A Little Number

Before I was born
Just a twinkle
In the universe
Of possibilities

Reflected in eyes
Both bluest grey
And olive green
Did you know me?

Or was the I of me
And mine all one to you?
My seedling promised,
But unplanned

Was a meeting of
Hearts and minds
Foretold in song
To bardic strains

Or merely Cast
Upon the plain and
Simple lines
That sprang and pranced

This two-fold dance
Of fire and ice
Your foreign couplings
Kept apart

By Mother Earth
Who did not dream
Of feelings torn
From the widening

Womb-like walls
And shallow shores
Of an underground
Kingdom

Nuts and Colonels
Carried away
With crowns of pine,
From slender hopes

To careful, caring
Tender traps in
Wadded cotton
Whose snoring sheets

Wedded Pluto’s
Darker dreams to
Persephone’s Oblivion
Before there was me

Last one standing

When they came by
For a cupful of sugar
Took my old man
And waltzed over the hill

I was still standing
Polishing silver
Gonna be standing
Forever, until…

Next time a caller
I’d hoped would be smaller
Tripped on her doorstep
Got carried away

I was still standing
To see to a Mother
Gonna keep standing
Another long day

One time you told me
That things never mattered
Half the amount I
Pretended to say

I was still standing
Alone with no lover
Not understanding
Which words made you stay

Then they came by
With a warrant for searching
Hoping to find
What I’d hidden away

I was still standing
In need of your comfort
No one to hear me
And nothing to say

Turn from the shadows
If you fear to follow
All those who greet us
And pass on their way

I am still standing
Myself and no other
One day I’ll falter
But never today

Choreographic Activism

I polished the drilling
Of Ms Oriana Fox today
Who’s disgruntled, but willing
Teaching folks in her own way

She’s quite sane and more sorted
Now plus one and a bit
Feeling slightly less thwarted
By the usual shit

She’s booked: gig’s on next Saturday
Way oop North of Watford
Dance-protesting the cuts that say
All artists will get shafted

And by doing a take-off of
Maria Miller
With some showtunes and JayZ
In a wig as a Tiller

Girl is dancing in her vest
To raise awareness fast
That if these cuts are not arrested
Arts have breathed their last

Musical Chères

Searching for my roots
Through old records
I pause, ears cocked
For my muscle memory
Awaiting the right decade
Simon and Garfunkel
Soothe my silences
Leonard Cohen for my
Loneliest of nights
Lucio Dalla nostalgia
Juliette Greco and Piaf
For flights of fancy
Childhood Winters in Paris
With a pianist thumping
Square-toed rhythms
Ballet port-de-bras
Watery arpeggios to mock
High arches, pale faces
Pink noses and blue lips
With Tchaikovsky diluted
We shivered on the parquet
In a sea of legs and faces
Sprung floors and tall mirrors
Threw our joint grimace
To the feeble footwork
Of the adults at the barre
Then Fleetwood Mac’s
Rhiannon echoes past
The jazz records listing
To the left of the top shelf
And as the sound swells
I raise my hands, start to turn
Eyes closed, I dance
Delighted that for once,
Nobody is watching

Tea for one

I hum a mournful tune, sat amid my geranium pots, on a European balcony, years ago. The beauty of the minor key, sweet in its infinite sadness, pleases me, and I feel somehow included in its nocturnal fumblings. I too have known loss, felt pain, loved where none was to be had in return, and in my imperfect cadences, I taste of the sublime. I swing my arms and legs in the warm breeze, perched on the high-backed kitchen chair, its wicker seat creaking under my shifting weight. The sound, as if on a small boat, gently rising and falling with the swell of my melody, prompts me to look up at the stars. Their twinkling pinpricks wink back at me in turn. The cooling tea I slurp and the chink of the mug as it chips against the concrete balustrade remind me that we are fragile, yet fluid. An ever-changing puzzle, shifting from time to time to keep up with the pace of this universal dance. I am in rhythm, and yet out of it. Touched by visions of truth and forms lacking in substance, I drift through my lazy daily routine, pausing to concentrate on such mentally taxing activities as shaving my legs and to admire the fleeting brilliance of newly applied toenail polish.

A plea for putting the clocks back

Oh give me once more my time again
That I might use it better
There’s so much more I would like to do
Not follow the law to the letter
I’d love to dance on a windy shore
Swim naked in the sea
Make passionate love to you once more
Take full-fat milk in my tea.
I never again would refuse to fight
For fear of what I’d lose
But into battle would march – with might
To wound, not just to bruise.
I’d see all colours in their true forms
Not fudge equality
And I’d laugh at any who chose to scorn
The way my life would be.
Yes, give me once more my time again
I know I’ve more to give!
That I might share all the love and the pain
That comes with learning to live.

Reminiscing in a morbid fashion

I long to recapture those halcyon days
Of spirit so wild and free
Where all of the world to me was a maze
And my only loves for thee.
But now I am older and jaded too
No more have I leave to roam.
And like a chattel am bolted down
To job, and hearth, and home.
Oh, how might I relive my days long gone
And change what deeds I could
That I might achieve what I’ve never done
As well as “being good”.
I’d not be so clever – not all of the time
Nor do what I know is right.
But talk back to those who put me down
And stand up to all in a fight.
Show what love I wanted, and share
With those who did not me deserve.
Not tiptoe for fear of igniting those
Whose tempers they should curb.
I’d laugh at the fools and sing to the moon
And dance with my skirts held high.
I’d act to all like a merry loon
Who does not fear to die.

Dancing around the bedroom in my pyjamas

Dancing around the bedroom in my pyjamas I pause to pirouette, feeling the scrape of the carpet, crumb-covered, beneath the ball of my blister-blighted foot, and I am beautiful. Without makeup, without mirrors, with no one to look at me or to stroke my ever-hungry ego, I breathe in the stale, book-dusty air, hear the tinny music of the radio, spy your socks on the floor, and, tutting to myself, march proudly onward to face the morning.

Starstruck at Capo d’Anno

I look to the future and what do I see?
My year-ful of past gazing fondly at me.
I turn on my toes and do an about face,
To find myself staring back at my first place.
But try as I might, twist and turn all my days,
The future will greet me, my mind is a maze.
I see now how vain was my endless display,
To seek out my present and past with one eye.
Yet trained in star-gazing and picking up jokes,
Not learning the nature of time, nor her yokes,
I still on occasion, though valiant my fight,
To catch my own tail, pirouette in the light.