Author: heather

She will break you

with an unseen kindness,

rattling your shape

until the brittle fragments

form a destitute mosaic,

a natural, defeated jumble

of broken colours.

 

And though you fear the piercing power

of these sharp shards,

she laughs with deft hands.

 

And shakes some more,

knowing you have secret pockets

to hoard your offerings,

persistent in her demands,

confident in her right to steal

what you don’t know how to give;

hers the artistry,

you the sand and water

fused to catch light

and broken for new shimmering.

I am a messy painter,

it comes from the way

these brushes are clutched

between my fingers,

creating a long fan

in each hand.

 

Each brush a different shade,

sliding paint around my world

without precision

but dripping love,

profusion of colour.

 

And rainbows may be cliché,

artistically lacking,

but each brush carries tenderness;

my committed flailing

trails this beauty.

All these heroes

who find the front of the room

to disrobe,

to proudly say I am gay,

I’m an alcoholic,

I have been wounded

 

and can show you how to live

with the liberated raw.

 

And me,

after scratching for a long while,

and listening in the night,

and letting the black sludge

pour from my bowels

in a paltry stream

on a small patch of ground

 

… my name is Heather,

and I’m not very nice.

 

Huge secret, that,

which is partly the joke

shared by men and women

at the front of the room,

bringing stories into light

after darkness

mostly hid them from their own view.

 

And me, I live with

nasty Gollum,

not the famous quester

but a little one

that scrabbles on my path,

whispering my need of more,

darting off to check the path next door,

cold and lonely and quite mad.

 

All this old steel for cage,

checking at the useless lock,

keeping her out of sight

except for all the times

she slips through the bars

… I give up the warden role,

stop pouring resources

in false penitentiary.

 

Fighting her has taken too much

from my heart,

has robbed my loins

of necessary nasty,

has sucked air from my lungs

that needed fuel

for belly fire.

 

I am not very nice

and you’d better hear it.

My aspirations of niceness

depended on a static clean,

a future transfiguration.

 

I choose instead the journey,

leaving the cage behind us on the trail,

letting my Gollum

squeeze my neck and pull my hair

as I carry her piggyback

and we trudge

or sometimes whistle on our way.

Too much, I feel
the vibrant geometry
of all those starlings,
each with their own dance
of effort and immersion.

The skill of dropping in
to links far deeper than the thoughts
in any bird-brain.

Grace manifest,
each feather tilting in a shared cohesion
to lift a bird,
each bird doing the same
to make a beauty never seen again
the same way twice.

And all those birds together
lifting human heads in awe,
forgotten tastes of joy.

Inside, the same shifting,
a fractal community
patterning, pattering
all these wings
and I have kept them caged,
worried about their feeding.

Too much
is just a hole,
a waiting for a key
shaped like love.

with thanks to Occupy Love

Unlike my friend
who polishes her stories
so they shine
at cocktail parties,
I have daily flecks of gold
free at water’s edge.
Still timid,
the questions hide,
when what I want to ask is:
what have you summoned lately?
what are your dreams conjuring
onto your day-to-day canvas?
And talking of the weather
as an act of social kindness,
curiousity longs to ask:
what have you heard in the cold?
what tales has water spoken?

I saw myself,
a sideways glimpse,
sneaking past my fear
to find someone else
to do my work.

Not just the obvious aversions
but also the care of my fiefdom;
baker, lover, monk
lined up for pay.

The glance forward
to a bloated self
watching a coach
on my treadmill.

There is a howl
that echoes in a ragged hole
where I rarely hear
the wail of my own need,
anger pulsing aimlessly.
All these stories of love
denied, light
covered, joy
squelched in the mud of propriety.
Salt from unshed tears
lining my rancour,
a chemistry of resentment
cracking the base
of all these pedestals
tumbling.
I have my proofs of hurt,
red banners fading to white,
carried for the oft-imagined day
of reckoning and truce.
But as light works its decay
on the pigment of my stories,
even white banners are weakened,
absorbed in the tremors
of a silent moan escaping,
a bitter wind astringent,
wiping me empty.
Here where all is lost,
the breeze has more space
for bumping,
dangled shards of my heart
touching like chimes.

This is so good;

sensual joy

from nerve ends conspiring

to sing their rhythms

in vital comfort

— not blanket or escape,

deep quiver of raw freshness.

All is well,

even here on the charred planet,

soft couch, memory of torment

in the eye of a storm

still raging.

This grin is not wild crazy,

it spills from softness

as if the earth

needed my feet

through which to grow smiles upwards.

Of course we belong,

we be-longing and belonging,

there is no other universe

we dropped from;

this is home,

our cells are bound here.

Carbon and oxygen entwined

in the deep pleasure of this skin

and all that roils beneath it,

and then molecular unbinding

as they dance in new pairings

and I cease.

And maybe you don’t see why

I hang the rearview mirror at this odd angle,

sideways glimpse of happy

living in tragic,

but every now and then

I also get to see the bright flash

of my own delight

as it moves through this aging body,

young and sexy,

aching and replenished,

morose and exultant.

And in that bright shining

the trees and my neighbours

sing their starlight

even as many are sleeping,

and oh! this is so good.