Little Women Making Loud Noises

I’m not sure Ms. Alcott had

this in mind but I love

loud women in my life,

singing their songs full-throated,

spearing their words through

vain assumptions,

shaking pulpit and

parliament and shouting

“harder, faster” into my

receptive ear.

Professionals

Because the people who

think they know will

always prevail, we who

do know approach the

shoot with faint faith and

little hope, determined to

do our best whilst

praying for the dubious

charity of our audience.

Funny Bones

I’d rather be buried whole so

some 26^th Century archaeologist might

disinter my bones and make

wild assumptions about my

life from what’s left of my

DNA.

Bare Bone

However careful we are, some

bare bone adheres to our soles

after even a short walk,

unhousled by history,

truffled by burrowers,

powdered by time,

blown by breezes into the

bushes we brush by,

trodden into our carpets and

perhaps, depending on how

fastidious we are,

ending up in our

vacuum cleaners.

Legion

You changed your look

each time I saw you

not knowing which

you was you

boy or girl

vamp or victim

fashionista or frump

Lezbollah or someone’s Sub

Mother or Child but

it mattered not for

you were you and

you were Legion.

These Islands

These islands are scored and

scarred with geometric shapes, the

meaning of which we merely

guess at, full of fantasies.

 

These islands have buried somewhere

more bodies than now live, their

lives as impenetrable as the

mist over their fields.

 

These islands are full of people who

jostle the ghosts, don’t see them

hanging in hedges like cobwebs,

swept from their houses like spiders.

 

These islands are full of strange angles,

unnatural mounds, stones pitched from

horizontal to vertical behind which

someone, at some time, hid.

Scorn

My business has many ways to express scorn:

the Lighting Cameraman who couldn’t

light a box of matches; the

Director who couldn’t

direct traffic; the

Producer who couldn’t

produce his prick from his trousers.

 

But you have refined scorn to a

simple glance.

Sun/Shade

Protecting myself from the heat

I have built a

shrine of shadows.

Empty Dancefloors

There’s this invisible

iron rod between us

ten feet long so

when I move you

move too in a

perverted mirror of

how we danced once on

empty dancefloors.

Pass the Parcel

Women confuse men:

it’s a gift, one I have been

trying all my life to unwrap,

unsure what might lie beneath the

final crumpled fold.