackbird's gaze.

She would throw
clipped reprimands
whenever the population of Rio de Janeiro
eluded the front row.

And yet
when that happened
she caused faint stirrings in that front row,
her twitching, bee-stung ribcage
steaming glasses and snapping pencils

as though her bubble gum coloured top
promised raspberry flavoured kisses
and her vanilla spindle arms
a year's supply of ice cream.

 

We all enjoyed
a fateful numbness in our purring cabins
with the heater on our feet and
the glow-worms on the dashboard
dancing.

Sometimes the radio
caressed us. Classical comforts
imprinted these final moments so mournfully.

Father turned the wheel
relentlessly away from the drowsy orange city.
On the bridge, brief glimpses of the
Intercity fleeing
back to the centre of the earth
where the real people lived.

And down the hill we would go
one after another;
the rear end of the Volvo ahead
recognised by the signal and turn

it made away from the orange city
and promises.

Slowly toward the winking mirror,
the siren at the end of the black driveway,
luring headlights and capturing

beady flashes; catapulting them
onto the oil slicked windows of
the Headmistress's study,
which lit up ghostly
but briefly,
before dissolving
black into Sunday night.

 

ahh... this is better... a whole, long thread of inspiration!

what took ya so long?

 

I thought it would piss people off cos it's really up yer own arse to have your own thread. Then I figured it would piss people off less than if I posted all my poems individually and pushed everyone else off the page..... ta for reading!