The girl I wanted to be

I envied you your freedom

To wear short hair

Pierce things

I had only seen

On TV

Fall off your motorino

Breaking a wrist

With such impunity

Unafraid of the

Consequences

Approaching exams

Short skirts

Body paint

Cool for days

I didn’t see

The things that

Frightened you

Kept you acting

The social butterfly

To avoid authority

Running from those

Who demanded things

You could not bear to give

How could I?

With my own demons

To manage

In my long skirts

Flat shoes, subtle

Silent screams

Haunting adolescence

Like a will-o-the-wisp

We are similar now

Grown treading different

Yet parallel paths

Outlasting our pursuers

Ignoring our denigrators

Fiercely seeking our own truth

In a sea of snake oil salesmen

We were never friends

Yet hardly enemies

Mere acquaintances

Each wrapped up in

Our own, private concerns

On nodding terms

Barely aware the other

Existed, but rivals

For all the wrong reasons

I wish you well

Perhaps one day

Our minds may form

A greeting longer

Than the casual nod

We spare one another

From across the room

At some ghastly

Virtual reunion

Organised by those

Who peaked in high school

And want to compare

Their declining ambitions

In a club house

After dark

Like giggling teens

While the next generation

Smokes round the back

Of the toilets

Hoping a mint

Will disguise the smell

As parents pretend

Not to recognise

Their own poor choices

In their offspring

Still single?

Deserted?

Divorced?

Half dead?

Any rugrats?

Really?

Same. Or nearly.

Deep scars from wounds

Old and new

Here’s to us

And all those like us

How about it, Fay?

We happy few

Still standing here

Upon this day

Slim Pickings

I cannot watch another film

Filled with wispy heroines

And their ‘to die for’ figures

Those dreams were snuffed out

Alongside Diana’s candle in the wind

Like Havisham’s Estella

They are conceived in spite

To break lonely hearts

No, give me a fat-hearted flick

With plaster food on every table

And I will feed my soul

In comfort

DElectable

If I were one, not two or three
I wouldn’t care what you thought of me
I’d have the choice to change, to be
The person inside, outside. Free.

But there is you, and her and him
And cool, and chic, and fair and slim
I don’t know where I should begin
To twist myself to meet each whim

Opinions hover overhead
What might she think? What would be said?
You couldn’t tell what’s in my head
I gathered thoughts, but lost the thread…

They’re moulding me to something new
To shine in every interview
And sell my soul – in shades of blue
With hints at things that could be true.

Introducing Jerry

He crouches in the centre
Of a sparsely furnished room
Long-cracked leather, missing buttons
Stained with sun and life and food
With fine scratches on his shoulders
To reflect the life he’s led
When he dressed for television
Or he stood in for a bed
Marked by forty years of sitting
In the heart of family
Soaked with tears and piled with knitting
Crumbed with toast and splashed with tea
He attends upon our leisure
Calls to strangers to feel free
Take their ease upon the contours
Of our veteran settee

A dystopian vision

A country left to go hang, its policies blowing in the wind like so many dead leaves, rolling across the bloated corpses of those yet clutching the reins of power in their vice-like grip of death.  The fetid air issuing from their purple cheeks only serving to stir up a small cyclone, spewing banknotes in a circle to help scatter the blame far and wide, sowing discord and discontent unevenly across the land, oozing mistrust and perverting the course of the rivers of truth to ensure every citizen has their rightful opportunity to know the bitter taste of fear.

Is this my land of plenty?  My Jerusalem?  This green and pleasant land has become a granite-grey terrain, a place of howling apes in media zoos.  Where once the sun shone down, reflected in the shimmering seas and rivers, upon the citizens at work, now we see, but dark skies and troubled waters, from the defeated couch-potato throne of the unemployed.  We gaze with disinterest at the hopeless perspectives issuing forth from the hi-tech plastic box in the corner.  We mark the passing of time, not by the seasons, or the light of the stars, but by counting the unnatural, tallying the vanishing wrinkles on each ‘celebrity’ face, and we wonder… What is to become of us now?