SOCKS AND SHOES
This is a sock,
Sock are friends for my feet,
But sometimes my feet leave my socks in the street.
This is a shoe,
To a sock it’s a brother,
But that doesn’t mean they can’t lose one another.
Small socks and shoes are so easy to lose,
Which leaves my poor feet getting snapped at by frost.
But feet are stuck on,
So they cannot get lost.
THE WATER STEALER
She often swipes away my glass,
My water glass,
Smeary with my DNA
And a forensic record of what I was eating.
She takes my fingerprints
And the misty smudges of my lips
Away, away
To be slooshed and sponged
To oblivion.
Where has her patience gone?
She takes my time,
My moments to think
And drink.
I sometimes regard my glass with interest.
I muse on the molecules
In H2O,
And I wonder where all the hydrogen in the world
Came from.
Without that multicoloured, colourless liquid
In my glass
Nothing called life
Could be.
Everything is in my water.
But then it is gone,
Whipped out from under my nose,
From beneath my aqueous eyes.
My thoughts are swept away
With my glass,
And this happens every day.
She does it without thinking.
I LOVE YOU, BED
My bed must love me very much:
It seems to cuddle me to sleep
With huge soft arms;
It waits the night to keep me safe and warm.
Then when the singing sun skips in,
My bed’s a golden lake.
And just before my eyes can see again,
It drifts with me amongst the clouds.
Once or twice,
Just once
Or twice,
I’ve bashed my bed with wicked thumps.
Sorry, bed.
HATING HOMEWORK
We hate homework
In our house.
It’s like a puncture on your bike,
Just when you were cycling free,
Or waking up on Monday morning
When you thought it was Sunday.
It’s a muddy hill of having to,
A dingy tunnel of got to;
It’s what you’ve done before,
Or what you haven’t a clue about.
Mum says she hated doing her own homework
And she’s not prepared to do mine.
My brother attacks his like a cross country run,
And his often illegible scrawl
Reflects his impatient haste;
Slap-dash, sloppy, “presentation needs improving”.
But it is conquered,
And he feels victorious.
I try to argue with it
And almost wish it could answer back,
But it sits there, dully, persistently hanging around,
Silently getting in my way,
Until I eventually, begrudgingly, scribe it away.
But it comes back to haunt me
When I have to do the corrections.
MY BROTHER’S TROUSERS
I love to put my brother’s trousers on,
Although they’re faded, limp, and are so short
My ankles look as if they’ve grown too long;
But they’re better than those stiff ones Mum just bought.
My brother’s trousers strain around my bottom,
And I have to fold my belly button in,
They have a seam repaired with unmatched cotton,
And yet, when they are on, they make me grin.
That shrunken pair eclipses any other,
And liking them is logical you see;
For those trousers I keep pilfering from my brother
Are the very ones that once belonged to me!
DOMESTIC LANDSCAPE
A tower block of magazines
Adorns a corner where it leans;
Rugged hills of unmatched socks
Rupture by the laundry box,
And on some bedroom floors repose
Hillocks made of half-clean clothes.
Lumpy building block concretions
Like volcanic rock secretions,
Wear away to nameless things,
Trapping dust and fracturing.
A tub of dark, outdated tech
Spills its contents like a wreck,
And paper aeroplanes in piles
Form an airport on the tiles.
A row of cliff-like backpack humps
Shades some shoe-shaped muddy lumps;
A toppled pile of books, unread,
Snakes its dried up river bed
Across the carpet to a copse
Of green and yellow bottle tops,
That sits and grows, to take its part
One day in someone’s classroom art.
Pencils lie like fallen logs;
Fluffy bears and cats and dogs,
Lions, whales and pigs too round
Is lifeless wildlife in a mound.
Skipping rope roots,
Chimney boots,
Loo roll caves,
Shoe box graves,
Boulder balls,
Tumbling scarf-formed streams and falls;
Things discarded, dropped and hurled.
Our house,
A world within a world.
GRANDFATHER CLOCK
It whirred and creaked,
Its casing dark;
Looming, brooding
On the landing.
Ghostly face,
Old, pale and scarred,
But shimmering like a hunter’s moon.
At times its tick
Seemed almost rasped,
Or hesitating
As I passed,
As if to catch
My quickening breath,
As if to take me
To its time.
And my time it took,
Scratching away
My child years,
With every tick
And every tock,
With every pendulum
Slice and swing,
Moving me on.
The clock no longer
Grinds and clicks and whirs,
For time caught up with it
In the end.
SOCKS
One sock,
Two socks,
Red socks,
Blue socks.
Thick socks,
Thin socks.
Too tiny –
In the bin socks.
Smelly socks,
Sweaty socks,
Just been
In a wellie socks.
Fluffy socks,
Holey socks,
In a ball
Rolly socks.
Wrinkly socks,
Neat socks.
Something
Seems to eat socks!
WHEN I CANNOT SLEEP
Listen to this
When I cannot get to sleep,
I try to make my breathing deep:
I huff and puff upon my back,
Until I feel my ribs will crack.
I rasp and blow, I pant and sigh,
I fight the bed in which I lie.
I breathe so hard I sometimes cough,
Which never helps me to drop off.
When I cannot get to sleep,
What’s the point in counting sheep?
One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four,
Five sheep, six sheep – what a bore!
I cannot rest with thoughts so full
Of ears and eyes and legs and wool.
It doesn’t help me to feel sleepy,
Only very, very sheepy.
When I cannot get to sleep,
With laboured breath and herds of sheep,
The time drags by, and yet too fast,
I find that several hours have passed.
The more I try, the worse it seems;
I long to linger in my dreams,
I long to lose the languid night,
To sleep, to wake, to see the light.
I know the night will never last,
Tomorrow shuts it in the past.
But that’s no comfort, when dark’s so deep,
When you cannot get to sleep.
STICKERS
(Or, THE GOOD BEHAVIOUR CHART)
I’m owed another sticker:
There should be one there.
I’ll get another sticker
For brushing my hair.
I earned three yesterday:
Got myself dressed,
Ate a banana,
Broke a vase – but confessed.
I need another sticker,
To get my reward,
It’s fair I should get one
For not being bored;
Or I might get a sticker
For making my bed;
No, that’s too hard,
I’ll lay the table instead.
Or there could be a sticker
For finishing my tea,
If it’s something I like,
That’s a pushover for me!
I think I might ask them
To fill my chart neatly
By awarding my sticker
For smiling sweetly…..
UNDER THE CHEST OF DRAWERS
What’s under the chest of drawers?
There are shapes in the gloom
Only half in the room
Under the chest of drawers.
What’s under the chest of drawers?
Is that bundle of dust
Still a sock? Only just,
Under the chest of drawers.
What’s under the chest of drawers?
That’s a sticky toy car
Which rolled just too far
Under the chest of drawers.
What’s under the chest of drawers?
That can’t be a biscuit!
Shall I touch? Dare I risk it?
Under the chest of drawers.
What’s under the chest of drawers?
Is that all? Is it clear?
That’ll do till next year.
Under the chest of drawers.
GOING OUT
We crimped and curled and gelled and styled,
Cracked our plaster as we smiled,
Rouged our cheeks as red as rashes,
With mascara clogged our lashes;
Discussed which daring clothes to choose,
And squashed our feet in painful shoes;
Dowsed ourselves with potent scent
Which followed after as we went:
Embraced the ritual and the fuss
To act and look far less like us.
Then afterwards, with mad delight,
Retold excitements of the night;
Confided secrets, bragged of sins
That washed away as we scrubbed our skins.
By daylight we might think we dreamed,
So rarely was it as it seemed.
Though there were those who would not doubt
Their lives were changed by going out.
MEMORY
The birds that glide in my familiar skies,
Conjure blinding seconds of recall.
Surprised, I catch my breath; it seems that all
The years have gone:
Then I a child was,
And watched the world with different mind and eyes.
COLD NOODLE
Why have I just found
Two tiny strands
Of cold noodle on the stairs?
A minuscule hemisphere
Of soy sauce clings
To my left finger nail,
As evidence
Of my discovery.
This is one of life’s
Deepest mysteries.
HE SPAT
I sat
Where he spat;
My big brother,
None other,
A bit
Of his spit
On me.
It’s wet,
I bet,
On me.
Just there.
(Not fair),
He knew
What I’d do,
That I’d sit
In his spit.
I’m cursed.
My brother’s spit
Is the worst.
FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM (Now It’s Friday)
I took the 2017 National Poetry Day theme as inspiration for these lines about how it used to feel at the end of my school week. I like to think that school is now more fun for most than it was for me! If you take the first letter of each word it spells out the title of the poem.
Fleeing, running,
Excitedly, ecstatically,
Denial of Monday
Forging rapidly, entering enticingly,
Domains of mind.
Forgetting recent events,
Entombing dark obvious memories now,
Only wanting immediate tangible sensations.
Feelings relax.
Interminable days are yesterday.
CUSHIONS
I really love my cushions
But my family won’t approve:
I like florals in the summer,
And buy new ones when we move.
I love velvet in the winter
In unusual accent shades,
But they say they’re just a nuisance
And make anti-cushion raids.
Every morning several cushions
Will be strewn about the floor;
Every morning I replace them
And appreciate them more.
I once saw in Buckingham Palace
How the Queen has hers on show,
With two v-shapes in the middle,
Rather like a mammoth bow;
But despite my daily efforts
To have cushions fit for snobs,
Careless pounding by my family
Leaves them shrunken, shapeless blobs.
And they say I’m causing clutter,
And they say the cupboards strain
With the old ones I’ve rejected –
Well I might need them again!
“But the sofa’s made of cushions!”
They opine and they implore,
“And if the sofa’s made of cushions
Why on earth would it need more?”
But they lack aesthetic senses
And they seem to fail to see
That to laze on piles of cushions
Is my life of luxury.
Yes, I really love my cushions,
And my cuddly cubes shall stay;
So my family has to lump them,
Watch me plump them;
I’ll not dump them,
THEY WILL NEVER GO AWAY!
UNDER THE TABLE
Our baby goes under the table,
Where he likes to chew paper and crumbs;
He takes his toy monkey called Mabel
Which also encounters his gums.
Our baby goes under the table,
A space that he very soon fills,
As he creeps there whenever he’s able,
With a stash of our leaflets and bills.
Our baby goes under the table,
With parts of our grubbiest toys;
He has toast and a sock and a label,
And he’s making a curious noise.
Our baby goes under the table,
And he’s turning it into a bin.
Now he’s gnawing electrical cable –
Thank goodness it isn’t plugged in!
Our baby goes under the table,
But it’s time he was going to bed.
One day this will all become fable,
And things will be neat,
With only our feet
Under the table instead.
AT ELEVEN
Will this be the last time he builds a den;
His last attempt to decorate gingerbread men?
Is this the final space flight to another galaxy,
And the last sandcastle he will leave to the sea?
Is this the swansong silky finger
Round the cake bowl, and the final linger
In a bath that’s a foamy playground,
Or his last bestowal of a beetle he has found?
Will there be no night-time visitations,
Or fully-costumed police investigations?
And is the ragged garden goal too small at last
For him to want to try to get one past?
Will this be his closing bedtime story reading
And the last hand across the road he will be needing?
Will he no longer sulk over something petty,
Or show contempt for alphabet spaghetti?
Is this his consummate scramble up a tree,
Or his final tumble to graze his knee?
Perhaps the ultimate spell of card game cheating
And his final Halloween of trick or treating?
Is this the end of much that he has done
Before he points his wings towards the sun?
And what new lives shall we all find
When he leaves eleven, and us, behind?
DANDELION
I wish to block time’s ceaseless pour
Whilst those I love are safe and well,
For fear time’s torrent dumps some hell,
And leaves us yearning for before.
I urge the keeping of the day,
The holding of the joyful hours,
The walking with the sun and flowers,
The hope that smiles won’t creep away.
There is no life that feels no pain,
There is no laughter free from tears,
There is no holding back the years,
And every summer runs with rain.
I know all this. But still I pray
And pray all might be heaven-blessed,
That deepest peace and calmest rest
Will bolster every night and day.
Such shadows chill the sunlit grass,
And snaking smoke our fires can smother.
How we cling to one another,
Feeling lovely moments pass.