Writing, mostly.

Don’t we all forget,
in the end? Don’t
we all lose control?

But I knew an old lady
who remembered
her mother, laughed
like a baby,
died.

That’s something.

abandoned by your own door
you are open to change.
a cold wind might bring me
closer to you
or empty your rooms of children
who wait, stacked inside.

but then they themselves are childless
and will be for years,
so rattle up the stairs
and scoot out the stories
hidden in the eaves

whilst they last.

That voice, the voice that leaned
Against a rotten fence opened
An invitation to the passer-by who’d
Stopped a while to look a while
For horses and clouds and maybe
A barn but it was that voice
Limping through the morning
Losing its way looking for family
Perhaps but finding only a stranger
Who couldn’t paint.

Deep as fingernail
Testing stormy waters once
Night calm dries an eye

It’s prime-time tv and hyper-hit chatsworth, Jonny Come-Lately, leaps into his chair, waving a hand and adjusting his trademark glasses. We appreciate the casual glance around the live studio audience, a response to rapture that comes across as spontaneous every night. The glasses are touched once more, like a sigh, and the noise abates. There will be a few jokes, a brief revelation from his private life but the seconds are counted, handed out to the viewers before Jonny turns to a new camera, more intimate than before and one less willing to share his affections with the clapping gabbots. A single blink is all that is needed to adjust the tone to reverence. our next guest is someone serious. someone with a story to tell. Could everyone give a polite welcome to someone they have never heard of?

It takes a minute, costed in advertising and more shots of Jonny than is usual at this time but then it comes. Out of the nothing to sell, no agenda to push. This man has no sell-out dates planned, no hopes of big money prizes. He doesn’t want to be here but this is for the public good and everyone has a novel inside them whether they like it or not. Jonny does his job well and pulls it out, page by page. A childhood, once normal, is polished into a jewel. He didn’t know it at the time but sitting third row from the back is pure nostalgia, something to be shared. That punishment for stealing, for talking, whatever – it’s hard to remember quite what exactly – well that happened to us all in our outsized/too small clothes. We’ve been there, we identify, we’d read this man’s story because we wrote it ourselves. Right through to, and can you believe this, the day he married the woman he’s been friends with for years.

It’s news out of nowhere. A celebrity from the soul. Now if only he spoke without prompting, if only he smiled without nerves.