A final apology

Thanks so much to those who gave crit. This very slightly adapted version is the finished piece

I want an apology.
For the gloss wrapped varnish
of womans magazines.

For the fish slick pages
of fake dreams;
models like cars,

with their red, slashed
gloss of beguiling charms,
come hither dressed in

children’s jeans.
I want an apology
for the girl,

splaying the weight of her thighs
on a gym seat, frowning in a mirror
and connecting up the

place at which they meet with
skimming the calories in breakfast.
I want an apology – for the long-fast

of the woman shivering in spring,
examining her wrists
like a witch through railings.

For the witch,
who’s really just a
woman over 30,

trying to hide
the lines that she’s made
whilst falling in love and

breaking her heart and
having a future.
I want an apology-

for The Snow Queen -
happy to be childless
and The White Witch -

carving a world
from the ribs of the man
who’d been thinking he’d made her.

For the blood on her gown
and the hooves in her face
and the maw of a lion.

For Medusa
and Delilah,
and the old crone,

and the weird sister-
and for the 4 siblings
that couldn’t all be

Cinderella:
for the women who fall
so she can stand

I want an apology.
Sometime. Anytime.
Now.

Hearing Nothing

I can hear silence:
the white noise of nothing,
a generator pumping
somewhere inside a wall,
in a brick built box of a
plaster hall, in a
city beyond
hearing.

I can hear cars:
one after the other,
like they’re tied
bumper to bumper,
with long strands of rope
made of night time.
Their noise is lower
than the purr of the silence-
like wind being moved on
by air ducts
or geese.

I can hear ticking:
soft moth creeping
between exhalations
of burning wheels;
flitting on the
sound cords of silence,
like a quantum mechanical
engine. Can I hear-

clicking?
Can I hear the sound of
ligaments creaking? of
people thinking? Of saliva
licking beneath my teeth.
Can I hear my ear drum
breathe?
Can I hear follicles lifting
one by one
like hairs pulling out of
concrete?

Can you hear it?
…
Tell me-

Peppermint Tea

Peppermint Tea at
three in the morning
I’ve got indigestion

but can’t stop from yawning
and sitting up writing
is crazy.

An Apology: 2nd Draft

Is it better than the first?….

I want an apology.
For the gloss wrapped varnish
of womans magazines.

For the fish slick pages
of fake dreams,
models like cars,

with their red, slashed
gloss of beguiling charms,
come hither dressed in

children’s jeans.
I want an apology
for the girl,

splaying the weight of her thighs
on a gym seat, frowning in a mirror
and connecting up the

place at which they meet with
skimming the calories in breakfast.
I want an apology – for the long-fast

of the woman shivering in spring,
examining her wrists
like a witch through railings .

For the witch,
who’s really just a
woman over 30,

trying to hide
the lines that she’s made
whilst falling in love and

breaking her heart and
having a future.
I want an apology-

for The ‘Evil’ Queen -
happy to be childless
and The White Witch -

carving a world
from the ribs of the man
who’d been thinking he’d made her.

For the blood on her gown
and the hooves in her face
and the maw of a lion.

For Medusa
and Delilah,
and the old crone,

and the weird sisters-
and for the 4 siblings
that couldn’t all be

Cinderella:
for the women who fall
so she can stand

I want an apology.
Sometime. Anytime.
Now.

An Apology

I want an apology.
For the gloss wrapped varnish
of womans magazines.

For the fish slick pages
of fake dreams, models
like showroom cars,

with their red, slashed
gloss of beguiling charms,
come hither dressed in

children’s jeans.
I want an apology
for the girl,

splaying the weight of her thighs
on a gym seat, frowning in a mirror
and connecting up the

place at which they meet with
skimming the calories of breakfast.
For the long-fast

of the woman shivering in spring,
examining her wrist
like a witch through railings .

For the witch,
who’s really just a
woman over 30,

sensing the new moon of
an old religion, and the icons
turning against her – pointing

their bone milk sticks
at the lines that she’s made
whilst falling in love and

breaking her heart and
having a future -
and calling them ugly.

For The Snow Queen -
happy to be childless
and The White Witch -

carving a world from the ribs
of male morality.
For the blood on her gown

and the hooves in her face
and the maw of a lion.
For the old crone,

and the weird sisters
and the 4 siblings
that couldn’t all be

Cinderella:
for the women who fall
so she can stand

I want an apology.

Chair

My Mother had a chair like you:
dark, ruby skinned, light
pattenation like the
small brass rubbing of a
snake skin.

My mother had four
like you, round her
dolls house crib of a
dining room, but three of them
broke, leaving only one-

fragile, waiting, never sat in
for fear of breaking its
fine brittle bones of
creaking wood. My mother
had a chair like you.

Lonesome in The Tree

Lonesome in The Tree. Waiting
for someone else to come
and shake me free;
pull me through the branches
rescue me from bird song,
man shaped feathered arms and
small pressed beaks. I’m -

lonesome in The Tree, with
bright globes of electric fruit
strung across the bar like fairies-
hung from raftered beams-
lonesome, for a world where
bright things breathe and
things make sense. Tell them-

the floor is not a filthy mess
of black dots,
the ash tray not
a place for killing lungs,
that the hands around my glass
are only pressed for waiting-
Not lonely.

Angry Young Woman

I’m so angry with you I can’t breathe.
I can’t see, I can’t sleep.
I’m blind and dizzy and
sleepless with rage-
it’s lodged in my throat like a
tight bundle of
balled up words,
desperate to fight their way free-
so fraught – with electric energy
to sink their frames into your skin,
they’re pounding at the
light membranes of my swallowing,
they’re blowing strangled notes
through the oesophagus, they’re
pouring the violence of salted water
down my boiling cheeks – these words

are like the thin pages
of too small writing -
black marks on white sheets,
layered like petit meue-fille,
coated and sandwiched and
carefully laid throughout my
small intestine.

If you’d let me breathe them out.
If you’d let me sigh them like a
hard screwed valve-
released, a window opened
on a clean square of red flame,
shouting from a burning building-
if you’d just let me speak-

and listen to me, really, really
listen to me, then these words
would stop being so angry.
These words would rush like a river
but finally start to settle
like fine antacid silt. These words
would pour themselves like milk

and we would learn the art of sleep
and touching fingers in the darkness
and grazing cheeks with lips-

please.

Monkey Gone Wrong

No-there is too much pain,
can’t you see it?
beating in my back like a

pack of wild monkeys
dying of tuberculosis
in a jungle of twisted silk.

I’ve got burning
and who knew that
things could be hurt in

so many strange and
varied ways.
This is like a metaphor

for sliding through the squares of
open days; eating sunlight
in great cubes of darkness,

as stars drifts bleakly
this is a white ventricle
turning red.

My water is broken.
So I’m gulping
canasta after canasta of

clear white fluid,
falling out of faucets in
roughed up movement

fluoride rich and cold and
slipping into raw pink piping,
making it clean.

I can visualize
the juices of artichokes,
medicated saline,

the sluice gates at
canals, the run off
at drains.

But this water is hard
to keep on pushing,
and its progress slows

like fading light.
The jungle is growing
and the monkeys are moaning.

Their round mouthed screams
are muffled, like flowers
in grass.

Blogger Pain

Argh!! Earlier today I visited one of the blogs I have listed on my roll. I’ve been a bit off the radar lately-not posting as much and not surfing as much and if surfing-not commenting, as much.

This surfing and commenting is for me as important as the writing. Since starting to blog, being a part of an active community has really helped to stimulate my creativity. However, any regular visitors here will probably have noticed my output slowing -and as I involve myself less and am consequently involved with less, this makes matters worse. So, in step one of Operation Restore Lydia’s Creative Activity, I went surfing.

I began this morning by visiting the blog of Janepoe-and that’s where the best intentions went to weed. Jane Poe had writtten a really good poem on the subject of pain. It touched me because though the pain she was referring to was that of a physical nature, it was pain that had been getting in the way of her writing-and she was quick to dedicate the poem to pain felt by anyone in anyway. So, in a rather egocentric way it resounded for me. The pain of (if I’m honest) a malingering blue funk of depression I’ve been swimming in lately-splashing up bubbles, getting in the way of my writing hands and creative thoughts..and then of course-the pain of not writing.

So, I thought, what better way to reconnect with my blogging community, sharpen my creative bones on the wet stone of someone elses writing-what better way than to read this very good poem and leave some considered feedback.

I left a comment. In addition to leaving another, shorter version of the above in Janes ‘leave a comment’ box, I also commented on some of the specific expressions she’d used. Pain as “An occupying force/Throbbing consequences/Of broken parts”. Also the idea of pain having a kind of existential crisis about itself-facilitated by the use of painkillers. I enjoyed reading the poem and I enjoyed leaving the feedback.

However, no sooner had I written out my masterpiece of feedback, did I run into problems. Blogger wouldn’t let me comment!! I tried signing in with my Google i.d. No go, I tried this several times. No go. I copied the text with the intention of pasting it up on my own site-but in between closing the Blogger window and opening mine I made the mistake of leaving the room…at which point my almost as evil as Blogger boyfriend swooped in and cut and pasted something else on the same computer…meaning that when I did return to paste my own cut-it had gone!

You know, this all wasted some minutes and caused me no small grumpy young woman rage. I’ve decided I don’t like Blogger. I’ve decided maybe my recent blue funk and lack of posting is all Bloggers fault. I don’t care that this couldn’t possibly be the case. I don’t care.

Jane, should you read this, will you speak to Blogger and tell it to play nice?