NaPoWriMo Day 23 Poem 16 The Magician

Ten years old at the window my dad smashed
with a milk bottle the night that he came home
full of wino spittle. The house became a giant box
we locked ourselves in. Me, my mum and my sister
hid like we'd found the trap doors, like we'd found
the magicians secret, the place that hides the magic.
My Dad became the magician that made us disappear

and he couldn't bring us back.

NaPoWriMo Day 22 Poem 15 What To Do

 Natalie comes to the door wearing a black miniskirt,

she

    leads me into her room, opening 

her lips on my neck,

        snaking    her   tongue   along    my   jaw.

Nerves tell the body not to move

because it is true that I am sixteen and stiff

in all the wrong places.

It will take me a week to hate myself

for having to try 

               so hard to forget her.

She has undone me, asking

that I do not fall for her,

    she says it will be easy to forget me.

It will take me another week to hate her

for thinking 
      that she can tell the heart
what to do.

Gentrification NaPoWriMo Day 18 Poem 14

Home is no longer
a murder mile, where I lay
in bed, mistaking gun shots
for fireworks at 1am.

Home is no longer
the cross fire of a turf war,
or a hooded 11pm shadow
in Lower Clapton with a blade
put to the warm vein in my neck.

Home is ordering gingerbread lattes and croissants
with smoked cheese and cherry-toms,
at a price that politely robs me.

Home is my buttoned up checkered shirt
cat-walking to Hackney Picture House,
at a price that politely robs me.

NaPoWriMo Day 17 Poem 13 Crushed Rain

I remember the crush 

of rain in Ken Wood, how hard

it came as we kissed under an oak tree.

Afterwards, my arms

curled coyly around your waist, 

as we ran through the field onto wet streets

where everything sparkled silver

                                in the rain.

I don’t know that by summer,

you will be pregnant

with another mans child,

but I know my friend James 

will grow needles in his gut

because he told me for years 

he loved you.

But I held you 

honest as I could.

NaPoWriMo Day 16 Poem 12 171 Bus Story

I am sitting on the top deck of the 171 bus

and something is meowing and everyone

is pretending not to hear it,

If there is a wild cat in here we’re all dead!

A man has got on board holding a paper bag of market stall fish.

If he sits near me….

He has sat behind me, my Britishness is keeping me quiet and I am wishing I belonged to a language more culturally assertive, but I think it’s ok because I haven’t heard the meowing for a while.

Maybe it was in my head; maybe it was the ghost of the fur coat the woman in front of me is wearing…

Now the bus is passing a car crash and a small Chinese man is standing with two police officers in the middle of the road, he is telling what happened in interpretive dance, as he star jumps into the air to gesture an explosion.

As the bus turns into the next lane a fox runs into the middle of the road

and we swerve but everyone is remaining British, and I do not mean we were in fox hunting gear, or we started drinking tea, I mean, we are quiet until a man’s phone rings and he picks up (“Bonjour’”) speaking French, and I am wondering what’s his excuse for being quiet all this time?

maybe he has been here too long,

maybe that is what he is saying in French right now,

Marcel, Je suis ici depuis trop longtemps!

              I have been here too long!

At the next bus stop a man gets on and in an American accent asks

fur coat lady if there is a real place called Pimlico because he can’t believe it

and now… I can hear the meowing

   again.

TFL Travel Update  -

On Wednesday 18th April at 6pm, the 171 bus will be on diversion. This is due to a road closure as a result of Baroness Thatcher's funeral.

NaPoWriMo Day 14 Poem 11 A Planet That Hurts

What colour flows through my heart

     like radiation?

                           How am I to see myself

in my own river when there is something wrong

with the water

                          in my eyes?

    I am looking for a kind of thinking that will give my face better posture -

I am telling myself

all this rain is made of rubber

I can bounce it

If I don’t stop dancing,

        this is how I move to my mantra before walking

into night

               as a warm body with hard feet -

 I tell myself -

     I got a good heart and it is looking after me -

but it’s not true enough -

there is something wrong with my heart -

it is inventing too much gravity.

NaPoWriMo Day 13 Poem 10 Ode To The Flu

I caught you going round
the office like a tea round, 

you whispered into my body
and said you want to breed 
your bugs with me.

We last spoke in February,

when you stirred your mucus frappe

into my chest.

This is how you saved me

from the torture chambers

of classrooms and jobs behind desks. 

You gave refuge,
reminding me how to be warm
and stay in while you arrived

in my tissues with your yellow 

after-party phlegm, swelling
my glands, until I became
your waling germ,

bubbling in your bacteria.

Tell the doctors that a temperature
is how I burn for what I want,
and I ache for you tonight.

This is how close love is 

    to a bed-ridden sickness.

The Pending Death Of My Dad NaPoWriMo Day 11 Poem 9

More and more I understood what he meant by leaving

the door open and pissing on the floor. What he meant

by not caring about the smell. He had a voice that had lost

all its weight. I could not hold my breath any longer.

He dreams of a younger body,

I watched him sleeping,

imitating a death

that he has been waiting too long for.

Do people always die     when they’re supposed to?