What Can I Do To Help

Thinking of the various meanings of the word 'mean' and working as a community worker in a Brexit-Britain, this is what came to mind:

What Can I Do To Help?

Why are you mean?

What makes it seem

Like the right thing to do

Are you only thinking of you?

Why are you mean

What does it mean

When it seems you don't care

Enough to share

Why are you mean?

Now meaning is lost

And understanding past

Selfishness and greed

Set in and outlast

And people in need

Are the ones to ask

What can I do to help?

What can I do to help?

In the flotsam and jetsam

I'm the seaweed and kelp

I float in a commune

I am helped when I help

People with the least

Will share their last crust

They know what it's like

When needs must

They know how to rely

On their fellow man

And when someone's in need

They do what they can

But sometimes desperation

Seeps up from below

And the powerful forget

Or pretend not to know

And feather their beds

And build up their walls

Razor-wire their loved ones

And bubble-wrap their falls

And the fear of loss

Overcomes the will

And the ultimate cost

Is not in the till

So we go from baby

To child to teen

And arriving at adult

We are suddenly mean

Just wanting to keep

Our fears hidden deep

In the power we feel

In control of the keel

Of our seafaring boat

While others can't float

We let the sun cast our eyes

To brighter blue skies

While fishing for castaways

And gutting their lives

In the flotsam and jetsam

I'm the seaweed and kelp

I float in a commune

I am helped when I help

Why are you mean?

What makes it seem

Like the right thing to do

Are you only thinking of you?

What can I do to help?

What can I do to help?

Why am I mean?

What makes it seem

Like the right thing to do

Why don't I think of you?

Why am I mean?

What does it mean

When it seems I don't care

Enough to share

Why am I mean? 

What can I do to help?

On Writing: Sermons, Carols and The Choir Invisible

We strive to be better. To develop. To learn. To be 'that better self' as George Elliot would put it. Organised religion doesn't always get it right and when they get it wrong the distrust earned eats away at what is the base good. Love and generosity of spirit and a search for peace, justice and equality.

Having never been in St Paul's Cathedral in all my years living in London, this weekend I went to Morning Choral Matins to see it in use as it should be. The choir sounded as good as a choir should in the high roofed echoes of a cathedral with an organ as accompaniment and at times was so moving a sound that it resonated though your whole body flushing out negativity as it swept though like a spiritual colonic irrigation. Once you turned a deaf ear to the camera clicks, off-key congregation and the hissing from the speakers as the minister spoke, it was as perfect as any Morning Choral Matins. What made it, and came as a great surprise to me, was the sermon. It was relevant, political and not afraid to take a stance on war and peace and justice and equality, as well as slam the Daily Mail (for another one of those surveys of all the people who think something the Daily Mail want them to say they think). The experience was uplifting.

Standing in Canary Wharf carolling for 3 hours had a similarly positive effect. My calves stung, my back grew stiff and my arms burned as the bucket I held got heavier, but it got heavier. People were generous. The Salvation Army Band played. And I had the privilege of smiling and saying 'Thank you' to hundreds of people and in reply to my Christmas greetings was wished a 'Happy Christmas' by hundreds of smiling people in return.

 

George Elliot is one of those 'immortal dead' she writes of 'who live again in minds made better by their prescence' as a writer. How many other of the 'choir invisible' inform our choices, teach us right from wrong and how, not just to love but also how to show that love in generosity of spirit and doing good.

Perhaps when we search for immortality in our writing, humanity would be better served searching for it in the good we do. As George Elliot entreats,  'Oh may I join the choir invisible' :

O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude,
In scorn of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's minds
To vaster issues
......

May I reach

That purest heaven,—be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

And in diffusion ever more intense!

So shall I join the choir invisible,

Whose music is the gladness of the world

A&E on a Friday Night

Today was election result day. This is an observation made of a woman sitting in front of me tonight in the waiting room of Accident and Emergency in the Royal London, while I nursed, what I later found out to be, a broken arm.

A&E
On a Friday night
The news
At ten
In Whitechapel
Jack the Ripper
Can't make claim
To the casualties of the night
Taken hostage and tortured by
Accidents and emergencies
Of their own making or
Of natural or unnatural means
And one such victim
Perched 
On a waiting room seat
Ready to take flight
Brave fear
In her bones
And on her back
A rucksack ruffle
And black sweater
With white spots
Casually over a shoulder
Which is tense
Having seen
Her blood betray her
And a  lump
Move from her arm
To her leg
A rebel clot
No doubt
She checks her arms
In navy and white striped
Three quarter length sleeves
She cannot see under
The grey trousers
And brown brogues
Showing just enough of the
Matching stripey socks
To ensure they were not
Pointless
What's the point of matching apparel
If you cant see it?
She wondered
When the sales woman
Tried to sell her
Matching lingerie
No point when
You're dead either
She remembered when
She was young
And vain enough
For clothes emergencies
In A & E
Trauma
Is not
Clothes-deep
Any clothes are removed
To see underneath
Their ornamental value
Has decreased
Like her hair
When it turned
Prematurely grey
And she refused
To turn to 'honey blonde'
To turn back time
But she cut it monthly
In a bob around her face
Framing
What used be called
NHS glasses
Now back in vogue
If she stayed still
Long enough
Fashion caught up
She was still now
Just one foot tapping
At least she was in the right place
If anything happened
If the lump
Was a clot
And went to her brain
She'd found a place to sit
Directly in front
Of the sign
Reading
'Ugent Care Centre'
Because
She needed urgent care
And
So they could easily find her
And so
She has no other casualties
In her sights
Who might tempt her to play
Guess-the-ailment
She holds her black cardie
Like a security blanket
Or broken wing
Keeping her arms uncovered
In case the swelling comes back
So she will see it again
And not have imagined it
The only time
She wished her phone
Had a camera
For evidence
For now
She was her only witness
And there wasn't even pain
A phantom
In her body
Which had years ago already rebelled
As women's bodies do
Not just every month
But when they get to an age
When monthly
Clockwork
Changes time
To the biological clock
Another timezone
Tick tick
She feels her pulse
And calms herself
And the rising tide
She is afraid will engulf her
And she doesn't see the boy with suspected appendicitis
And the older man with chest pain
Or the guy the blue gloved police have brought in
Swaying in and out of lucidity
Some substance
Still abusing him
And the blue gloved police
Telling him
'You're in the Royal London hospital.'
As if an arrivals announcement
In a major airport
Where
Departures are not announced
The man is on a wave
His wheelchair, his surfboard
Controlled by the police
Perhaps he is having
A silent revolution
Against a disappointing
Election
Vaccinating himself
Against the epidemic of
Conservatism infecting the country
We are all in A&E
In need
Of urgent care
Mourning our losses
With the NHS on death's door
And the country's humanity not far behind
What is chest pain or appendicitis or clots or unconsciousness
When no one cares?
Just symptoms of a deeper
Hurt
A more painful truth
What does death matter
If you don't care? 
Her name is called
She takes flight
And like that
Someone tends to her pain
And not a filthy coin or note
Has exchanged hands
Because we care
We look after each other
With our taxes
We pay the ferryman
Or else we go to hell

No Breakfast at Tiffany's

Sipping a flavoured water

Not far from Tiffany's

Watching her father-in-law's

Full fat latte

Creating a moustache

On his five o' clock shadow

Even though it was 4pm

She straightened her back
Her somewhat Hepburn hairdo

A half redheaded beehive

Making her appear taller
Black jeans to look slim
White chemise top

With black spots

A la Audrey Hepburn

Playing Capote's Holly

A starring role

In her own life

Fictional characters

But with real food

Cakes all round

But a morsel doesn't touch her lips

She hugs her flavoured water in her hands
Her hollow cheeks and upright carriage

Elongating her face and body
They chat about exercise
Her skinny jeans just aren't skinny enough
There is not enough room

Between her and their skin-tight

Contours that make them more

Like pants or slacks

So she twists the body

To show it to its advantage

Be careful of foreshortening

Use distraction techniques

Two bracelets on her right hand
Almost take the attention away

From her bony wrists

If the pearls did not remind us

Of a carcass picked clean

And bones shiny with wear
She constantly fidgets

Wishing she could be burning calories

And calms herself
And pulls her top down to settle

Does it riding up mean

She is putting on weight?

She distracts herself
Applies lip balm

Careful not to have to

Include it in

Her calorie count.
At least its flavoured water now
She thinks of her progress

It used be plain
In-laws were watchful
She'd have to be

On best behaviour
And secretly purge

Her wicked ways

Careful not to

Mess up her

Pretty, patent pumps

With bows

Like the one she wore

On the black round neck

Slightly off centre to the left
Her left
Even that weighed on her

Made her feel off-balance

Lacking in symmetry

And she knew stress

Could cause water retention

And water retention stress
And then the whirl pool

Spiral

Never ending
Down fall
Into collapsing

Under her own weight
The weight of the world on her
Worries weighing heavily
Weighty issues
Everything was too big
And too much
And controlling excesses
Became a minute by minute
By milligram by milligram
By millimetre by millimetre agenda
And they all know the day

Will come

For an intervention
She drops

The empty bottle

On the table
In case they haven't noticed

She has finished

The whole bottle
Not kept any for later
Or pretended to drink
As they said she usually did
She twists the ring on her finger

Her wedding ring
That will fall off one day
When her fingers

Are small enough
And she leans back

Against her fawn coat
Just like Hepburn's
Darling
To keep a hungry girl warm
And Holly goes lightly
With no breakfast at Tiffany's
Just animated

Conversation to
Distract

From the elephant in the room
Half sitting on her coat

For comfort
Her buttocks have no fat

To cushion against

A hard wooden red seat
The colour is immaterial
Although she finds

Wearing certain colours fattening

Nothing flattering

She puts it off

Long enough

And finally

Goes to the toilet
Hoping she hasn't let it go too long
She has her tissues in case

And always a sugar-free breath mint

She is gone.

They wait

Knowing

Hoping not

She comes back

There's too long a queue
She will just have to work it off

They go to leave

She picks up her bag

A golden hold-all

She keeps her life in

When it runs out

With gold accessories and bows

So she can look at something bright

When she lies on the bathroom floor.
And maybe when she faints

People won't just walk on by

Because she is so slight
And as she walks

Large and shiny accessories

Distract and make her look small

In relation

To their bright golden presence
A model size zero
A terrible beauty
Will implode

Like an atom bomb

Or a star
Will reach

Its chandrasekhar limit
Collapse upon itself

Becoming a black hole
And a glimmer of the past
A twinkling that was

And there will be

No breakfast at Tiffany's

However much

The diamonds

In the windows

Reflect her fading light.

Capote, T. (1958) Breakfast At Tiffany's, Random House

Docupoetry: Kaiser

Kaiser

Perpendicular

With designer streets

Of designer clothes

Ebor street

Opens up the argument

In Shoreditch

Waiting

For a reply

Her voice arrived

Before she did

Cutting through

The gentrified air

Adding colour

To the graffiti

'Because you're male

And I'm female' she said.

Amidst the cursing

And swearing

And pointing

At the injustice

Hanging there

Plain to see

Unlike his manhood

She shouts down the side street

At one of four young men

Not saying a word

That could be heard

Over the tirade of abuse

She waged

And staged

Righteously

Standing in the middle of the road

Her oversized striped

Multicoloured

Padded

Lumberjack type shirt

Saggy tracky bottoms

And greasy short hair

Scraped back

Into a tiny pony tail

That did nothing

Practical

Or for appearance

But balanced her profile

Standing defiantly

And with the nonchalance

Of only someone

With a chip on her shoulder

She's had so long

It's a comfort

A cushion

To lay her head on at night

When the gentrified air turns cold

And regeneration provides

No roof

Over her head,

Or calms

Her head

This is her home

They are walking through

They should have more respect

And to a woman

Don't they know?

She wonders

Leaning up

Against the street art

The wallpaper of her world

Rolling a roly

In the great ashtray of her life

Only looking up

To berate the guys

Some more

Long gone

She swears at them

And at the world

And continues on

Past the street-long

Building-tall

Giant word

EXTORTIONISTS

Turning left onto

Redchurch Street

Still cursing

Long forgotten deities

In London's

18th Century slums

And called by Engels

The worst conditions

Of the working class

In 19th century England

But today designer streets

With no room on the inside

For her

She is gone

But her voice remains

Screaming 'Kaiser'

At the very extremity

Of her range

The louder she shouts

The further the sound travels

And the wider her world

This is her personal space

She shouts

'Kaiser',

There is no reply

'Kaiser' she shouts again

Still nothing.

Is he the illusive

Keyser Söze

The Usual Suspects ask

He will not be found

The Shoreditch crowd

Concur and continue

To confer in

Trendy bars and cafes

With the 70s eclectic look

Of London in New York

With eco-friendly earthy names

Like HunterGather Cafe

So far from its cave man roots

Apart from the carrot juice

Banana cake and WiFi

How far we've come!

A dog ambles in

Through the open door

Skirts the legs of people and tables

Can't be taken seriously

Wearing a snood

For a collar

Is it a bandanna?

Dogs don't wear snoods

Dogs don't wear anything

Emperor's new clothes?

Emperor. Caesar. Kaiser.

A scream

'Get out Kaiser'

He's found

And

Tail between his legs

Follows her out

As the Barista

Says quietly

'There's no need to shout'

When in fact

There is

Bank Holiday Monday, the afternoon of April 6th 2015 Ebor Street, by Eine's graffiti piece 'Extortionists' and Red Church Street, once the worst slum in London and now a place for the hipsters and wealthy of London to shop and dine.

More on: Docupoetry

Docupoetry: Easter Sunday

Docupoetry is a mix of documentary and poetry, coined to express the idea of poetry based on real life events. It has developed over recent years as I've overheard conversations or witnessed scenes which have interested me enough to want to recount them in this format.

Having just read Paul Auster's The Red Notebook I was working on a post on non-fiction writing, which reminded me of being attentive to events around me, past and present. This in turn led to me writing a list of memories, then to writing a short piece and then on the train from Canary Wharf made me pay attention to the laughter of the women in the train carriage in front of me and take note. 

Docupoetry takes what is heard and seen and presents an interpretation of the elements which made up the scene. Descriptions of where and when the event took place, and who were involved and what they said will be described accurately but after that everything else is is conjecture. With any reporting of an observation there will be observer bias and in docupoetry it takes the form of poetic licence.

The following is a scene I noted, involving three black women on a train, riding the light rail over London's West India Quay. I knew the area was built on money from the slave trade and tried to capture the links with past and present while trying to leave some of the past behind where it belonged.

Easter Sunday

'Buried in a plain box' she said
With a West Indian lilt and smile
Across the aisle of the train
To the other woman
Striped scarf wrapped round her head
Silver threads caught in the light
Bauble earrings dangling
To meet a red wrap
Like a rug with a fringe
Held with crossed arms
To keep warm
Words float off on Caribbean
Seas of laughter
Moving with the tide of interest
Thoughts appearing as sound waves
Back and forth like the tide
Carried forward through time
Leaving the past behind
On the tracks
Like crumbs to find the way
To the future where
Trains of thought
Trail like comet tails
In darkness as
Rails ride the sky
Through West India Quay
On Easter Sunday evening
When the past is only resurrected
For good

Easter Sunday Evening, London, England, 2015

Peacefully Within

Peacefully Within

We went in through the open door into the dark and quiet
And all we saw in that little room was his face in candle light.
He looked a man who did it well, with neither pain nor moan,
But who's to say there wasn't grief, for his wife is now alone.

I couldn't bear, seeing him there, remembering him so full of life,
So I continued on, down the hall, with pain that pierced like a knife,
Ne'er will I forget his wrinkled face and look of peacefulness
And that my heart it did touch and my soul it did caress.

Each time I passed the open door, n'er would I look in
For life was going on all around and death lay peacefully within

More on the origin of this poem in On Writing: Coming Out as a Writer

On Writing: Coming Out as a Writer

 'Still it was hard to make the step of saying 
"I'm a writer" 
before I had published' 

(Erica, Jong, 1973, p.12-13)

It it took almost 6 months writing this blog anonymously before I put my name on it. It took me just as long to tell a select few that it existed. It took over 80 posts, and over 6000 views of those posts  before I felt confident in being able to say I blog. All sensible precautions, I think. But what am I protecting myself from? Ridicule? Judgement? Attack? Yes. I am protecting myself from all  that and the questions, well-meaning and otherwise. Its one of the reasons I attend a writing class, just to be around people who know what it feels like and who accept me as one of them. I don't have to explain. They get it already.

Gradually however I have wanted to reveal my 'true nature' more and more. It started with making a pact with my partner to devote more of our leisure time to writing and the writing lifestyle. Then it progressed to the point that when I was asked by family or friends or colleagues what I had done at the weekend or that evening I started to tell them I'd been writing or gone to a cafe to write or been doing some research for my writing or that I'd attended my writing class. The more I wrote, and spoke about writing the more I felt like a writer and the more commitment I felt to the labour of writing. A virtuous circle.

So 'coming out' as a writer, to three 3 colleagues I used to work with, seemed a natural progression. They were teachers and had asked what I had been up to in the time since they saw me last. I just said it. I'd been writing. I wanted to take the words back as soon as I said them. I panicked and wished I could turn the clock backwards or forward, back to when they didn't know or forward to when they no longer saw it as a novelty but just saw it as  normal. They were interested and supportive and joked about me writing about them. This, of course, I rejected as a ridiculous idea but see the irony in me talking about them now.

They were great but it didn't matter how lovely they were, I might as well have called myself an astronaut because they had as much evidence proving I'd gone to the moon as proving I could write. And then what can be the evidence? Published work? I'd written a poem which appeared in my school magazine when I was fourteen. Too little, too far back? More recently I've written a poem which my writing class praised, even people who didn't like poetry. Does that count? I've written a novel which my partner (another writer ), on reading it, said he wished he'd written it, and a major publishing company said it had some merit but needed work. And I blog.

Yes. Not a lot to go on. So I have to be become more productive. I have to provide evidence. In my work as a youth and community worker I am very productive and have many stories to tell to prove my ability and experience as a practitioner in this area.  If I want to be as confident calling myself a writer I need to do the same. I need to practise writing and have others evaluate my practice, just as when I was training to be a teacher. That is why I blog, why I am attending a writing class and why I have started to submit some of my work for consideration. So far, just a poem and a short story. But its a start.

The more people who enjoy what I write, the more I will feel like a writer. However,  what I write will not be to everyones taste. I write poetry.  I write young adult fiction. I blog. If I write in a very narrow genre and am only appreciated by a few people what does that mean? It is a question of process and product? Everyone has some concept of the the process of writing and being a writer but the product seems to be the ultimate proof of your merit. I once got 93% for an essay in an MA in Childhood and Youth Studies. Does that mean I'm a writer? Or does that mean I can write a particular essay according to the criteria laid out, grammatically correct, appropriately punctuated and in a timely fashion?

I know I am a writer because when I was fourteen, how I dealt with the devastation of my grandfather's death was to write about it. I remember at my grandparents house, seeing him in candlelight at his wake, laid out in his suit in the bed downstairs in the sitting room. There were so many things wrong with the picture framed in the open doorway in relation to the world around it that I didn't look in again. I wrote Peacefully Within to explain why. I wrote to explore, record and tell others my feelings. I wrote to capture the moment and picture in time. I wrote because I coudn't do anything else. I've known since then that I'm a writer and however much I've disguised the fact in the intevening years, however many other doors I have avoided looking in, haven't opened or haven't gone through...finally I am opening a door, looking out, stepping into the light and coming out of the closet.


Jong, E. (2002) Conversations with Erica Jong, Ed. Charlotte Templin, University Press of Mississippi

Write it Away

 

This morning I woke upset, after a sleep punctuated by nightmares. I have, over these past six months, tried to write away my disappointment and disillusionment, and in the main succeeded. This is another attempt to write some of it away...

Write it Away
 
Writing does not tell you tales to hurt or put you down
Writing doesn't try to pick a fight
Writing does not weigh a concrete block to make you drown
It's all left on the page when you write

Writing does not cause the nightmare or the flinch awake
Writing does not scare you at night
Writing does not confuse you with the lie, half-truth or fake
It's all left on the page when you write

Writing does not let you down or neglect your existence
Writing does not block out the light
Writing does not ignore love and truth to sit on the fence
It's all left on the page when you write

Writing does not manipulate or try to control your fate
Writing doesn't try to hide what's right
Writing does not give up or in, and is never too late
It's all left on the page when you write

Writing does not hide behind the false smile of enemies
Writing does not wage war or fight
The writer's pen is mightier than the sword of history
It's all left on the page when you write

The Understanding Tree

Standing under

The Understanding Tree

Rain clouds thunder

Threatening over me

Shelter beckons

Standing under the tree

Low boughs welcome,

Reach n' call out to me

Blossoms open

Caring and lovingly

Giving tokens

Swapping melancholy

Arms out stretching

Branches enfolding me

Always catching

Kindly words holding me

Knowing wonder

Understanding set free

Standing under

The Understanding Tree

A Christmas Poem: The Christmas That I Love

A Christmas Wreath of Helping Hands

The Christmas That I Love

 

White Christmas on the radio

Spotting the first drop of snow

Tangerines and clementines

 Family, friends and good times

Hanging the Christmas stockings

Highstreet and online shopping

Dickens' A Christmas Carol

Christmas jumper apparel

Candles flicker frosted pine

Christmas markets and mulled wine

Animated three Snow Kings

Shepherds tea towels n' angel wings

Brusselssprouts and potato peels

Christmas carols and leftover meals

Christmas tree and fairy lights

Sweets and treats and more delights

Hospital visits and good cheer

Skies so bright, day and nights so clear

A Christmas tree of green hands

Sounds of Salvation Army bands

Sherry trifle Christmas pudding

Wrapping presents, hiding things

Christmas dinner and paper hats

Cracker jokes and cheery chat

End of Year TV Roundups

Hot-chocolate marshmallow cups

Children's Christmas party games

Santas suitcase n'candy canes

Trying to make mum's stuffing

Hearing the New Year bells ring

Sitting in cafes to write

Watching Its a Wonderful Life

None of this can ever matter

Nothing can make me happier

Not a world of Christmas Fayre

Is Christmas without you there

A Christmas Tree of Hands