Helen

In five days and one month it will have been a year
of not having you here.
A calendar full of forgettable days
that have lolloped into a year.
Milestones I have been through alone.

Your skin and your smell and your voice
are still here in traces.
I am sent them in dream-places and flittering
trickles, spools of memories that
can never truly capture you.

A year is just too measly a
slice of time.
A flake, a little shudder.
Not nearly enough of a stretch to be
able to say goodbye or begin to forget
the thirty-two years that have stalled
to a near-pause since you vanished.

Grief feels like so much weight.
Like a plate metal costume; cold and
uncomfortable.
Some other strategy.
There is no longer a you and me. You're
free. You're there.
And me? I could scream at the
unfairness of it all. Fall on the floor
and - in despair - bewilder myself with the word mother.

I fear my fading memory, I'm scared I won't
remember your face if sleep beats the fight out of me.
Waking, I fear I'll see blankness instead
of your smile and that would be like discovering
you are dead a second time.

You wouldn't be far, were you breathing,
you wouldn't be far. But you are,
aren't you, Mum? You are.

Padlock these memories for me now and
tell me how I can keep them safe.

Just vote

And if you’re not careful they’ll throw bricks through your windows.

Goes to show, you who think you’re in the know, don’t know

anything at all, you could be working on a market stall

touting your tatty wares.

We don’t care that you’re there or

What you try to do.

We’ll just expose you to our horrible disingenuous spite

should you fight, strike, allow the like

of the right and his ilk to steal money and

milk and spin cotton into silk for

the rich while they privatise and monetise and fantasise about

an island without poor and shut the front door to refugees and those that can’t help it.

Helpless people, we’re all sheep and we’re just keeping this going.

Let down the shutters, earwig on those mutters of insidious hatred,

We have waited too long and bated our breath under duress

and at the behest of our nation and some say our creation but just pure procrastination

we let it happen. We obey.

Lefty they say, lefty they shout, get them all out,

It’s a drought of humour and humanity and what is left of depravity is

In the US waving placards and flags, “We hate fags”.

In the schools and in the bedrooms, these cages of cobwebs

That spindle around the brain and riddle the soul

are asking for a name, an unticked box.

like chickenpox. It’s itchy, so scratch it

An unhinged door on a latch and an unlit match and they’re

Waiting. What are you so afraid of?

One Year

Like when you crick your neck in the wrong way
and it feels like something not hurt
but jarred.
That's how inexpicable it is to say
one year.
It's nothing like hard.
That's a syllable and it's said by
absolutely everyone.
When I feel miserable and guilty
for feeling miserable
I feel these hundreds of days
have been treading-time, getting used to it.
Un-training my hand to grab you.
De-fathoming my mind, un-synching
the plans.
Mother, bride, grandma, grey in a rocking chair.
Brushing my hair, fixing the clasp on my first bra, wiping my nervous tears.
Memories, hopes.
I wish I could have had both.
You are now This Someone to everyone and
they think they own you because
you left so suddenly; but you only
belong to me.
One year and I do know how many days
but it feels too many to say out loud.
Such a wisp of a life I've been living since
and lying about it all the time. Because
I've been proud and embarrassed.
A thrown away piece of paper with
nothing of note written on it.
An afterbirth of a ghost.
Regrets, what I've wished for the most?
Had I stayed, stroked your
face, scattered your ashes over the coast,
into the wind, away into salt spray,
I might feel better.
I might feel okay.
But you're ether. And I can't feel you either.
Not in a dog's bark, not a goosebump or a blossom-bloom
I don't believe you've been in this room.
You're pure absence. And since
you went, it's a phony world
I walk in. Seaside town with shutters down,
no games today.
No ferris wheel, no waltzers.
No spinning around for fun.
From where I came from to here,
just one year. A crick in the neck;
jarring. Plains and beaches and
farms and my arms can't
hold you.




   a

Mould and Mildew

You smelled like the sodden earth tonight,

when you skulked through the door, thinking me asleep.

Like an insomniac made man, I keep one eye open

always, now.

It’s foul, this smell,

like mould or mildew,

and no matter what I do, it cloys at my throat, in my eyes

and in the air, straight through the middle of the room. 

It grows and it permeates almost everything.

Your ingrate need to bring and be brought desire

has turned our home into a funeral pyre.

I am on top of it, the Guy, and in it I wait.

Peer out at the garden gate;

in nightmares I see you as slapstick: skipping through,

pleased with yourself.

Bolstered by tricks and dressed up in ridiculous Midas lies.

You believe yourself,

your clever wealth of cunning.

And so, running through the door like you won the whole solar system,

you nonchalantly bring in with you this festering

mould. Me, the dismembered cadaver, cold and unmoving,

watches you out of a blinkered eye. I spy

a lie. It’s difficult to discern but there’s a trace and it leaves

a stinging, itching, nettle-adorned scratch down my face.

You have taken a hammer and chisel and destroyed

the dam that was holding its guts back,

and the river breaks its banks;

brings with it its filth.

I goad myself to pretend to be half-awake, fabricate a sham of a snore.

It’s true I don’t have the wherewithal to care any more

but I can’t look at you without being sure I

won’t vomit panic onto the carpeted floor.

And the floor is infected now

with the spores of mould and mildew.

The horrid and dull and obnoxious smell

I will never be able to quell or eradicate.

Noxious evidence that no disinfectant can resolve,

no amount of wire wool can scrape to solve.

My fingers convulse, compelled to torch the whole house

when you slither in next to me, my spouse: a snake shedding

soiled and on-the-floor-clothing.

The gutter-smell is unbearable now, roving and I inhale

the tang of sweat, latex and pleasure.

It escapes your breath, unmeasured, and it’s in the strands of your hair.

Underneath the layers of deceit and decay, I smell her.

Perfumed, distinctive and anonymous and

stiff as a board between us. She’s the phantom

that brings that stinking whisper,

she hangs in and splinters the air, without being there.

I imagined I might share you, at first,

but then the damp got worse and worse and

you seemed to develop a thirst for it.

You went more than you came.

A pathetic fifteen minutes of fame turned into more

than a million crushing hours.

This mould now envelopes this home of ours.

It seeped into the earth and riddled the flowers.

Now, like those plants in the garden and this shanty-house,

I’m destroyed: a dried up insect,

a scorched and upended woodlouse.

A shell of a thing with nothing inside.

And oh, how I’ve tried! I’ve ignored, I’ve denied, supplied

what I think you’ve been looking for.

You still bolt for the door like you’re winning a race

and I’m alone in this derelict place,

embraced and clutched by mould and mildew,

inhaling and choking on asbestos.

suffocated by the scent of my loss.

The End of Fun

 This was always arguably a bad idea.

I should unhand myself of this weapon of destruction,

because the only thing being destructed is my trodden-on and smeared-across heart. 

I was determined to start this but now it’s turned into a jaunt into jail.

A flailing plastic girl; I have furled and unfurled, grasped for something then

curled away and clenched my insides

to bide my time, see what happens, suspend what I deep down believe.

Then: irretrievable, lost: a memory, only last week

I attempted to stage an intervention on myself.

I sabotaged whatever we had. Planted a landmine and

launched a jihad.

Mostly good, but admittedly bad, I deleted those digits, the text.

I still, wearing these pink tinted specs, wish it had lasted

just a little bit longer.

I still think that had I been stronger and more the finished article,

perhaps all these little particled nights

could have been stitched together and those twilights

in the tiny hours might have been stretched

into mornings. You’d have wanted to stay, if you could.

But I’ve never been that good

at playing it cool, despite all the warnings.

I don’t always get the rules, and – well – if you do, you don’t seem to care for them.

Temptation is always there, a message,

a step backwards, down another rung, I’ve got the lesser-known lower hand

that no one wants to be lumbered with.

A significant number of people I love and listen to

tell me not to back-track;

instead, they say: “sprint away

as fast as your little legs will carry you”.

So I go: through brambles and nettles that bite my ankles. Run up

a steep hill and then  leap over the hurdles.

Try to knock down obstacles and barricades

that I’ve arranged and manoeuvred to get in my own way.

I think I mistook the games you play

for something different.

This is nothing and that will never be a lot of anything.

As long as you’ve got me waiting here, trying to be

the perfect person to you,

slapping myself slick and shaving myself hairless, on cue.

I wrap my legs around purely because you ask me to.

What a joke.

To you, I’m a bespoke service in banter, gossip and sex.

You rarely get the first two because you’re only interested in what comes next,

and the end of the evening is always the same:

you’ve never called me by my first name.

It’s a beguiling and bewildering

game of pretend.  I wouldn’t be your friend if you begged me.

No magic 8 ball can toss up a happy ending out of blue;

No mind-tricks can bend this spoon to reach out to you,

no one will strike an enchanted match to light a fire

if you’re not warm already.

The firewood is dead and rotting and stinks of your rejection.

On reflection, instead of thinking straight or

doing the right thing, I flung myself towards you and then I think you

flung me further than you meant to.

In the end, you decided – didn’t you – that

you weren’t going to bother going and fetching

me. I was left in the drizzle, with the firewood,

and you thought fizzling out was good enough treatment for me.

So, over and out like a rained-on tea light.

Swan back to your manufactured life

that looks normal and so civilised to the outside.

Whiter than your cricket whites everyone thinks, but your

empty chest has no heart inside.

I’ve tried to burrow, dig around. But the only sound is an echo,

bouncing off a cavern of dry ice that stings

the eyes and chills the marrow.

What does she know and how would she feel?

And why do I feel the guilt when you feel

nothing at all?

One day, a twig will fall, get caught in the spokes

of the wheel you’re spinning.

The flimsy paper-thin veneer, like a mist

that’s gone before it had chance to disappear.

Your “life”. You are supposed to live it,

be real, feel something.

You don’t, and I conclusively and absolutely won’t

waste any more minutes.

My life will be far simpler without the delusion of

you possibly, could-be, maybe being in it.

Stay away. Stop all of this.

Take back your poisoned, puppet-master kiss.

I’m done. 

This is no longer fun.

Carly's Story

She was nineteen,
and he brought me home to keep her company.
She had a big belly,
and she decided to feed and walk me.
This thing came home,
it was small and cried and I didn't want to leave it alone.
Another one came,
and I felt the same.
We moved from place to place,
sometimes I ate lipsticks,
sometimes I hid in the chair and sofa space.
I ran away.
That was a bad day.
When I came back they loved me that little bit more.
They rode me like a horse, though it hurt my little legs, I liked it.
They dressed me up.
They brushed my hair.
I was always there.
I slept at the bottom of their beds.
When he heard I was dead
a little bit of him seemed to die with me
this dog's life was the best he could give me.
I reflected their childhood in my eyes.
I was a little scrawny surprise.
I used to put up my paw.
But one day I just had to collapse on the floor.
And when I closed my eyes on that final night
Something sunny went out of the light
and I saw them cry but not hold each other;
they wouldn't feel the same grief till they lost their mother.
I witnessed it all,
the rise and the fall
of the family.
The houses and fights and the sadness
I hid behind the sofa during points of sheer madness
And I ran up to them all.
Jumped up, gave my paw, rolled over
I couldn't have been better had I been called "Rover".
A mongrel from a shop window,
I was a dog that showed some children to grow,
I comforted her in the screams of the night
I made sure he was in bed and alright.
I watched over these friends,
Through storms and around the bends,
Until my legs gave way,
And I was unable
I was unstable and old
Truth be told,
I'm still watching.

The Story

Born in Airedale, in the sixties,
they called her "Tubby Lister".
She was a late bloomer,
stayed in her room, playing Wham.
Then BAM.
Benidorm, 1982.
She found you,
or you found her, who knows.
This is how it goes: the Yorkshire and Lancashire merger
took my future further.
Dexy and his Midnight Runners sang about Eileen,
and there was Helen, she was beautiful and seventeen.

So this began. You ran, and
you both ran after each other,
I don't ever doubt that you loved one another.
A little flat, a little puppy, a little baby: me.
Things got fairly serious, quite seriously.
You changed your life, and so did she,
that's just the way people thought things had to be.

Imagine if life had just split right there,
you had not stayed together,
you'd said it wasn't fair
to be tied down, to be stuck in that town,
where all you felt was some rope dragging you down.
Take the baby, raise it alone, Grandad said,
My god, can you imagine the life I'd have had instead?

I apparently emerged into this life,
With a little puppy to accompany me.
The first child, the one in pink,
in photos.
A tiny flat, I wish I could remember that.
For a long time I thought I was a mistake
but what a mistake to make.
Flashing pictures on the wall,
years later, made me see
that you loved me completely.

And then came the other little surprise,
Daniel with his curly hair and squinty eyes.
A stout little maniac with shovels for hands,
he ruined days out and kicked his shoes in the sand,
he jumped into pools and cracked up his skull,
if life were a china shop, he was the bull.

He was clever they said, a genius perhaps,
And growing up, despite the occasional lapse,
he remained the clever one.
And I resigned to be the one that never won.
She loved him more; I always knew.
There was just so much more of me that reminded her of you.
Until I left, went away, spread some miles.
She reached for me in the agony of a trial.

And our story has gone on a different trail,
Thinking twice now that I've lost you, I've flailed
and gasped and we've been through so much strife.
But you are the anchor of my life.
We are the same, and I am proud of that fact,
every now and then, though, I need to react
to feeling the way I do. And you can't talk to me,
in the way I need my dad, best friend, mentor, to be.

And then Helen thrashed out of this life.
Or slept through it.
Doesn't matter, she's not here to
talk to if I wanted to. Which I do.
I lost a limb, no not that, an organ.
A piece of me that can't be replaced,
I will never close my eyes and not
see her face. Every thing I do is laced
with the loss of her.

So we are now placed here. Later.
Your children are together. And trying. We need to try to
get over mum dying.
I know we are grown and we are old enough,
but is it still okay to say I am not that tough?

I still need that man.
Because I'm your child and you're my father. That will never change
No matter my sadly increasing age.
You still are that hero. That Rochdale imposter.
Don't let me lose you, now that I've lost her.