For someone who insisted she would
Not do anything she couldn’t admit to
midnight copper cockroach
crouched on asphalt pavement, inner
city face concave – erratic dark vermin
in the alleyway oblivion –
across an empty lot, strewn with rubble and tattooed
(the shadow-net cast by the meshed wire fence)
she scurries, feet scraping
alert: rapacious watcher
metallic and uncaring
She does know (or course)
It’s a dreadful thing to do
Time repeating: a face stripped
white in the sunlight
still (unrestored) he stands
uncertain
his shirt the violent red
of the venomous: of stonefruit
fresh blood
or old-fashioned sweets from the corner store.
Hope in a vacuum?
never believe these people aren’t dangerous
They lie They betray the curve
of jaw neck shoulder
from you I wanted tenderness
Trust and dependence I recall the nights
spent waiting
in cyclindrical gas chambers, backstage
With the band The elite
this might be hell, this doomed this
Damned this Dachau I
can’t live can’t breathe this
Poison bitter this
this spited air
Men
are made to invade and to hit
grim-faced and intense, they force me to feel
nothing but them: they bruise me
then leave me
pleading for pain, and all abused flesh
like meat on a spit
Some lamb
so when I’m empty
I want to be beaten
down, again, or to slash my face
which men have seen but
Men die
with grace, head held high
she carries herself serenely
(King Charles walked and talked
half an hour after…)
unassailably regal as those who have learned
to ignore homemade bombs peasants
pitch in their faces
she carries herself
no support
she knows
she knows
she believes them, and believing
will never trust again
moving?
as if on castors, slightly stiff but
caring?
unbowed. Steadfast, her face composed
grey-eyed
she must know
dry-eyed
who’ll help?
dignity a shell
fashioning roses
You restore my hand from a crown of thorns
starfish into petals
I could hug you; so crude
when your is an origami touch
as if I were sheer and white like
a nautilus shell pure
coddling, coaxing growth
from an African violet bella
donna prima donna temperamental
unearthing a fossil, living coral
flushed with myriad gasping, sucking mouths
breath
taking: life-giving, sleight of hand
a healing touch – herbs and tenderised nettle
by moonlight, calm and soothe
smooth
cultivate concern
It shouldn’t be like this
not
so long after: the hunter and the hunted
oppressor and oppressed: so much later
but now
still playing games with mirrors
still replicating that face
you look
in every crowd
you note
the set of her shoulders (whose?): the way
she moves
the planes of her features: tense
all symmetry and conspiracy
all over, so much later
over now:
it shouldn’t be like this
This is warfare
I could get what I want but it would only
Backfire: this is a doomed
And ignoble cause. In victory, defeat
But this
Is a cold and protracted campaign
More casualties (mere carnage)
More self-inflicted damage
This is my Crimea: a wearying, putrid, recurring
Night horror. We play over
The same sequences, we make
The same moves. Too studied, too
Well-practised: the positions are
Entrenched now.
We are buried
In trenches, our consciences deadened
This battle, weighted no way, is fought out in
No Man’s Land. This is an exercise:
We order reprisals for guerilla attacks
In cold blood, turning violence on
Innocent civilians
We use their wide eyes for target practice.
As a shadow, she’s much bolder
than I – looms much larger
takes more risks, stretches out and
intrudes: she
ignores bolted gates, and enters
other people’s homes; has no fear
of anything concrete, anything private
anything closed. Unafraid
and irreverent, she touches
those I love
has no shame, no sense of place
reaches out: no restraint
In a mirror she’s much sharper
than myself – she’s much
lighter, more quick; so much more
the creature of light
being of colour
Of angles, much more
somebody’s dream, someone’s
image – a reflection, my opposite number
laughing back at me, wherever I
look: winking up
from whatever I make
I create
spotlit flirt, knowing
on paper
she’s more brilliant, so much braver
much more startling, more broad
for your dollar
(more a tease)
more alive, even disguised
even dismissed, even derided and
tossed off as a
cheap poem
Back in business, in tycoon form
touting like a hustler for what
the day may bring: bring noise bring
heat bring dust and it smells
like the street (my private property my
Wall Street, my bonanza)
bought and sold, selling now
on competitive terms: my sharp
my shop-worn challenge
on a day like today, on my street
feeling strong: feel cunning (lazy malice)
and sly: feel like laughing –
wanna rip somebody off
the helicopter went down
in darkness
eelelectricblueblack
I saw the rotorblades
swimming in the spotlights
distorted by lightwaves
wet sinking fast
through butterflywing fishshoals
I saw the surface
slip from our grasp
I saw dayglo
fish bellies as pale as
lonely faces
tell me:where were you:to tell me
I’m dreaming again
Walking past this house the temptation is strong
A brick through the window, a boot in the door
This is white This is open This is fragile This is
Valued – auctioned last Saturday (the bidding was persistent)
This is someone else’s property
now
Someone else’s
Home This is closed to the streets with
No remembrance of past No
Remembrance of loyalties No haven
for the outcast I hope
Somebody
Scrawls graffiti on your walls in
Indelible black and
it lasts
the earth stings
three-cornered jacks and salvation jane
barbs savage flesh
beer bottles, broken, and jagged jutting rocks
cut out to sea
claws
a rip through the Heads
now tearing, now
taunting, a dagger-thrust wind
a place of impalement, by nature
defensive: here, by the shore, the hard-worked flints
sheathed in grit break off
under foot
a ghost race’s weapons still function, still strike
in a fight long since lost, while shells
slice soles: a terrain
sharp with tension
how far (how long back?) what people
lived here
how hostile (what violence?) what intrusion
resisted
resented
what fear remains: in pain, and by force
grafted
enduring – the grey lash-scar weal of
a killer’s brand
dead birds on the shore
she sees them, and sees herself
battered, blown off course
in the guts of such storms as
bully this coast
she’s buffeted: she feels her wings snap
by day her surrounds eddy grey and by night
churn black: the sea, the sky, neither down
nor up nor around no sense
no salvation – small corpses, oil-slick sodden
dumped, junked by the tide
dark damp broken omens against
panic and exhaustion (so tired)
Cathy laughs best
her lips tie a bow
an extravagant, impulsive
christmas present flourish
her eyes go bright green they
gleam like a scarab
a bauble dancing, as jaunty
as brilliant a yuletide
decoration: a gift, an excitement
as frivolous, as generous
sparklers ablaze
Cathy laughs, lights sing
Everything
flies upward: we cheer
and with a flourish, her lips
take a bow
Elly McDonald