Poetry – Living in SIN

What I’ve learnt

I’ve learnt that life isn’t fair.
I’ve learnt that even the ones who play different
still have the capacity for great cruelty.
Being the bigger person doesn’t stop the revenge fantasies.

I’ve learnt that things aren’t black and white
I always knew, in truth – but now I know again.
And yet my mind swings like a pendulum
between them both. Black to white and back to black again.

I’ve learnt that when I’m scared
I lose my voice. Shut up tight like a bad mussel.
Clinging to a rock like a clam, for fear of falling off.
A salty, solitary oyster, afraid of standing out in target practice.

But I’ve also learnt that I’m good.
Not at love but yes at love. At loving anyway.
At exclaiming out loud when seeing the landscape as
we turn a corner. At reaching up to touch the leaves overhead.

I’ve learnt that feelings have highs – as well as lows
‘Your problem is you always feel things so deeply’ he once admonished.
But I’d rather feel the prick of the thorn of the rose than never
– ever- know how lucky I am to breathe in its scent.

29 April 2021

What have you learnt about yourself and your practice? What from this four weeks do you want to carry-on? Make a commitment.

My commitment: try to never stop seeing (and writing) the good and the great in being alive, even if sometimes it breaks your heart

E.A. Caldwell

A writer
of books, lots of them – tens of them.
All published to critical acclaim and
Gobbled up by those around her.
Her brother’s her biggest fan.

A Batman,
A Christian Bale Batman,
Trick-and-treating up the lane.
A whole band of Batmen together,
Archie playing the Joker.

A thumbsucker,
From day one, hour one perhaps
Self-soothing her sweet self to sleep
Plotting her world domination
The first female (thumbsucking) president

A member,
Full-fledged, not honorary,
Of the Vaginae Dialogue.
A coven she can always call home.
Just send out the signal.

27 April 2021

Prompt: Make a work to give to someone else, and then give it to them.

Written to celebrate the birth of Edith Arden Caldwell on Monday 26 April.

What’s my responsibility as a maker? A one minute manifesto.

To write from a place of integrity
Whilst maintaining some level of flippancy.
To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
Or my version of it, anyway.
To depict life in all its messy, chaotic, glory
To find the reverence in the quotidian: that hot cup of coffee
And capture its irreverence: another mug turning stone cold on the side
To detail the ferocious, as well as the pure,
And those events which tick both boxes:
The punch to your gut when you least expect it.
The crash of the release when you write it down.

21 April 2021.

Prompt: What’s my responsibility as a maker?

3 recent pieces of unsolicited feedback, in haiku form

My last online date

‘Don’t you think that you
have too much on? You should learn
how to relax more’

The man in the street

‘Smile, love: it just might
never happen’ he smirks at
me. I stay tight-lipped.

The Duolingo owl

‘I miss you’ he chirps
Each Friday, like an old ex
who won’t get the hint

—-

20 April 2021

Prompt: Take the unsolicited advice about your work.

I turned this on its head a bit, and asked Kat for a prompt – she suggested I try haikus. So I took some solicited feedback and created 3 haikus based on unsolicited feedback I’ve received. Please note, I call these ‘haiku’ only in the loosest (and probably bastardised) sense, focusing on the 5-7-5 format only, and referring to syllables rather than the Japanese ‘on’.

The path of least resistance

Does it take the path of least resistance?

I wish I could say that it did.

I wish that it slid effortlessly over my soapy skin in the shower,

disappearing down into the plughole below.

Does it take the path of least resistance?

I still have hope that it might.

Perhaps I can pick it off myself carefully, like lint on an old jumper

flicked onto the floor, for hoovering later.

Does it take the path of least resistance?

I’ve heard rumours it’s happened before

Words spoken easily into the telephone, the one in the hall,

Before putting it down, suddenly lighter.

Does it take the path of least resistance?

I’m beginning to think that it could

be resisting all this resisting, that’s the path of least resistance,

And I can’t resist that, that’s for sure.

15 April 2021 – Halfway!

Prompt: Does it take the path of least resistance?

Original sin

When I think of guilty pleasures I think of warmth and excess
The ice cream running down my thumb on a hot summer’s day
	The one I'm eating instead of dinner

The bead of sweat that rolls down into the small of my back 
When I’m jumping up and down around my kitchen,
Rocking out, pretending to be Debbie Harry
	Acting like I’m 12 years old again 

I think of how it feels to dig my toes deep into the sand
As I polish off my third detective novel in row 
	When the spine hasn’t cracked on War and Peace

Or the wave of glee that crashes over me
When the roses and peonies I bought for myself 
Arrive at my door, with a note - from me, to me
	A house deposit on frivolities

I never understood,
What’s to feel guilty about?

Who says I shouldn’t be: 

Eating ice cream before dinner
	Or jumping
		Or singing
			Or imagining
				Or spending
Or you know
	Just generally enjoying myself?

Cool is a box,
made of ice 
shoved in the depths of a chest freezer 
that I don’t want to be shut in. 

Leave me out on the side to melt 
joyfully

6 April 2021

Today’s prompt: Do you have a guilty pleasure? Make a work from that.

Photo credit: Charlotte R took this photo of me in NYC, October 2018. Find someone who looks at you the way I look at an ice cream sandwich.