Category: poetry

For all those who bear the burden of pain
creeping upward through sleep & outward through the day
mindless & brutal
without compromise
joints locking & failing
fire-flicker of shingles
body-soaking drudgery of fibro
tooth pain from poverty & fear & never being taught self-care
old injuries, x marks the spot where you came off your bike
& broke something
& now you have a weather-vane set steady in your bone
the pain, once mental & now physical, of loneliness & abandonment
hugs that are virtual, smiles that are absent

gnawing cancer
migraines starring the heavens when there is no light
cluster headaches killing your will as an elephant throws down a shack

for all those who live in pain from noise & dirt & rudeness
& can’t find much in civility to ease it

guts knotted, cramping & sinister & tiring
the imprisonment of arthritis & the ‘overdoing it’

adhesions & keloids & the pain of being ugly, being useless
drawing tiny breaths because big breaths hurt

the pain of not being believed that you’re in pain
& then you’re given an addiction, as well as the pain
& now pivot between addiction & pain like a mechanical bird

funnybone & needlestick & central line

diffusely aching elders forcing themselves upright in the morning

itching pain, skin rashes

lying in bed with a hot water bottle
while your cervix crushes out the wine of ‘not this month’

endometriosis & you as a warrior emerging from a bath
of inconsiderate hormones

the times as a child you lay in bed & cried because you could hear your bones growing

earaches chasing all contentment from your toddler
putrid sore throats & burning bronchi

goddamned paper cuts & cat wounds gone septic
dog bites & thoughtlessly scratched-off bug bites

Foot pain as all those little compressed bones make their displeasure known
ingrown toenails, bunions, plantar fasciitis, charley horses

Knees that click & fail

Horse kicks & bites, all the farmer’s ailments
unprivileged by weather
now’s the time to do something & pain must be endured

Repetitive strains – hands & forearms, necks & backs
we are all of us little loci of hurt and debility

eyes of sand & photophobia

mouth sores, brushed against by teeth
& pinging in the sensorium like a red light on a street corner

embarrassed people who don’t want to say
it hurts when I pee, when I screw, when I poo & I don’t know what to do
& I don’t want to talk to you
or anyone about it

Pain tells you you’re unfit, & then you get the message again
& again
& again
from the TV, the city walls, the casual blunderings of friends
the sharp hashtags of your unfriends
& you, your body telling you
not today the grocery shop or the trip to the vet
not today the movie with friends and the beer at the pub
not today
not today
not today
& probably not tomorrow

The pain of knowing what you think isn’t true
& the drugs to drag the truth back to your thinking will stack on pounds
& kill your sex drive
& hurt you in all the wild free places you still have in your brain
the pain of knowing your compliance is convenience & not much else

The pain of trying to get strong enough to be independent again
& it’s never going to happen
& the choice is always, endlessly
pain or death

All those reading this who have suffered a loss, the kind of loss that lessens you personally; not a thing you have lost but a large chunk of cognition and equilibrium chewed away by fate.
Perhaps it will grow back.
Perhaps is unlikely.

This space is full of ballerinas toe dancing through minefields of grief.

1 in particular arrives at the other side of the ‘stage’, limbs intact, smile intact.
Watching her, you’d never know they move the mines every night, as you stand to applaud you think, “So consistent in her performance,” and yet
as she moves she’s thinking she’ll be happy to hit that grief and sit with it a while, with whatever limbs she has left.
And then she’s reconstituted, maybe takes tea with a friend, something germane and mundane, and the friend presses fatty food onto her, seeing that she only has a pound of fat left on her and it appears to be between her ears
and not doing well/and there are other ballerinas to be visited and given tea
always
always

It’s our job to make other people happy and then they die, and they stole our job.

Of course there’s a long list of things wrong with that sentence
If you really want somebody to be happy it’s not a job
and I say
of course
fuck that noise, it’s always a job, it’s always been a job

but some jobs you scramble through your shower and into your clothes to get to, and that’s what making somebody happy feels like
sometimes

and then it stops. There are no clothes to scramble into, or out of.

There’s a list of tasks with no happiness. There may be the shadow of grim satisfaction that they’re done, but there’s no happiness in it.

You’re an animal. You’re easily distracted. You find a minute, or two minutes, or three, when you’re not a tunnel from grief to grief, stormed and held by monsters that look like every harsh word and uncaring action you ever directed at the dead.
cheer up it could be worse you prick you prick that was the minute the downpour started
Cheer up it could be worse.
My beloved is dead, and I’m alive.

I wanted to be able to feel your love for another hundred years. I’m not suggesting I would have done something as depraved as put your consciousness in a robot but yes I might have, I might have, and now that will never happen.
I wanted you live forever because that’s just how wonderful you are. I can deal with dying but I wanted to believe you’d live forever and now you’re dead and I’m not allowed to believe that anymore.
There are so many things I’m no longer allowed to believe.

This space is full of a waterfall. Thanks to magic it looks white, but once you get close you see it’s not water, and it’s not white.
Every tear I’ve cried since you died is in there somewhere. Drip drip. I think some snot got in there too.

This space is full of steam. Hot water helps. I can still stand in a stream of hot water and let this poor messed up body feel some relief. Steam from a cuppa. Steam from my breath, waiting for the bus. Steam from the tops of buildings. Steam from icy grass as it sublimes. And with the pulse of steam I think of the next breath, which you will never draw, and it’s on me again, riding me like a parody of a savage, except it is not savage, and it knows how to ride.
I look at ceremonies of grief and they are all lacking.
Who will grieve you like I can?
Who will grieve for you when I am gone.