Dream Poem 94: Liquid Mud I open my mouth to scream. And it is choked up with liquid mud. It fills my mouth and throat, gagging me, stifling my cry.
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Dream Poem 93: Ice Grey Spray of silvery sea water Numb cold, blue cold Smashing against a towering cliff of grey granite Immediately it touches land the water is turned to ice. High, high up, the brine is frozen into stalagmites of gleaming pewter grey Instant freeze, towering cliffs. Incrusted like wax from a guttering candle layers of frozen water, Icy concretion by wave after relentless wave of bitter cold deep.
All the Way to Rotterdam Twilight over the sea An inky graphite blue And above the moon Behind a cloud Split like a slashed doublet Spilling silver satin Down to the sea A patch of blue black Black blue We move silently past Peering from our port-hole How good it is to be to have them here No fog tonight, unlike the Orkney crossing Just the silver dollar moon And a strong south easterly wind All the way to Rotterdam.
Dream Poem 86: The Capturers Choosing coloured pencils from the library shop at college to use with students on a trip to a museum. The pencils are non-uniform very dirty but the pigment in them is very good. We go out, myself and the students to the museum another group is there, they are dangerous. They capture victims to hurt them. We try and escape by hiding in a room in a tiny shop. We are gathering so we can go out in the street together Playing music and singing. But the capturers are coming and we hide in a room. A man and woman are already hiding when I try and squeeze in with them. A handsome man in a shirt decides to brave it on the street. Slips out of the door and mingles with the crowd He is successful And returns later dressed as a woman.
Dream poem 84: Long Dress and a Sword Two teams of us On both sides of the hall To take games The game was to take on a new personality And act out that personality I was in love with someone on the opposite side In every game they were on the opposite side I tried to explain this to them one day but it was wasted words We were never meant to be. Fighting a battle Long dress and a sword I always win but I wonder if I will win this time and why me? A grandma and baby are at the play ground Grandma injures her neck and I hold the baby and go to ring an ambulance. I don’t want to dial the number so I get someone else to do it the baby is tiny And starts rooting at my breast and crying. But I tell it “I’ve no milk anymore” Meanwhile the grandma who should be lying flat is playing on the park. I’m opponents with another kingdom Although I’ve won many times before With my long dress and sword I wonder if I will win thi...
Dream Poem 87: Bus Trip to an Island It is cold and I have got gloves and coat to keep warm I catch the bus and end up on a dessert island cast away with some sailors. They are an island nation like Tahiti or Hawaii I learn to understand life in the island The tides The gifts from the sea Village life. In the village there is no marrying But people couple off as they want. Another influx of westerners arrive Large girls in prom dresses and sailors There is a general free for all. I observe and think “They are being very disrespectful, grasping and rude.” “Greedy.” I think to myself “They will learn They will understand this is not done, not acceptable.” They are just grabbing people to have sex with. I have fallen in love with an island man, he is a carpenter and has tools We like each other but it Is not their way to stay as a couple and commit to each other. So I keep my thoughts to myself. There is a crisis. A v...
Dream Poem 91: Not Worth Pursuing An office of glass and concrete It’s a bank. There is some funny business going on – a scam A suitcase of money is handed over for investment but it is an inside job which is discovered at the last minute and the man has to grab the money and run. We already know he will get away with it. We knew it was happening but it was worth the risk and in the long run it is not worth pursuing. The elders of the bank have allowed it to happen. (images of the Seagram Building New York. Built in 1958 by Modernist Bauhaus trained Architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson who designed the four seasons restaurant.)
Dream poem 81: Princess Stroppy Princess stroppy In a campsite By a reservoir A princess in regal state gown, sewn all over with jewels, pearls, crystals, gold. We have to keep her happy But it’s a campsite Basic and dirty There seems to be lots trailing about in the dirt. she is not happy, no Allerlierauh is she. (illustration: princess DonkeySkin by Kay Nielsen.)
Dream Poem 54: 1920's Bed At a night class I’m teaching, there are three students, a man on a bike and an older woman. The class is next to the canal, People have drowned there we discuss their motivation for drowning. It’s the end of term and the whole college is getting together for a ceremony. There is a bed in an office. I go for a lie down feeling tired. It is a 1920’s bed, Art Deco in colour and style ash trays in the wall next to each side. All around are sky scrapers I feel very small and insignificant.
The Waterwheel Once Again: Mrs Rochester’s Story Drawn as I am to it I fear it too Its dark beauty and power Black with age and use Cups again and again the soft water. Made mild by dale and stone The drip, drip, drip of Mother Shipton’s cave Petrifying a hat, a ballet shoe An umbrella Hanging like excavated Pompeian Artefacts. There is no wheel there in the Garlic forest up in the hills A damp cave for a home. Driven from town as a witch she was feared and saught. This wheel is an attraction so great I abhor it. It has a pull on me. The rhythm of its rhyme, the rhythm of its rhyme, the rhyme of its rhythm A repeated phrase In mechanical shouts And watery gutturals The crank and grind of it The burden of industrial weight The insolent preponderance of it pulls my eyes unwillingly to its black presence Its perpetual motion Hypnotic Wavering on a precipice How easy, how freeing just to let go ...
Ode to Pina Pina and her dancers Joy and abandon Pure physicality of space And shape. Dance with Water Earth A forest An open cast mine A Modernist glass building. loose hair And long dresses And their bodies move with grace and staccato In minimalist repetitions. And I recognize my own body in this form and saw my body strong and flexible it too could work like this with this hair and this dress I too can be Pina in her hat and wellies.
Dream Poem 92: 1960’s Classroom Affair A 1960s film, very stylized The relationship between a woman teacher and a late teen boy He is blond and overweight by todays fashion standards She is dark and tanned, hair cut in a bob, beautifully cut clothes. She is in line with the young man and is fighting her feelings. She sits in her apartment in the evening. All in white, white YSL dress, white Mary Quant shoes She sits at white plastic furniture leafing through a copy of Paris Vogue. It is a very modern roof top terrace There are high windows all done in the Modernist Bauhaus style. West Side Story – a doomed love affair. The next shot is In the class room There is an info graphics film about the physiognomic difference between a man and a teenager. With kooky drawings and comparison measurements. The next scene, He is there at her flat She is trying to tell him to leave But cannot help crying He wants to comfort her But conv...
The Change part 6: In the Fall-Out of Chernobyl, Black is Inapposite She is in her black as usual. Black coat and bag Black bra and knickers and slip Black dress All black, every day. Saying – he is dead and I am sorry The semiotics of the outfit. She is in her black dress at the doctor’s waiting room In the hospital Surrounded by women like her. Some crying silently, anxiously, some dead eyed, exhausted with an IV of nuclear-ness drip, drip, dripping into their bodies. With husbands With women friends With mothers, with daughters. She is alone, and happily so she needs a break from the well intentioned baggage of others. She looks at herself And she says “This narrative has to change”. This event marks a way stone, a departure from the path she thought she was going on. Her agency in this new reality asserts itself and says, “Dump the black, Live. This is your time now. He has had his slice of mourning, ...
Dream poem 89: Disingenuous Back Problems There are three or four of us with back problems. I am across town teaching a community class outside is a ‘Back Problems Van’. Later the van is at Kirkstall Abbey I return with Pudsey people to go to the ‘Back Van’ It is a lengthy day of seeing doctors and nurses and procedures but at l the end of it our backs are better. I am the first one through and I see the assembled doctors and thank them for their intervention. And I say “My back had been previously so bad that I couldn’t even put the handbrake on or lift a child without pain Now it is completely well” Even as I am saying it I felt completely disingenuous. My back had not been that bad for years. As for lifting the kids At thirteen and fifteen I do not carry or lift them at all anymore. I felt it was what the doctors wanted to hear especially the lady doctor. She wanted us to be grateful She wanted to make a dif...
Dream Poem 79: The Girl Who Wasn’t There In a small back to back house a young adult is staying with us. She is dangerous. We are looking after her but I’m afraid She is Hard, unfeeling, uncaring. One of ours has gone missing The girl has sealed the woman inside a cardboard box And fastened her behind a wall Walled her and boxed her. It takes us days to work out where the woman is And when we finally breakthrough the wall it stinks And the woman’s body is emaciated and covered in her own faeces. I am more scared of the girl now walking down stairs I see she is there, lying on the floor She looks at me with hate in her eyes. “You should go upstairs out of the way You are indecent like that No one wants to see you” I go upstairs I’m really upset The girl is always listening. And as I looked at her, she disappeared – became invisible But it meant she was everywhere and nowhere Listening malevolently. We have to get rid of...
Dream Poem 77: The Important 3rd I’m in hospital having a baby I’m having triplets or three children, I have had the first two but there is another one in there. My stomach is hurting and I’m wandering off to different rooms in hospital away from the first delivery room. This last one is important and it hurts. I’ve got to go find a new room to give birth in. No one is ready the doctors and nurses are busy somewhere else and I’m surrounded by distant relatives and relations waiting for the baby to be born.
The Change part 5: Her Black Heart Beats The time of the black. She hates him for dying, she is so angry he left. She is in a state of flux, ripples of sadness. And dualistically Joy at his departure. She is free at last She can be her own self But how to? Her template was damaged, Flawed, imperfect to start off with. His hurts and disappointments, misadventures and bad behaviour, He wore like a traje de luces , a waistcoat of many lights. It caught the sun in different seasons. And he was exposed time and again. And yet she has no choice. She has to love him To offer him fealty Because he is The Father. The ultimate Authority Male. Her stumbling block. Her fear, the greatest fear, of his disapprobation, his scorn, of being ignored, rejected and forgotten. Her hatred Her disavowal of God in her distress “I don’t like him, I don’t trust him” He causes her misery and rage. And yet she must imperatively Lov...
The Change part 4: In the Fitting Room The breast is changed for sure. The first time. After. She felt she had to explain to Bra fitters in shops, Exactly why she had two cuts On her breast. But did she really have to explain? Or is that part of the recovery? Is she angry? Is she embarrassed or shy? How she feels about herself Has changed. She is looser, more relaxed. Says what she thinks a little more. Explains herself a little less. Gets fired up more easily. “I have lived through this and it will not bring me low” She thinks. She is more certain of what makes her happy, What is important – vital. She knows about pacing and timing. Appreciates energy levels, She doesn’t push it. She knows about rest and healing And the importance of a little exercise. She is the same really. But changed.
Dream poem 74: Castles in Carolina The kids have a school trip coming up, going away on an adventure weekend we have decided they are not going we cannot afford it. Because of being off work with cancer. We are getting a lift, It is extremely snowy and the woman is driving slowly an advert comes on the radio for the school trip saying there is a bursary that can be applied for. I say to the woman, “I’m going to apply for it” then I realize that she has put up the money for the bursary when I tell her I’m going to apply for it she is very enthusiastic. Her husband is talking about next year, the trip could be Scandinavia or the Carolinas as there are beautiful old wrecks of castles along the coast line I’m looking at him thinking, “Hmmm Carolinas, I don’t remember any castles in Carolina.” He explains they are old film lots, stage props for films. I’m looking for a new student flat with a blind student. I want one really close to col...
Dream Poem 69: Let’s Pretend to be English On a canal trip we are going to Everest on a canal barge we go up on deck to fish, he gets one, I get one. He gusts his I throw mine back in – I don’t want to eat it – its yellow and orange. The tide is low and crabs are coming out and an octopus it gets up and lumbers about. I run to the upper deck I don’t like it. We go to a party I have to pretend to be English and my friend pretends to be a nurse. We are both unconvincing.
Dream poem 73: Trampoline Tai Chee Class Guitar strings Beth and Steve are over from America It so good to see them I take them to a Trampoline tai chee class And we chat with the artist Jenny West. Tidying up my desk and dressing table with lispsticks it’s a mess, tryng to organise into categories but its hard to get it tidy Doing my make up, I don’t realize Ive made my whole face golden And topped it off with my favourite Dior lipstick which is also gold. I look ridiculous as my face is the colour of lavendar. Making a scrap book about my Grandfather. I’m overlapping Pictures Trying to unstick some so they can be seen. Old Victorian pictures. Marketplaces and back streets.
Dream Poem 83: Large Animals like Sharks At sea I have asked all the passengers and students what they want. Myself and a student are in the sea swimming Far out to sea. Under the surface of the sea Are large animals Like sharks and whales and octopi. But I don’t have time for them I Just keep swimming.
Dream Poem 78: Drawing Waves I’m in a night club with a tablet I’m drawing wave patterns using a matrix grid after grid recording it on a tablet. The bouncers want us to get out The club is closing down and everyone is leaving There is just us left. I want to keep drawing wave patterns and recording them on the tablet finally we really have to go And I press record and then play And all the drawings disappear and I think I have lost them All. Feeling a bit upset when an interior appears on screen It is the inside of the club And in the corner is an old telly And on the telly screen My waves. They have been animated Going and going and going It looks like waves slapping against a glass wall Over and over and over We have to leave But I have done it.
Dream Poem 75: The Mythical Trout Fishing in a canal with a more experienced fisher, she is fishing for a particular trout, these two know each other of old and she has been back and back to get this fish. It is long, big and intelligent She tries many different bait and she waits only for it. The small fish don’t interest her they are easy to catch But this one is a challenge A puzzle And she will keep coming. She doesn’t really want to catch it and end its life She just likes the challenge of finding it and tempting it. I see tiddlers rising to the surface But then I catch a glimpse of the big one And it sees me leaning over the bank and rises out of the water. Higher and higher I am a little scared as it looks at me And suddenly drops back into the water And is lost to sight.
Dream Poem 46: Life Guards At the pool, A poster is asking for trainee lifeguards But only men need apply. Two of us women read the notice and were outraged. A couple of shady guys hire us for their new pool. Something unpleasant about them, untrustworthy. We started working as lifeguards But soon the men became bored of us and the pool And have moved on to a new venture Leaving us and the pool.