For a year now, I’ve been flitting and have had no fixed and settled ‘home’. I decided to mark time passing by posting some fragments about it all here. Other fragments are in my Isolation Blog. The problem with fragments of anything is that they’re easy to lose. So at least here, some of them are kept in one place.
Opera
She left home barefoot, placing a small metal circle
under a streetlamp’s glow to mark the beginning or end of a line.
As she walked away alone, she sang of horizons.
Chanting languages, she sang each of her heartaches
and dropped them away:
fractured gales through barbed wire
cymbal clashing sunlight
bowed cellos in shadows
off-key tenors: hawthorn branches
xylophoning water under moss, over rocks, through rushes.
Her voice a stream, a river widened to an orchestral ocean.
Ear-deep in salt and moonlight,
her song subdued to gasps
she trod water, rising.
Placed one sole then the other,
emerged dripping sound,
stepping from one sharp star up to the next.
She’d often wondered what sounds stars made,
if they had voices, tone, pitch, modulations.
But the notes the horizon sang, aeons ago
became silent stars: a trap for songs of human hearts.
More
It’s not that I’m home / less, it’s just that for now,
I have less than a home.
Without a home, somehow the weather gets in
too deep, or just right,
on one particular day, or an / other.
Emotions are now out / side, left on coaches, roadedges, hills.
House walls, dry stone walls, boundaries.
Blocked walls of cities, towns, villages
as if no place is any different to any other place.
Every / where looks the same
no / where looks like somewhere to feel at home in.
Returning to these borrowed-cottage walls, knowing
they’re only holding me here for two months more.
And then out
to some / where, or no / where or every / where?
How to decide, to think, to know
looking for guidance from rail maps, cloud shapes and tarot cards,
seeing symbolism in temperature changes
and the shapes that the stars dangle themselves in.
But none of these things answer back.
How to know where would feel home-more
when some / no / every
wall:
divides to make boundaries
claims ownership
hides what’s behind it, from the sky.
Sleeping Beauty
Back to this, the relentless
pull of quiet gravity.
A hankering for the damp of soil,
the company of bulbs, roots, shoots
the smell of rotting leaves
of apples – fallen, worm tunnelled.
Oh soil – you’re a blanket, a coat,
an over-loved dressing gown
which homes every
millimetre of pale skin,
covers dangerous beauty
with dirt, you uglify kindly.
Oh prince and princess
king, queen or witch –
do not wake these lips,
there is no kiss for you.
Just let me live this silence
drawn by stillness, soil and sleep.
I have a whole piece of sky
which I’ve torn from a cloud
clutched in the palm of my hand.
Molehills
I can’t tell you anything new
all the same I’m wondering why
my heart’s gone blind
another thing I can’t give you
now these hands are scraping spades
shifting soil or coal or lead
bury me a dead leaf
an unwritten letter
that ring I gave you
nothing comes back that’s been given away
so I’m tunnelling, searching for stars.
Homefree
I wake before the alarm alarms me
but waking still startles me into each day
in whatever bed I’ve found myself
because it matters that I’ve nowhere to live
and I tell myself I’m not homeless
that I chose to unhome myself.
Each morning, alarmed, I check
I still have both feet
knees, hands, legs, wrists, arms, head.
Breasts, bum, waist, thighs.
The rest, I don’t much care for
I don’t need to check for the clench
in my jaw, I can feel it.
My eyes, ears, teeth
are always present, uncorrected.
This broken nose that strangers
never comment on, more polite
than some of my friends used to be.
My black bag is spilling charity shop clothes
and carrier bags onto someone else’s carpet.
How long is it possible to remain lost?
Stop Being Thistledown
though softer than air lighter than sunshine
twisting more than other people’s keys carried pocket-deep
reminders of what home, walls, doors which close and open again mean.
Not everything in the world can be a trap, so
stop being thistledown
because now I’ve done what everyone I’ve ever met seems so afraid of –
I’ve lost everything gone spinning away
on the north wind which really does blow, without snow. If I can
stop being thistledown
after this year of nothing owned, this year of refusals to borrow, watch TV
or commit, to communicate or read anyone’s news. If I’ve detached my trust from
promises, to fly wind carried, can I land on some architectural pediment? Is it possible to
stop being thistledown
because what am I still fleeing
in this rush of missing?
Why allow gales to decide the travel routes, why not now choose the direction? But to
stop being thistledown
when at first, air seemed the only freedom it’s become dizzying up here
does this mean the moment to see light is near, notice temperature – there’s altitude to consider
before landing to field, plinth, pavement, or some beach no one goes to. If I could
stop being thistledown
and find time’s meaning again
stop tearing the top corners off newspapers,
detaching dates from the news, avoiding columns of drama, lies, crumpled promises.
To Displacement
You and your charity shop clothes – those
throwaway coats, button-loose trousers
which fit you, don’t fit you
while you wide, thin, wide yourself again.
The seasons change you, losing gloves
scarf, tunic, hat and shawl
to find a jacket, waistcoat, shirt.
Why do you clothe yourself in empty pockets
when you steal things from mine
and then throw them away?
A strand of precious hair, that shapely twig
the seventh pencil from a set of twelve
a square of silver-wrapped chocolate,
and a half-written letter.
You are sewn on, my Siamese twin
stealing my scissors, losing my hairbrush
taking my painkillers and pocketknife
picking holes from my socks,
discarding threads I’d have found a use for
you pinch my pebble mementos
and drop them in drains.
You leave handwritten lists
of train times and my passport
splayed on top of each bed we sleep in.
You never want to shower
preferring us to carry grime
in the warp and weft of skin and clothes –
you call these stains maps.
On a bench at a railway station
you make clouds from lint and
throw them at my worn boots.
You can’t steal my thoughts.
I stare at an impotent train carriage
and wonder if the patterns in its rust
are predictions or memories.
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