Six words, a la Hemingway

Things are very hard these days.

Pull pint, double shot, no time.

Twenty minutes to finally breathe again.

Can't make plans so don't look.

A relationship between personality and poetry?

I do prefer poetry to people.

(Really, pretty much to anything else.)

Gonna miss you when you're gone.

A field mouse disturbs the grass.

Climbing over the gap-toothed style.

There are never any happy endings.

There are always some happy endings.

Where did all the poetry go?

Regulars

There are a few things I like when it comes to my work. Overall, it's exhausting and mind-numbing but in some ways it's beneficial to be ground down and anaesthetised. But what I like the most is recognising people who visit regularly and remembering their drink orders.
There's a guy with white hair who looks like a cartoon character and drinks London Pride and works just upstairs from the Foyles where I once worked, and says that he hates it due to a culture of nepotism and 'cronyism' and talked with me about the power of social influence on one slow evening.
There's a wine connoseur who drinks ESB ale in a tankard and tells me about his visits to wine tastings and port tastings and whiskey tastings and God knows what else, and who fiddles with his phone and eventually falls asleep, without fail, over his dish of pork scratchings, but not before inviting me to accompany him to one of his many beverage tastings and I am too busy.
There's a guy who pops in early afternoon and always has the exact change for a pint of Guinness, who then disappears and reimerges with another order, who grabbed me to the backdrop of Save The Last Dance For Me and we danced together while my boss clapped, inebriated as she usually is.
There's an incredibly effeminate customer whose name is David and comes in every day, who drinks chardonnay with three ice cubes and stays for many hours, way past closing time, applying his make up while looking at himself in the mirrored wall.
There's an attractive man with a beard who wears pressed shirts and drinks lager, standing outside with friends or strangers to smoke, and who I would like very much to kiss, and when I let slip to my manager that I thought he was good-looking he made fun of me and told me my boyfriend would be jealous.
There's a woman who has a bespoke drink devised of vodka and a very small amount of orange juice with ice and a straw, who was there the other day at midday and again in the evening until midnight, but who won my affection despite her lingering after the last bell because she gave compliments about me to my boss.
There are two men in creased suits during after-work hours, one of whom looks a lot like an ex-boyfriend of mine and drinks Seafarer's Ale, who always rack up an expensive tab and want receipts so I wonder who is paying.
There is another man in a suit who always attends with a group of other men in suits and who showed me his phone, saying, 'Look who I had lunch with!', to which I replied, 'Nigel Farage!' and went into a brief soliloquy about his politics before kicking myself because I realised that they were actually friends.
There is another man in a suit who used to do what most people would gauge as flirting but has since given up and orders Guinness and asks for huge amount of cashback but mostly stays outside with Heineken Top, who is named after his drink order and because he's so tall he's always at the top, and always asks for a lager with a top, and during my first week I stupidly put soda water in the lager instead of lemonade.
There is a man who always sits in the same spot at the bar and slowly drinks his lager and occasionally asks me for help with the Evening Standard crossword.
There is another man whose voice gives me nightmares and who stands at the entrance to the bar so I keep having to squeeze past him and each time he says, 'Hi Daisy!' in a very strange squeaking voice, which I used to think was a joke but now realise is his real voice.
There is an Italian guy called Marco who had a birthday party the other day and gave me a slice of cake and many hugs and made my heart warm.
There is a couple- a long-haired blonde and man in a blazer- who come in and stay for hours until they are both more than tipsy and they are kissing and cuddling, and she drinks wine and he drinks lager, who had a conversation about becoming boyfriend and girlfriend on official terms, which I picked up from eavesdropping, but which worried me because I could have sworn I saw her with someone else a few weeks ago and when my manager and I were gossiping about them and I mentioned this, he said, 'I like her style.'
There is an attractive close-shaven man who drinks Amstel and sits alone, scribbling in a notebook, and when I asked him what he was focused on told me that he's drawing jellyfish because he is making illustrations for his friend's writing, so I have decided that I would like to be his friend.

May Hill

I’m with you on May Hill where bedsheets smell like tea and milk
I’m with you on May Hill where time stands still as if in a snow globe.
I’m with you on May Hill where I learnt the names of flowers.
I’m with you on May Hill where I waited for the morning birds.
I’m with you on May Hill where I am sorry I lost my mind.
I’m with you on May Hill where my grandfather died in his bed.
I’m with you on May Hill where all the stories began.
I’m with you on May Hill where quiet is heavier than sound but slower.
I’m with you on May Hill where what is thrown away burns in the garden.
I’m with you on May Hill where Christmas is redder and greener.
I’m with you on May Hill where green grow the rushes, oh.
I’m with you on May Hill where I first heard a lullaby.
I’m with you on May Hill where my grandmother broke a leg.
I’m with you on May Hill where I learnt to sing.
I’m with you on May Hill where we go out walking to Ella and back again.

Time

Time is an elastic band.
Time is a flat circle.
Time is precious, but truth more precious than time.
Time is item reorganised.
Time is too slow for those who wait.
Time is a human construct.
Time is too swift for those who fear.
Time is a frame for the masterpiece of experience.
Time is too long for those who grieve.
Time is a medicine.
Time is too short for those who rejoice.
Time is not on my side.
Time is the most precious element of human existence.
Time is our afternoons measured out in coffee spoons.
Time is more valuable than money.
Time is the sound of new leaves turning over.
Time is the most undefinable and yet paradoxical of things.
Time is a tapestry that weaves itself again and again.
Time is trying to put a limit on infinity.
Time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
Time is unkind.
Time is an illusion.
Time is all we have.
Time is the longest distance between two places.
Time is a game played beautifully by children.
Time is all your yesterdays and all your tomorrows.
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
Time is all it takes.
Time is taking it all.
Time is catching up to you.
Time is whether you want it to be or not.
Time is treasured, wasted, spent and bought.
Time is a greedy thing.
Time is stolen by punctuality.
Time is a slippery thing.
Time is mostly spent being dead.
Time is there to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
Time is not mine to take.
Time is not mine to give.
Time is in the tide.
Time is just a point of reference.
Time is not going to explain.
Time is clinging to me like cat hair.
Time is without meaning.
Time is the meaning.
Time is mine and it’s worthless.
Time is never on my side.
Time is nothing.
Time is all.

How many?

How many years before the fire? How many years still looking up at the sky at night and seeing nothing but black? How many years of imagining a mirror up there above you, something to gaze into all wide-eyed to see something that looks just like you staring back, to see creatures who have spent all the days in their lives looking up wondering whether someone else is out there? How many minutes spent hoping that maybe we aren't alone at all? How many hours did we dedicate to dreaming up these people, dressing them up in bodies like ours and lives like ours and words like ours, in names that fit comfortably around our tongues and then giving them our hands to shake? How many days did we wait for them to give a reply? How many times did we send out exploratory ships and crews on voyages into the big endless blue, navigating between the stars using a tape measure, looking for some small hint that there are others out there too? How many times will we come back, shaking our heads in disappointment but our eyes glimmering with resolve because we are not giving up yet? How many seconds will we waste away, raking through the galaxies, only to prove that we are not alone out there? Surely we are not alone out there.

Unfinished jigsaw

I am trying to learn over again lessons in love,
to teach myself how to be alone, without being
lost but I have never known how to be beautiful--

and I do not live anywhere but the room where
I sleep is so crammed with empty boxes and
all those empty corners I could build a nest in.

If I had the flesh for it and the energy for it
I could grow wings to pull myself up and then
fight a war with gravity and someday I'd win.

I could grow up if it weren't for a gap in the bed
that I am too small for and the gaps in memory
I am too big for, and for the emptiness of space.

Alone is a state of mind, in and out and between
and it's a place, a strange place I am and I'm not
and I've been here before but back then I didn't

notice the cold.

Memories in Motion and Finally, Meliorism

There’s a window and the night waltz comes, just a little too drunk,
so there’s nothing much to say but the words of the insomniac,
and secrets that cannot interact. The moon is quiet in the sky,
but like an egg uncracked.

Here is a story, made up inside my head.
Failure and glory, but it’s someone else instead.
Dirt under my fingers from digging in the night.
But beauty lingers, petals falling as I write.

In and out again, he floats as a cloud right by, made up of memory.
Hello stranger, may I ask why your greeting
is a just as good a goodbye? And your words of love
as concrete as the sky.

Here is another tale. I think this one may be true.
You were fractured on the inside and I took care of you.
I know those were your secrets and those I’ll always keep.
I know there will be sometime you’ll visit me in sleep.

So I’ve gathered the remnants of your stay,
thought of destroying them by May.
But no matter why you proved unkind,
you know the inside and out of my mind,
and I’d never give a moment or memory away, for I love blind.

Don't Think Twice about Love Letters

Love letters are the kinds of things I can only write at night. Hello moon, how do you like these lines? Insomniac sentences who always wear muddy hems, refuse to reveal more than absolutely necessary. And only what’s necessary counts. When I write them down, I want them dirty. Gritty. I want my recipient to find dirt under fingernails after reading. Maybe some behind the ear. Tongue coated in saliva. Do you need a bath, love? Your skin’s looking a little grimy. My love letters aren’t fluent in softness, sweetness, regret. They’ve a bitter edge, tartness. They only lift their dresses when they shouldn’t, are only addressed to who they can’t have. What, moon? Love and her letters aren’t always as pure as you and your Cheshire grin.

Meaning in Life Questionnaire Results

Conducted at Penn State University, I took this psychometric test. These were the results considering my Presence score was 21 and my Search score was 29:

If you scored below 24 on Presence and also above 24 on Search, you probably do not feel your life has a valued meaning and purpose, and you are actively searching for something or someone that will give your life meaning or purpose. You are probably not always satisfied with your life. You may not experience emotions like love and joy that often. You may occasionally, or even often, feel anxious, nervous, or sad and depressed. You are probably questioning the role of religion in your life, and may be working hard to figure out whether there is a God, what life on Earth is really about, and which, if any, religion is right for you. People who know you would probably describe you as liking to play things by ear, or “go with the flow” when it comes to plans, occasionally worried, and not particularly socially active.

Little stories

All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of the prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve contentment and simplicity with enormous effort. 

Reality prior to language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded the possession of silence.

Where does music go when it is not playing? - she asked herself. And, disarmed, she would answer: May they will make a harp out of my nerves when I die.

They often talk about falling, not floating or flying but falling. Falling up, falling down, falling all around like wishes or kisses or ash. What goes up, must come down. She falls over her own feet. He falls off rooftops for her and she waits at the bottom. She falls off faithfully for him but doesn’t always find him where she lands, if she does at all. Is this love?- she asks or herself- or self-destruction like the white-coats say, or hope, or blindness, or admiration? Maybe even madness. To face the possibility of falling everyday and always climbing up up up.

“Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.”

The story of a girl with the same diagnosis as me- BPD- played by Winona Ryder who is manipulated by a sociopath played by Angelina. Brilliant. Watch it.

Some time

Some hours, then, perhaps days, your bones were only my luggage.
I carried them and would have continued carrying them to the end of Forever-land.
How long would it have taken for your will to burn out, turning my truths to  lies=
Museums of tendons, ligaments, joints, bruised shoulders and a bag of fool’s gold.
We saw countless midnights but here comes another, the only one since
Before I can remember that the keyboard hasn’t been bearing it’s gap-toothed grin
In the shadows between one black hole and another. I wish now that the water
We had let take us downstream was fresh, not a wishing well of whisky.
A snow-globe storm of portals to other cyclical natures of our affections-
How we afflicted ourselves. I used to think cutting myself open to watch
Red petals bloom in the sink was my worst affliction. Or disappearing, day by day,
Suicide in slow motion. How silly to think that it was always my failure to
Accurately weighing the inequality sitting right in front of me. Once it’s too late,
Though, arguments go to dust. Internal, introverted silently bleeding,
and eventually, eventually dusting off and healing.

“You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.” 

Dear Higher Power

Dear Higher Power, Dear Higher Consciouness,
Please, make me useful? Make me unhurtful?
Turn me into a bare white wall so that I may be
vigilant and harmless, so that someone, someday,
may punch a hole right through the middle of me.

I dream up cities on top of cities on top of cities.
I invent mercies and miracles and monsters
and in my mind, everyone has good intentions,
perhaps just poor execution. I'm still trying
to invent a word that means: I will be better,
I will love better, I will prove myself better
next time. If there is a next time.

The future wants to kiss you on the lips.
The future wants to kill you in your sleep.
Everything that exists on this earth
is in equal measures both good and bad
depending on how brightly the light shines
or the angle at which we are tilting our heads.

a poem

Inspired by The Bard

These violent delights will have a violent end
For now is the winter that we contend.
With fire and powder, explosions resume
Which, when we kiss we will consume.

To die, to sleep, perchance to have dreams.
The stars shine darkly, shedding their beams.
In malignancy of fate, what dreams may come?
Slings and arrows and a coiled mortal thrum.

I cast a plague on both your homes
When the summer’s day counted my bones.
My conscience made me afraid to speak.
Not wise, nor slow, just stumbling and weak.

It must be ancient grudges, a new mutiny.
The way the stars cross with dignity.
Just the same, please alter me no more.
I have one foot in the sea and one on shore.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
Nothing is the love and all is the fear
That will strike once wound, the watch of wit.
This new world has such brave people in it.

Don’t know what we are, just what we may be.
Taking arms against the troubles of the sea.
Yet it is on this stuff that we build our dreams.
The good faces are the deadliest, it seems.

I’m a witty fool and I’m a foolish wit.
Some become mad, some are born into it.
Whatever piece of work is man?
We defy the stars whenever we can.

In forty thousands came all the brothers.
Though God gave me a face, I made up others.
Light will break from yonder window tomorrow.
Until then, goodbye is such sweet sorrow.

Beware the leader banging his war drums.
Something wicked this way comes.
This above all- just to yourself, be true
And doubt the stars are fire, not that I love you.

just a wish for someone I care about

You no longer tell tales tall as cliffs or mountain drops.
I think you want to speak true and yet each sentence stops.
Now I'm no marionette, pulled to 'must' or pushed to 'should'
because you are here learning what it means to be good-
not so that others find you magnetic or charming,
or that others find you to be a shock or alarming-
and there are no strings, I can't be pushed, pulled or led,
I will always tell you what's buried brow-deep in my head
though I know I'll never learn all the secrets you keep,
I wish you freedom and laughter and a beautiful sleep.

Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting.

As the people who know me well know, one of my favourite poets, possibly my favourie poet of all time, is Alice Oswald. In her anthology, Of Weeds and Wildflowers, are etchings and sketches of various plants, stems, petals, roots; some wild, some on display. On one of these pages there is included some lines from Hamlet, Act I, Scene III, taken from a conversation between Laertes and Ophelia. I printed the etching onto fabric. It's not so clear to read from the pictures below, but here are the lines:

LAERTES
        For Hamlet and the trifling of his favor,
        Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
        A violet in the youth of primy nature,
        Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
        The perfume and suppliance of a minute.
        No more.
OPHELIA
  No more but so?
LAERTES
  Think it no more.

No sleep, just time

I don’t have anybody to talk to about these things. Even if I did, I would never be capable of finding the words to fit the war that beats its drums out of rhythm with my own beat, beating back against myself as I push a path forward through the universe that only goes in circles anyway. It’s yet another feeling without a word. These not-yet-existent words lower and tremble with such loud violence they could bring down every library wall.  I leave notes in the condensation on taxi windows (‘I’m sorry’; not ‘am I there yet?’ But ‘will I ever make it far enough to know where that is?’). So I try to write it down, and out it comes like nonsense mumbled in sleep. When I first lived alone after so many years, I noticed that I had begin to talk to myself. It wasn’t thinking out loud or singing in the shower.  The voice was mine but not in my head like before, either. The words were spoken by me, and mostly to me, although sometimes to the absences that were bothering me, living alongside me and occasionally taking up more space in my cluttered world than that which I was in the presence of. I recovered from my preoccupation with absences several years ago. My brain was just trying to help, I suppose- the loss being not only emotional but perceptual, it could fill in some of those empty spaces. It didn’t help because I found no comfort in the hauntings, or the one-sided conversations. I’d rather go about stumbling into hollows than share my alone time with ghosts.

What is it that I can’t speak or effectively write about in this unavoidable life?  The ringing alarm and how it calls to mind histories of fire escapes. The broken door from when paramedics kicked it in. The little hours, the nights without the courage to close my eyes, the mornings coming so close, but my closeness becoming somehow a little less crippling every day. Clouds folding over, packaging up all the absolutes. The futility of some things, the sacred nature of others, like remembering to breathe, to stay in orbit, to let the anxieties bleed right through without pooling on the floor, and to let the city in and these new people in (though the city spits people out) and to let them meet the genuine person I had hated silently and fiercely for years until being left alone with her and realising that armfuls of her is not hopeless; I am at least worth something. My bus-stop mind will probably wait there indefinitely but I hope someday it will travel far enough away from the old loneliness that routinely follows me around and close to where the simplest words and the simple ways to love are enough.

The TV shows I watch are violent and strange and I like the ones without a resolution, where the questions remain unanswered and sit behind your brow as it faces the screen. Staring in when it’s over, my own face is shadowed back at me. I feel like a wide-eyed alien in a small godless world of grey and yellow, and I have no real name, just hundreds of books. My hands are unfamiliar and warm. Sometimes they touch a cheek and upon contact the light that floods into my mouth turns from lemon to something sweeter. The sky is dark as a fist whenever I manage to get out these non-specific words and jumbled reveries. Over the buildings across the street, the moon is a creamy gold and you could see all it’s contours- I would say edges, but circles and spheres don’t have them (or do they have infinite edges, or are they all just one edge?). It hums to me, I hum to myself. Sometimes I sing and look for stars that might be pricking our sky, leaving tiny wounds of white. I see them so seldom, but most frequently at bus stops.

Potentially

Like plums that bloom, or like a nebulous hush
of matches whispering as they scratch one another.
What I could be. What we could be, even, maybe.
What to make. What to do. What to change.
What to break. What to love and what to hate.
If I am really here, or rather, if I might have been
allowed to grow, permitted to show my willfulness
and human endurance, mirrored in my makers.
I am not going to become. I am mistaken and
I don't have the form or features to actually exist.
But in that moment, caught between the open and
closed box of Schrodinger, when I both am not
and I could be, I do exist, on one side of that gate,
as a concept. The potential. Would it matter
that it was a mistake that made my potential?

So many tiny alterations, side-steps, choices,
mistakes, actions with reactions with reactions
and causes with effects and knock-on effects
that ripple from one person to another
as if we are all touching fingertips.
This was never going to be- we see our decisions
altering the tides and never-oscillating certainty
of change, but we don't see the smaller steps,
or the missteps, or the chances or split-seconds
between one life and another, the box open
or closed. Still, if there were ever going to be
a potential in me- would I be caught on a tide,
or the tsunami that's caused by a moth's wings?
And if there were to be space for just the idea
of a person to bloom in this space, though empty,
what would it feel like, for he or for she or we?

Retrospect

Still, I recall, with cinnamon breaths
and a voice translucent,
you said you believed in me,
and that I helped you. In thoughts
like falling petals, I believed
you could help me too.
You knew I couldn't swim,
but you let me drown in my mind
and then in my tears, and I knew,
when I was in darkness and cold,
I should have wished for sunlight
instead of a candle. I just wanted
to make you happy. Swirling
dispute, conflicting conversation.
Was I lied to or did I learn
to tread water; did I do anything at all?