Sudden Rain in June

An ash black cat on the tarmac licks her gravel paws I pose on the sofa snack on blue tortilla chips the salty olive oiled jalapeños you gave me and blossoms of tangy goats cheese

Worlds apart you & I share stories of sudden rain in June I tell you how it hits the pavement like applause bloodies the asphalt lifts the scented lid of first dust The cat scutters away burned by these insulting drops But you I see you lift your open mouth to the clouds

Birthday Poems for a Brother

John's Poem

When John

stopped going to Mrs Moore’s

he went to

Our Lady Of Lords

and he learned how to

have friends

Marcel

and Tina

and Michael Popplearse

and how to have a drawing book.

Then he learned writing

and he drew pictures of his friends

and underneath he wrote

I like Tina in my tea

and

Marcel is poosticks and a bum.

So this is John’s poem really

I don’t think he knew how to spell

Popplearse.

Lessons in Lego

Jess was born

upstairs

with the door shut

and Cousin Wyn

came to look after us

downstairs.

And when she had come

Cousin Wyn told us

we could tiptoe like mice

up the stairs and see

our new baby sister.

And Mum was there

and Dad

and there was this baby

in a black carry cot

and Mum said the baby

had brought us things,

and if we put our hands

in the bottom end

of the carry cot

we would find the things

she had brought.

I didn’t know

how a baby

could get to the shops

but Mum said

I didn't need

to worry about that.

And there were things -

I got a little box of lego,

blue lego

roof pieces.

It was all right.

Then John opened his box -

when I saw what he got

fireworks went off in my head

John got

little yellow curved bits of lego

that made a fantastic round tower

if you put them all together.

Yellow bits

not blue.

Curved bits

not roof bits.

And they said the baby

was called Jessica Mary

and that she was the baby now

and I had to be her big brother

and teach her things.

I thought I should better teach her about

lego.

I expect Kate got something too

but she was six

and I didn’t want it

it was probably a wet yourself dolly

or something.

Only a game

John and I

dug Jess a grave

in the garden.

Dad had been doing some digging

and we asked if we could.

He did not know

why we were digging,

but we dug a trench

then mounded

up the soil

as if we had buried Jess there.

Then we made a cross

out of two bamboo poles

and made a paper sign

with

Jessica Baldwin

RIP

written on it.

When we told Mum

she thought we were mean.

So did Jess.

The Russells

were coming for tea

and she said

don’t let Ann Russell

see our grave

she might get upset

and cry.

Ann was seven

and it was only a game.

So John and me

we went and

jumped up and down

on Jess’s grave.

Blue Misses

A wraggle of lads

push out of the Supabar

words lost in mouthed vowels and chips

while on the corner by the street lamp

four girls

in minis and blouses

huddle around one of their phones

blue screen lighting up their faces

as they rate

whoever's featured

with oo's or boo's

they don't look up

as the lads come over

just turn as a group

as the boys sweep past

caught in the wake

of the evening bow-wave

20.11.2018

Ill Wind

It didn't snow straight away but she knew it wouldn't be long.

She'd woken in the morning to an unfamiliar metal squealing as the weather vane on the barn swung round to the North. And to the sound of banging. But she didn't think. Patrick would have known to go and close the barn doors but Patrick was gone. There were so many things he used to do of which she was simply unaware. They'd made a good team. But now, alone, she was a novice again, and she cursed herself for the things she didn't do until it was too late.

Coombe Farm nestled in the rounded belly of the valley end and usually benefited from the shelter of the rolling hills that cradled it. The fields on the northerly side bathed in generous sunlight and the wooded slopes of the hills opposite softened the breath of the warmer winds from the south. But at this time of year, the wind swung around and sharpened its edges. It smelled of frost and peat and smoke and damp. It seeped through the cracks in the door and rattled the glass in the windows.

The wind wrapped itself round the back of the house and found the year's gathered detritus – old sacks, leaves, straw – and scattered it back across the yard. She felt as if she'd been found out. Everything the wind said was cruel. A judgement. The songs it sang were bitter and grating. It found her flesh between her clothes and dragged its sinister blade across her skin. There was no getting warm. The smoke backed down the chimney and smutted the clothes on the dryer in front of the hearth.

She cursed the wind every moment she had to venture outside. She cursed Patrick too for leaving her to this, this bitter solitude. She stayed in as long as she dared, putting off the tedious tasks she knew she must perform. She went to the back bedroom and opened the blanket box, cursed the moths that had evidently been feasting on the blankets and garments within. At last she found it Patrick's old Guernsey and the looseknit shawl her mother had worn. She wrapped herself against the oncoming grief of the wind.

She battled across the muddy yard and opened the henhouse. The five were hunkered on the lowest perch, their heads pulled down into the shoulders of their wings, feathers ruffled up such that she could see the purple grey roots of their plumage. She tipped grain into the feeders and cracked the ice in the water trough but the birds remained in their maudlin meditations, sullenly blinking at her for disturbing them. She could feel their annoyance. Should she leave the flaps open? They showed no inclination to venture out into the gritty wind.

'You've got drink. You've got scran. You'll survive a day,' she said.

It was only after she had lowered the flaps again that she heard the beating of wings come from inside,

'Ah, bugger you,' she said. 'Bugger the lot of you! You'll stay in there now and like it!'

Now the snow had started, thick and fast. It had plastered itself across her back much more thickly than she had realised as she tended to the chickens. She turned her head as if to challenge the beast wind but was forced to squint her eyes against the icy blasts. Snow crystals stung her cheeks. Head down, and pulling the shawl tighter around her, she set off across the yard to the barn.

And now she saw her mistake, the barn door had been flung open before the wind. She should have come here straight away – as soon as she had caught the sound of the weather cock grinding its unfamiliar wail. The barn had shuddered and swallowed gust after gust of the shouting wind.

During the night the milker had given birth. She had heard the animal lowing, a dark rich guttural moan. Patrick would have recognised the signs and she would have left her bed and followed him to the barn, lantern in hand, to see to the animal. She knew how to follow him. She knew how to be at his right hand. She knew what he would need before he knew himself. But with Patrick gone, the rhythm was upset. The natural order was in chaos. The sound and sights that were language to him, cues and clues as to what he needed to do, now went untranslated for her. She was alone and the wind sharpened her aloneness, tattering the memories of their life together, ripping their story from the landscape and leaving her with broken words, fragments of their togetherness that no longer meant anything but just hung like brittle flags, dissolving under the acid breath of the North wind.

The milker lay on her side. A black motionless mound was spilled in the straw beside her.

Snow still gusted in through the open barn door. It had been closed the previous night as usual. She had made sure of that. But as had so often happened before, the wind change had challenged the latch and caught the great timber panel full force, splintering the wooden closure like kindling. Patrick had had to repair it many times, had often said he should get an iron fixing from Howlett the farrier, but had never got round to it.

She cursed him again, this man whom she had loved so deeply, relied on so completely and who had left her so suddenly.

It was her grief at losing him that was transfigured into this anger at him and now, as she stooped to test the little corpse for any vestige of life left, she cursed Patrick until the tears ran. She held the head of the calf in her lap, pulled at the mucus that still clung to its muzzle. But nothing. The animal's eyes were half open but glazed and dim. The neck was stiff and cold.

The milker turned her head towards the woman and a deep rolling growl rippled in her throat.

'Tis too bad, old girl. Too bad. I'm sorry.'

She stood up. Pushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist. She bent and found the calf's front hoofs and, holding them together in one hand dragged it out of the barn. The umbilical cord trailed after it, terminating in a massed clamp of blood and slime and mucilage. She would figure out what to do later. It would come to no harm now, no greater harm anyway, and the cold wind would slow the rotting. She left it around the side of the barn and covered it over with some old sacking.

The snow was falling thicker still and no sooner had she pulled the sack over the little corpse, than the flakes began to blanket it.

She rubbed her hands on her skirt, cupped them together and blew into the opening between her thumbs. As she stood and looked down the valley, into the very throat of the wind, she saw a dark smudge among the falling snow, moving vaguely, slowly, towards her. The smudge moved in the rhythm of a person walking, head down, trudging through the thickening quilt of powder.

She saw the body opening and closing with each heavy step.

A person, a woman, coming towards her – a dark, hooded figure looming out of the snow towards her...

19.02.2019

No waiting

I will no longer wait
for this bus
because buses slow down
if you are waiting for them
and it makes no odds
if I see the very first moment
of its bumper
rounding the corner
at the end of the road

It will either come
or it will not come
whether I wait 

or not

No
I will no longer wait
but I will stand here
because this bus-stop
is as good a place to stand
as anywhere else

and I will watch the sun
creep in and out of the clouds

and I will watch children
running near the kerb

and I will hear their parents
scolding them

and I will watch
a starling
on the gutter of a house
preening itself

and I will breathe
the bus-stop air
rather than the air by the crossing

and that will make a change

and perhaps
while I stand here
watching and breathing and listening
I will count the chips of paint
on the bus-shelter
and fancy that I can see a face
forming in the dry stud
of chewing gum
that someone has posted
on the glass

and I will imagine 

the sweetness of the gum

on my tongue

But I am not waiting for the bus
because it takes too much energy
and I don't have that kind of wealth

No
No waiting
for the bus
even though
you said
you might be on it

Winter Blues

'Yes, yes,' he said, 'I'll get it fixed. Don't you worry about that. Don't you worry. I'll get it fixed before the cold weather comes. I've got a guy does things for me like this. Jim. I'll get him to come over and have a look, ok. He'll fix it. He's good at boilers. I'll get him to come over next week. You here next week? I'll get him to come over and have a look... What day is best for you? He'll have to come and have a look then probably he'll have to order some parts, so it might take a day or two to get them because... these old boilers, well, the merchants don't keep the parts in stock now, you know. You can still get them, like, but you have to order them, you know.

'Ok, so I'll get Jim to come and have a look and then when he's got the parts he'll come back and fix it. You know, it might take a week or two, but it'll be done before the cold weather comes you can be sure of that. I don't want to mess you around. You'll need the heating when the cold weather comes. These old blocks are freezing in the winter - no insulation, see - they didn't think about that when they built them, I suppose. Didn't have the technology, maybe.
'Rightio is there anything else while I'm here?'

'Well, you said that you would fix the window in the bathroom last time you came ...'

'I did, I did! I haven't forgotten, but I need to... I just haven't had time to get to the glass place, you know. But it's on my list. It's top of my list. For next week. I'll get the glass and come over. And fix it. Do you mind me just letting myself in if you're not here?'

'No no that's... '

'I'll come over next week with the glass and I'll... Right, if there's nothing else I've got to get home. Sharon's got line dancing tonight and I said I'd drop her. All right? I'll love you and leave you then, Amanda, and I'll give you a ring when I've spoken to Jim to let you know when he's coming over. All right?

'Yes that's all right, I suppose.'

'Good, good, see you then, then... I must say you've got the place looking nice. Better than the last guy. Still that's a woman for you, isn't it, making things look nice. Men can't be ars... bothered with stuff like that can they, but no, but yes, you, you've got an eye. I can tell. I should take you on, eh? Take you on as a stylist, eh? You could sort them all out, couldn't you? Ok then, bye bye...'

'Bye, Phil...'

She pushed the door closed behind him and turned and leaned against it. She could hear his footsteps on the concrete in the stairwell, the resonating tang of his wedding ring hitting the iron handrail. Then his voice booming and indistinct as he met some other tenant down below. What was he wriggling out of doing for them, she wondered.

She hadn't got it looking nice. She hated it. All she done so far was hang some of her tapestry pieces on the wall. The two garden scenes she done for her degree show, and the framed seascape that Dad had liked so much.

She was desperate to hide the reality of the rooms. The damp plaster, the peeling wallpaper. She knew what she would do if it were her flat but as a tenant, a poor tenant, she was only too aware of the large sum Phil held as her bond. He was a git, she thought. Harmless, but a git nevertheless. He hadn't yet done any of the repairs she had asked him to do since she moved in: the bath tap washer; the leaking cistern on the toilet. Eventually she had given up waiting and borrowed some tools from Marchin and done it herself. Marchin wanted to do it for her but she wouldn't let him.

He had wanted to do a lot for her. She wouldn't let him do any of it. She could feel his Polish machismo in every throbbing sinew of his body. And while she loved that strength, the confidence in his blood, she hated how small she felt against him. She despised the simpering child that she regressed into in his arms. Shrank from every feeling of power she had painstakingly fermented in herself.

So while he became more and more dominating of her she found herself wanting more and more to resist. Their love-making which had been playful, sensitive and passionate in the beginning, became rough and angry, wild and unpredictable. He took to leaving while she slept so she'd wake up alone, wondering where he had gone.

So, when Cameron told her he'd seen Marchin with someone else she had ended it. And he didn't fight for her. It was, she felt afterwards, the typical male tactic of behaving so badly that eventually the woman would end the relationship and then he, as he already had, would take his victimhood and his urges into the bed of another. She'd felt the pattern many times before.

'Fuck him,' she said out loud, pushed herself forcefully from the door and into the kitchen.

'Bastard!'

She put the kettle on and looked out onto the swing park below. Two kids were sitting on the swings, rocking, but not swinging. They were, what, fifteen? Sixteen, maybe... hanging on to childhood securities but too cool to play. She had long hair. He had his hood up. Amanda, even from this distance, could sense the balance of tensions between them.

'Don't do it,' she mumbled to the girl as the kettle switched itself off. 'Don't get taken in by it.'

She made sweet chai tea, dangling and dipping the tea bag on its string. She watched the colour of the water slowly shift in hue until after a few minutes she pulled the bag out, held it over the glass mug with one hand, and ran the fingers of the other down the string to the soaking pillow at the end. She squeezed, and dark droplets fell into the mug like blood into water, clouding and swirling until they disappeared into the brew.

She lifted the cup to her lips and blew.

She looked out again and saw the trees beyond the swing-park had lost their leaves. When had that happened? Last time she looked they had been bedecked in verdant foliage. Now they etched lines against the grey clouds. It was getting dark, too.

The boy and the girl stood up. She studied the chair of the swing, ran her palms across her buttocks, while he hitched up his beltless jeans.

Whatever they had talked about had changed their status. A new stage in their negotiations had been reached because while she stood looking at her fingers on the chain, he stepped up to her and kissed her cheek. She shrieked and pushed him away in mock shock. Amanda thought she could hear her say 'Who said you could do that?'

But Amanda knew that she had said it even if she hadn't used words.

He was brave, though, stood his ground, and evidently had some persuasive comment for the girl. She turned to him and let him take her hands. He pulled her towards him and their faces met.

Then she hit his chest and ran off laughing.

Amanda stood and watched the sky gradually darken. Then, from below, a voice drifted up to her - a woman's voice, singing. A deep sorrowful voice, singing an old song. The notes hung in the air. Maybe it was the black woman who had smiled at her in the stairwell yesterday, now lilting her desperate song out into the early evening.

'... caaaan't help lovin' that maan of mine.'

Ella sings...

She Got A Weekend in Paris

An Electric Tomatoes piece written in just over an hour.  We stabbed words in a book to come up with the prompt - She got a weekend in Paris

Aunt Jocelynne sighed at the other end of the line.

'It was quite quick in the end.'

Her soft accent curled around the words.

'He did not suffer. He was asleep anyway. His heart just... it just stopped. Gave up. It just didn't want to fight any more.'

'Right,' said Phil. 'I'll tell her, Jocelynne, thanks for ringing. I'll tell her when she comes in. She'll probably want to phone you. In a way I'm glad I can be the one to break it to her.'

'She will come, won't she? The funeral... and there will be the... the reading of... what is it?.. in English?.. you know, the wishes... the inheritance... what is it?..'

'The will.'

'Yes, the will. She will come, won't she? There is no-one else...'

'I'm sure she will. She wanted to come before... when we heard he was ill... but she couldn't get time off. She'll be devastated. They'll have to give her time off now. Claude was the closest thing she had to a father.'

'Good, good. Let me know your plans.'

'Course... of course.'

Three days later, at the station, Anna kissed Phil as the London train drew into the platform.

'I wish you were coming too.'

'I know... I know... I do too.'

She clattered the small suitcase up into the carriage, battled the persistent automatic door. Phil walked down the platform parallel to her as she made her way to her seat. But it was on the opposite side of the carriage so she could only see him if she remained standing.

At last the train pulled out and with a final fingertip kiss she waved him goodbye and slumped down into her seat.

She liked train journeys, especially travelling alone and with little in the way of luggage.

She unzipped her backpack and pulled out her book. But it lay on the table in front of her, unopened. Her hands stayed in her lap, her gaze fixed out of the window. She watched the weft and warp of the landscape as it slipped by. Fields and hedges. The running of fence wires, power-lines, the silvered rails of the sister track. All became a conspiracy of lines as the train slithered through the countryside. All scheming together underscored by the continuo of locomotion. She felt the wheels on the rails – ticketataa-ticketataa-ticketataa. Watched the telephone wires rise to the punctuation of the poles then swoop and sag back down again before cresting again. A wave of black lines – the musical stave of the train – drawing her eyes and her ears, mesmerising her, seducing her into the lull and pause of her memories.

Claude. Uncle Claude.

The smell of tabac clinging to the lapels of his jacket. A heady fruitiness to his breath when he picked her up and lifted her onto his knee after Sunday lunch.

She reaches up and touches his face, reading the grey stubble on his cheeks with her fingers. Then he seizes her tiny hand in his great fist so that just the tips of her fingers are showing and he lifts them to his open mouth and noisily plays at eating them. She could feel the edge of his teeth.

'J't' mange!' he said, ''j't' mange, mon petit déjeuner!'

And she would scream and giggle at the terrible monster he had become and flee from his lap, laughing, only to hide behind her mother's apron and wait for him to come and find her.

The connection was straightforward enough and she slept as the Eurostar slipped into the darkness of the tunnel.

When she awoke they were already passing among the banlieu – grey concrete tower blocks with broken windows and graffiti. Factories and rundown estates. The signature hinterland of every city.

But because she had slept it was only on arriving at Le Gare du Nord that she learned of the delays: a suspected terrorist incident at St Lazare. There would be no trains out till Monday at the earliest.

'There's nothing I can do, Auntie.'

Silence from her aunt at the other end.

'Tant pis,' came the reply at last, but Anna could hear the wheeze of emotion in her aunt's voice – her tight breathing,

'We'll see you soon on Monday, then, à bientôt.'

'Yes, Auntie. Baises... bon baises!'

But the line was already dead.

After a visit to the station information centre and a short Metro ride, Anna found her way down a quiet side street, Rue de Paimpol, to a small pension. She registered and was shown to her room where she washed and changed. Then she walked out into the late afternoon sun. Now for the first time she recognised the distinctive odour of the Paris streets.

It was still warm and she allowed herself to wander back down towards the Metro station but then at the last minute she changed her mind and walked over to a small café across the square.

She ordered iced tea.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the soft breeze, then reached into her bag and pulled out her book once more.

Le Petit Prince smiled guilessly from the cover as it lay on the table – his crown still as bright as ever. She decided that perhaps she didn't even need to read it. Actually. It was enough to just have it there. She remembered the soft whispering of her uncle as he read it to her. She could feel his breath on her ear.

She stroked the paper cover with her thumbs. She felt the the memory of Claude's hands on the leaves. Then her fingers opened the book, riffled through the edges - and smoothed the page.

Page One.

Here was Claude in her head, in her heart. Uncle Claude...here! Here they were in Paris together, drifting once again, from planet to tiny planet in search of peace.