Silly Cow

There once lived a cow in the zoo

Who didn’t know how to moo

She thought it a lark

To whistle or bark

Or hum a nice tune in the loo!

 

Can’t believe I actually submitted this as part of a TMA!

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

On the stage, standing still and looking straight ahead as we’d been told, we were ready to sing our first song, ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’. In the hall of the small parish primary school, the parents were crammed in, sitting uncomfortably in tiny plastic chairs. They were all dressed up for the occasion, overcoats folded on their laps, proud dads giving a last-minute thumbs-up for luck while the mums chattered, their voices mingling. It was hot. All the different perfumes made the hall smell different to how it usually did. We were doing an Old Tyme Music Hall. Dressed as a Pearly Queen, covered in sequins with my lips and cheeks smeared with red Rimmel lipstick, I felt really excited. Not only was I playing a solo verse on the glockenspiel in ‘Little Donkey’ at the end but I had the lead role in ‘Albert and the Lion’. I was the smallest in the class, perfect to hide behind the lion after he’d ‘swallered the little lad ‘ole!’ We had a new boy in the school from Lancashire who could read the poem in the proper accent. I was so excited, even though I had to wear a horrible flat cap that made my head itchy.

The lights were switched off and we launched into the first song. I couldn’t concentrate. I was still glancing as often as possible at the door at the end of the hall, opposite the huge artificial Christmas tree. The red lights gave just enough light to see that neither of my parents had come.

 

Angela’s mum told me at the end that I’d been brilliant as Albert and the music teacher said I’d played well as she drove me back in her tiny yellow Fiat. I didn’t answer her; I could feel prickling at the back of my nose and wanted to get to bed so that I could cry. I had hoped so much that Mum and Dad would be there that it had become like a film playing over and over in my mind – they would rush in at the last minute with special smiles that said ‘look, we managed to get here to show we love you’. But they hadn’t come. While I sobbed in my unfamiliar bed in the foster home Mum was in London, in hospital. They thought she might die. Crying into the pillow so that no one would hear me, I wished she would.

 

 

Ten years later and I’m still scanning the audience for my mother. I’m in the pit of the Jersey Opera House, dressed entirely in black and waiting for the amber light to come on in the wings to show that the show’s about to start. My stomach is in knots, despite the two hefty vodkas I’ve been bought in the bar. Anticipation fills the theatre, coming at me in waves from all angles. I hate it; I’m so nervous. No, that’s not true. I love it, more than anything.

Plodding On

countryside

gradually more hilly

obstinately uncraggy 

A gentle descent

into Warm Springs 

It sounded like such a nice place

to pass away

Homemade Happiness

Hard-wearing but colourful

skin stretched over slender frame 

Long string tangled

it flies ever higher 

Soaring, wheeling, diving

Inevitably a crash.

Dirty and broken 

Something so easy, so free

will always depend on the weather. 

Unrequited

I think of you the moment I awake

despite my pact that I would not relent.

My mind misleads, pretends I smell your scent

which makes my stomach churn, all senses ache.

Your plain dark looks, a drug I can’t forsake

gives bittersweet and silky smooth descent

into a decadent, luxurious torment.

I hate the way you linger at my hips

once you’re devoured.  Not just a greedy fling,

I can’t give up my aphrodisiac.

Ashamed when caught, your taste stays on my lips

but diet books have taught me one sad thing:

‘chocolate cannot ever love you back’. 

Ticking Away

Ticking Away

Crumbling church, perched high above the village

guards heartfelt thoughts on lichen-rich headstones.

Dark stubbled boundaries, sheep in grey bloomers

match steely sky; late, pale moon hanging high.

Woodpecker’s staccato percussion breaks

the stillness of this silent symphony.

Footpaths lead through green-hued rainbow fields,

entice from real but stilted clockwork life.

An unrecognisable silhouette

hears nothing. Punctuated by gunshot.

Warm breath coming faster, I check my watch.

This timelessness cannot last forever.