'60's HOUSEWIVES

Our vocation is eternal drudgery. Every day
is the same: washing, cooking, cleaning, shopping -
and all this without an ounce of gratitude.
And many of us are little more than breeding machines...

But what we really want
is to be Rock Stars with wild hair,
we want our men to notice us up there on stage, where
we're belting out power songs, prancing seductively,
letting the lights melt us, sweating
with our heavy makeup running into creases
that will someday deepen into wrinkles (but we're ageless, aren't we?).
Let us girls form a united front. Support each other,
go shopping for perfume, wolf-whistle
workmen on building sites, and make eyes
at passing truck drivers. Let us find our equality!
Let us take coffee breaks in the park lying on our backs,
and accept complements from passers by
with knowing smiles. Let's wear micro skirts
with bare legs. We'll walk barefoot along the shore,
totally free of time schedules, duty or obligations -
all without the slightest pang of guilt...

Oh yes, it all begins in our imagination, girls - self-belief!
Why shouldn't we be wanton mistresses if we choose
or, perhaps, independent career women?
But the choice should always be ours alone.
Our lives, our way.

DEFECTOR

Where the Battle of Culloden was fought I am.
Where the voices of the fallen call me
down into their comfortless tombs of clay.
I'm sinking, sinking

to where sunlight never reaches
and the soil weighs heavy
on the tartan and bones
enshrouded in despair.

I am lucid, not dreaming,
nerves on highest alert for recollections
not my own. Mentally recording.

Fear spikes my blood
as I gradually descend
through the centuries of suppression
anger and resentment
concealed in this forsaken patch of earth.

My inquisitive nature
has brought me here
to this place of utter misery.

Deeper I sink to where the blood has dried.
I've only my faith to shield me
from the clash of murderous steel
and the unimaginable horror
of frenzied hate and treachery:

an English King and Scottish Prince
so unequally matched.
The rape and pillage, torture
and slaughter...

that prompts the gnawing question:
whose side am I on?

RUTH

Inspired by the British TV series, "The Life and Loves of a She Devil"


A tower, perched on a cliff edge:
picturesque, isolated.
Oh how I loathe and detest it!
It is the residence of Mary Fisher.

Bobbo, you promised you'd always love me,
but how husbands can lie
when they promise to never leave you.
Now, I am alone

in the house we once shared.
Alone, with only memories
of how we'd lived together, loved,
and conceived our children.

Did you really believe it? That I
could share you with that whore?
Well, after you left me I burnt the house down.
Let you and she be saddled with our children!

I  had my own life to rebuild, without you.
Each night I cried and cried though,
until blind fury ousted heartbreak. Naked,
I studied myself in the mirror. Yes, perhaps I was ugly -

what some men would term "a dog."
And as I scrutinized my eyes, I was shocked:
I searched deep into the pupils. There was nothing there!
You and she had sucked out my very Soul.

The She Devil took up residence then, in my hollow core.
Red eyes stared back at me, and pure power rose up inside.
I did it then - the thing you'd driven me to.
I dedicated myself to revenge.

Ah, the anticipation of payback felt SO good! It had begun.
I befriended the mother she had tucked away in a home
simply because she couldn't be bothered with her,
and I brought her back to her "beloved" daughter.

Oh how she hated the chaos her mother created - just as she hated children.
And ours were already driving a wedge
between you and her, Bobbo. I was exultant!
The She Devil's influence was growing stronger.

Others like myself I drew around me: the
ugly, down-trodden "dogs."  Together,
we helped each other to find our place of power.
We all wanted the same thing. To gain control of our lives.

Soon, I had stolen all your clients' funds - we still had a joint account, remember!
Ha! Bobbo the successful accountant! Your boring wife had outwitted you.
I was by then a wealthy woman, even more so than Mary Fisher.
I  could afford nice clothes, expensive

jewelry and sexy high heels. Bobbo,
eat your heart out! But I hadn't finished yet.
Oh no! The ultimate satisfaction was yet to come.
Agonizing, extensive cosmetic surgery.

I had to be petite, like her. But
six feet two doesn't go into five feet four.
They said it couldn't be done.
But how I proved them wrong!

Liposuction, tucks just about everywhere,
complete facial and genital transformations -
and even a section of bone
removed from each long leg.

Now, I was a much better version of Her: in fact, she was
a mere shadow of myself.
The She Devil had cursed her.
And there was no coming back from that.

Her life fell apart. The celebrated novelist
had become boring to her once adoring public.
And you, Bobbo, were growing tired of her. Poor fragile thing!
Her looks were fading too. Now I  had sucked out her Soul!

Just one look and you were mine again, but this time on my terms.
The She Devil had total power over you.
I now owned you, body and Soul, just as you'd once owned me.
And the She Devil smiled...

BEING BI-POLAR

For Jeremy...

I'm not mad,
it just seems that way
when mania strikes
and I'm mega enthusiastic
about what others would deem trivia.
The chemicals in my brain get all mixed up.
I am akin to a robot prone to short-circuiting.
Neural pathways malfunction,
creating loops that repeat themselves
over and over and over again,
creating a kind of an acute awareness
of other's emotions. Consequently,
crowds become overwhelming -
indeed, terrifying. Their en masse
thoughts and moods penetrate my skull.
Major panic attack!
It is the loops that let them in.
The so-called "normal" brain is immune
to this kind of intrusion - it's
possessor is incapable of comprehending
how I process this additional flow of data
and so they fear and avoid me.
I am grossly misunderstood.
I am the actor who became his favourite role.

I feel for the psychiatrists. Suddenly
I am an irresistible enigma, a paradox
their analytic minds need to resolve
in order to justify their superiority
over "impaired" individuals like myself. Of course
it's all an elaborate delusion - this superiority.
My loops will ultimately defeat them:
a mind like mine cannot be categorised.
It travels too furiously, too erratically
and never quite integrates with my body.
It is like an anthill: a myriad of separate awarenesses
radiating out in all directions simultaneously.
The analyst, at best, will simply slip
between the lines of communication
and become entangled within
the abstract metaphors
that define who I am.
Only I can unravel the whole truth:
I AM LEGION.

RADIOTHERAPY

The text book's dogma:
see, I am categorised - it is
what they decree, not I.

Sentence is passed. I am to be
a lifer, it seems.
And that life is unthinkable.

Such cursed fear,
of living with bone damage,
lung atrophy, tissue loss, pain.

Pre cancer days, I crave your return -
through a window in time, to wholeness.
Oh I cannot, will not submit...

Recovering with my son...in my own way! I have decided to refuse radiotherapy and drug therapy, as I believe the side effects far outweigh the benefits. 

Please wish me luck...xxx

HASTINGS CASTLE

Above the town it looms, timeworn, ruinous.
From the south the ocean devours it's foundations
year upon year, inch by inch.

Yet defiant it stands. A sprawling moss-covered hulk,
repelling the violent storms that threaten to destroy it -
It, a survivor for nine centuries and more!

Touch it's weathered vestiges, feel it's history.
Commune with it. Open your mind and experience it all:
the Hundred Years' War, the Dissolution, the bombs of  World War II.

The gloaming is the best time. Such low light
plays tricks upon the mind. The tourists gone,
now only revenants wander among the gloomy ramparts.

Let yourself dissolve into the silence and through half-closed eyes
glimpse what wasn't there a moment ago.
Distant times, the glint of steel, bodies of the slain

and the castle restored to it's former glory:
a shimmering grey-gold mirage, suspended
in the indigo threads of night.

IN BANGLADESH

Lines written on 24th December, 2018... 

It will be lunch time now in Valletta.
They will be dining
and sipping wine in the
roadside restaurants and watching
the passing tourists
who have come to celebrate Christmas.

It will be dark and cold
in Alberta at this time.
The streets will be lit up
with multi coloured Christmas lights
that bewitch both eye and brain.
The city will be mostly asleep,
except for the party goers
singing along the sidewalks,
like the girl in the red
Santa costume, dancing
around a pole in the all night club.

In Reykjavik they'll be clearing snow
from front doors, then going out
last minute Christmas shopping
on skis and sleds over deep snow
that sparkles and glistens
beneath a dark winter sky.

In Bangladesh it is evening,
but not like other evenings.
This one is tragic.
A tsunami has hit.
The villages, the people,
all have been swept away.
By the hand of God?
What true God would inflict such agony
upon his faithful and obedient worshippers?

Volcanoes will erupt, spewing out
molten lava. Tsunamis and earthquakes follow...
while, elsewhere, are peaceful paradises.

In all these places I have never been
my presence dwells: aah, such pleasure...
and the most heart-rending and debilitating compassion.