Hold Your Own (4 page)

But for now, he is young still, and everything’s his.

Because the boy will grow up

makes him no less innocent.

Watch him,

staring at what doesn’t bore him.

Sun of himself. All things are his moons.

He can even now

feel his destiny calling.

He holds it to his chest,

like a dressing to a wound.

Womanhood

T
IRESIAS
: The truth with all its power lives inside me

– Sophocles,
Oedipus Rex

The woman the boy became

Born more brawn than most,

Born warm.

Born close to ghosts.

Born storm.

Born old.

Grew young.

You could tell she wasn’t from

The same place as the rest,

Born strong.

Born wrong.

She grew.

Growing is what anyone would do.

Given the particulars

She knew what she knew

She was ridiculous.

Born too smart and too dumb.

Born to hold the world under her tongue.

Don’t swallow yet.

She felt

All the things that others didn’t feel,

Or if they did,

They did a lot to conceal what the feelings were.

She felt skies and bricks and rain.

She felt it all

It made her fall

And weep beneath a crawling dawn

When everything was ruined; torn.

She felt ill.

But she felt still.

How many
yous
have you been?

How many,

Lined up inside,

Each killing the last?

How many times have you

Seen yourself change,

Felt yourself splitting in half?

When does it happen? There in the moment?

Or when you look back and say

– that’s when my changing began?

Born hero.

Born freak. Born weirdo.

Born blind.

Born seeing.

Born man.

She stands.

The hillside beneath her is crumbling.

The sky frowns.

The land wants to return to the sea.

She is food for the gulls and it’s humbling.

But this is not all

That she was born to be.

All of the things in her life that have happened.

All of the changes.

All of the strangers.

All of the nights and the days in her heart

Have been present in her since the start.

You don’t learn.

You remember.

Born with it all in your chest.

Born first.

Learn last.

Burn fast like paper

Unless you’re wet logs.

Wet dogs shelter in her caves when they get lost.

Howl with her.

She has been touched without asking.

Punched by a madman.

Drunk in a bad town.

When she puts her hands down

And feels what’s beneath

She feels all the grief

Of the world.

Lay a wreath

For the girls.

She will march

Till she feels the tarmac respond.

She will die for our wrongs.

We won’t notice.

She is fire

And sleet and granite,

Space rock shattering the planet.

She wants to stop it spinning in its tracks like a dumb child.

She will be prophet one day.

For the moment

She soaks up all that she can

She will own it

This filthy body this life

The dethronement of all that was precious

In favour of all that is tepid.

Opponents mean nothing. She’s Titan.

Born of the first breed.

Born in the last days.

Frightened of nothing that bleeds.

The more that you hate her

The less that she needs.

All of her childhood passed in a flash

When she woke on her back in a clearing.

Time to be me now.

How many
yous
will you carry,

Weeping and desperate to marry?

How many
yous
will you churn out?

Turn out the light for the night.

She has burned out but she’ll be alright.

She is coming up.

Child of her time.

Red morning.

Blood on the tips of the thorns,

And the awning is dripping

With all of our scorn. We were born in

Days that will fill you with porn and with boredom

Grey little faces march in the squadron to warsongs

Penned by cynical fiends,

The latest big hit that cements the routine.

Sell us the download.

And kill all our dreams.

She rises.

She will see through the disguises.

They stab knives in her thighs.

See the swell of her iris?

She survives.

She will run till the cities are vanquished.

And all of the children are gods again.

On Clapton Pond at dawn

The pond was calm

the sky was new

your voice was soft your lies were true.

You were me and I was you

and I was going blind with you.

You told me I reminded you

of Venus when I smiled at you,

or angels that go flying through

the paintings in the quietest rooms

of galleries. Renaissance girls,

all soft curves and floating curls.

We sat there and the light shone through

the leaves and we admired the view.

I loved you.

I had died for you

that night,

I’d closed my eyes

and through the gaps

I’d sought your silhouette.

I’d given up my mind for you.

We did what all our kind would do.

You sat beside me, finding new

ways to look away.

You kissed me. It was lighter fuel.

It burnt the night away.

And when I took my eyes off you

I saw that it was day.  

India

It was quite funny really.

We sat round the kitchen table,

a sisterhood,

drinking vermouth.

I opened the window,

blew my smoke into the night,

passionately drunk.

In love with two women and playing charming as hard as I could.

At some point

I asked you to carve your name into the flesh of my arm

with the blade of a Stanley knife.

You asked was I sure.

I said yes I was.

Looked at you and nodded deeply.

You were excited

in the way that you get

when things are unusual.

And so you pressed the blade in and you drew blood

and it hurt like everything hurt with you.

I smiled winningly

and bled everywhere.

The other woman I was in love with

filled my open wound with ink

and together

you rubbed fag ash into the bleeding letters.

Smiling at each other.

And at me.

I didn’t realise it would last forever.

Now I wear your name in capitals across my right arm

and people think I found myself in Goa.

Remembering the way you kissed me once

You were driving, my legs were across your lap.

I rolled your cigarettes while you rubbed your hand over my ankles,

and picked my foot up by the sole

to kiss in between my toes with your tongue

and I giggled as if I was a beautiful girl.

And as you sucked my toes and drove the car,

I dared myself to focus on the side of your face.

In other cars, on other roads, in other towns,

I’m sure other lovers were glancing sideways,

smiling like morons, pushing their thighs down into their seats,

but none had the stop of blood,

the fall and crush and emptying that I had, right then.

Some couple

There’s always some couple

in ravenous stages of loving

just when we’ve argued ourselves into cunts.

We’ll be fuming,

walking along, saying nothing,

when suddenly,

here they come, skipping in front
–

whispering,

smiling,

tickling,

cooing,

it makes me feel

empty

and angry

and dead.

But when I look at you

silently screwing

I know

I’d much rather

have this love instead.

The old dogs who fought so well

It struck me that morning. I was in Ireland, terrified in a tiny tent.

Outside, a storm was gathering gale force and I was going out of my mind with the guilt.

The drugs had made a monster out of my face.

In my head I was listening to Chopin and I was reading Joyce and I was in love with them for being so human and for saying it all so well.

I felt myself shrinking and desperate and worthless and I wondered if they ever felt like the most alone and despicable people in all of Poland, or Paris, or Dublin, or the World.

I could see him, Chopin – thin and pale at his piano stool, sicker every day, watching his hands getting older.

I could see Joyce, tearful behind his eyepatch – throwing himself into it in a room as dark as wet earth and I smiled to myself, and stopped trying to sleep.

The wind was still making an orchestra out of the tent. But it wasn’t a requiem anymore.

Three mornings later, I woke up and reached for one of the books by the bed.

It was Bukowski. I opened him at random and read a poem I’d not read before – it was called
How To Be A Great Writer
and in it he said:

remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

if you think they didn’t go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you’re doing now

without women

without food

without hope

then you’re not ready

And I laughed out loud. Because it’s always the way – when you’re alone and feeling like you could jump off the edge of the world,

that’s when they find you and tell you they all went through the same thing.

And it makes you feel special because you feel like of all the people in all the world, these yearsdead writers wrote whatever it was that made the blood run in your veins again, just for you.

And you say their names out loud when you walk the city in the middle of the night, and you feel close to something timeless;

you feel like someone just lay you down on your back and showed you the sky.

What we lose

When I was young

I could speak to animals,

these days

I don’t know what to say.

They used to sniff my ears,

but now

they smell my fear

and walk away.

You eat me up and I like it

The air is wet with pressure.

You stare at me across the table.

I feel like if I move

It will begin to rain.

You pile your fork and smile through mouthfuls.

Overwhelmed, I lean across to press my smile against your chewing lips.

The first thing I noticed about you was your lips;

Shaking with pressure.

Capable of mighty mouthfuls.

I gave you my hand. All my cards were on the table.

When we stood in the storm by the river, I couldn’t tell your kisses from the rain.

We kept still and let the planet move.

It was your move.

You raised your eyebrows and licked your lips.

My clothes were cold skin from all the rain.

You grabbed me with so much pressure

Your fingerprints stayed on my arms after you’d gone, like tea stains on a coffee table

And my body shone all over from where you’d had your mouthfuls.

You say my name in between mouthfuls.

I feel you feeling me move.

The books, the lamp, the whisky all come crashing off your bedside table.

I bite down until I can taste blood on my lips.

We tried to play it cool. We promised
no pressure
.

But I couldn’t keep myself from falling. Like the rain.

I lay in the dark and listened to the rain.

Drank the night in breathless mouthfuls.

The sky hung low and gave in to the pressure.

I stared at your back, desperate for you, trying to make you move.

But you were busy, chain smoking, swinging those legs off the edge of the table

And I could feel myself burning up each time the butt met your lips.

I watch your profile, the stretch of your nose, the curve of your lips.