Through Zoe’s Eyes

In Zoe’s eyes the birds don’t sing,

waters run too shallow.

If she could sleep those worries away for a

Blink-length in time…

In Zoe’s hands winds drop bland,

little scabs tremble with the memory.

She fears no strangers but each

is an intruder

she will not talk to.

She fills in gaps with words apt and inept.

Oilcloth strips she stuffs in crack,

when cracks are all she sees and walks on.

Answers rehearsed, eyes dart to the left,

A clue we have seen before and again.

Zoe’s skin bears the weight of all scars

Her own and the world’s.

When you look through Zoe’s eyes

Your world temperature turns down a notch.

 

Linked to dVerse Poets Pub: Poetic Expressions.   This week it was all about Dominant Impressions in Artistic Expression.  For me, Venetian carnival masks are all about sadness rather than gaiety.

The Ballad of Night Anxious

Image from http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~nicholson/alice.html

What does it matter where my body happens to be?  My mind goes on working all the same.

I’ve done it again. Unwitting, unwelcome,

I’ve woken up Knight Anxious,

all creeping worries and lingering thoughts,

all lists and fears, tapeworms,

my warts magnified fivefold by the conjured dangers of the night.

 

He heralds tumbling tonefalls, a rain-soaked day ahead.

Regardless of the weather, he never cooks the pudding,

yet proud of his invention, he harrumphs on horses high,

failure denigrated, unhinged from little pleasures,

unwashed with median joys.

 

He watches, waits, then pounces, always the live menace,

but always unexpected.

After all this time

I still can’t find the trigger

nor welcome him sagely

nor sluice him off like wet reproaches.

I hesitate just one second:

each time the haircracks multiply,

he seeps through, sucking

all air from the cave of my lungs:

infallible gravity.

 

We soldier on, we soldier on, mounted or on foot,

no end in sight, no redeeming dawn,

we balance, we teeter… and some of us fall.

Dandelions & Bad Hair Days – how mental health & motherhood woke up the writer in me

Dandelions & Bad Hair Days – how mental health & motherhood woke up the writer in me.

Looking forward to reading this book – the anxiety that dare not speak its name in the competition of upbeat self-deprecation of the school run!

Clone Trooper Wins Again

We reach the park. It doesn’t take long for Mum to get bored: ‘Enough of swings!  I’m tired.  Run about, do something!’

It’s cold, windy.  The monkey-bars are icy, and there are too many children on the climbing wall and see-saws.  My baby brother sticks out his lower lip. ‘Don’t wanna!’

Mum rolls her eyes. ‘First of all, it’s “I don’t want”, not “don’t wanna”.  Secondly, tell me clearly what don’t you want?  Talk to me!  Can’t help you if you don’t tell me!  When will you learn to express your thoughts instead of just crying and whingeing all the time?  Waa, waa!  Is that all you guys ever do?’

She’s off again.  No one can say Mum is stuck for words.  Press a button, and she goes on forever.  I have my pocket remote and switch her off like the sound on telly.  Only let a few words slip through, just to make sure she isn’t suddenly saying something important, like lunch or time to go home.  But no, it’s the usual stuff…  How could she have given birth to such lazy children?…  Sports are so good for you – unhealthy, stuck indoors all the time – only interested in Wii… Nobody will be our friend if we behave like this…

She folds her arms and sits, muttering, on the bench.  Jake stands stiffly beside her. Face all screwed up and snotty.  Refusing to have fun.  I shrug and start playing Star Wars.  I always play this on my own – no one else, not even Jake, may join in. I’m a clone trooper, fighting enemies with my light sabre.  I run around with sound effects. Mum hates this game.  She says only Jedi knights have light sabres and clone troopers are stupid. But I want to be stupid, I want to look like everyone else.  All Mum’s brains, all those college scarves in her sock drawer that we’re not allowed to touch… and she has to go to hospital every month. Feels sick like a slug afterwards.

Besides, Jedi knights are boring, like grown-ups: they talk too much, they’re always right, always winning.  Light sabres should belong to everybody.