Other people’s words weigh heavier than mine:
they carry gravitas on their printed pages;
gold lettering shimmies their spines.
My words are poised, waiting like a debutante
to be called to the ballroom of the read,
to dance and twirl ’til your eye’s content.
If I look at my work through my father’s old lens,
I can only see fatal flaws.
If I look at my work, check down and not up,
I’m only fit for a crippling critique.
If I view my work through his envious look,
I can sense his blue eyes go glazed:
his look can melt my cast-iron talent
to a wobbly, kiln-broken mess.
But the lens through which he has cast his spell
has been buried five years and ten.
At what point can I say ‘enough’ to his hold,
and deny his dream-hogging blitz?
My real dad’s been dead a decade and a half.
But the inner one just can’t let go.
OK, so I’m loyal to my daddy by birth.
But there’s a time and a place for loyalty and guilt.
Instead of looking down my father’s old lens,
perhaps it’s time to write my own script.
I catch myself,
many a time,
living rules of others
that no longer apply.
Still their critical words
will fill my head.
Even though they’re
gone. Passed. Dead.
Their invisible binds
taper me to a past
that served me ill.
When will my ice defrost?
Loss speeds alone; angry car drive
unpleasant. Duck, dive, dodge;
sneaky sideways swerve
leaves the South London visitor
outmanoeuvred. In the funeral lodge,
wishing she’d ever had the nerve
to address the issues she’s never dared.
Long-gone relatives leave memories dislodged.
Maybe black and bruised was all she deserved.
My love in life was seeing the world.
To be precise, it was sunning my soul.
I came alive on my summer holiday:
my skin could cope with all those rays.
My problem was, I couldn’t see beyond
those speckles of sun. I was just too fond
of easy-bronzed skin to see that my girls
were curled to wizened, before-their-time whirls.
A strip of hurt they might just tolerate
but, in later years, they felt victims of Fate.
It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t really know
that love and abuse could be bedfellows.
I thank the wisdom of my first-girl is called
to cancel the bits that left her appalled.
She learnt from me how to be what I’m not:
she’s now reaching out to heal what I hurt.
Ten years of non-life,
as dementia kicked in
were still the breathing years.
I’ve got maybe 40 years left
to live or non-live,
depending on what I fear.
What I can’t get over
is the flick of the fatal switch
from here to not-here.
I know all about the shock that comes
with that sense of leaden dread:
it’s all over now.
We’re talking definitive adieu:
no more chances for ciao.
I know all about the stages of grief,
but knowing won’t numb my pain.
Shock, anger and denial,
depression and then acceptance?
Yeah. But MY loss can’t be so contained.
OK. So it was expected
that any breath could be her last.
I’ve sat with her so many times
as I raked over gripes from my past.
But what I’m still sitting with now
is the contrast between life and death:
one minute her chest’s up and down;
the next she’s drawn her last breath.
There was calmness in that in-between moment,
with sounds of her last snores and sighs,
as I sat in my ambivalent seat
making heartfelt, what-if goodbyes.
Why should I forgive
when you beat me black and blue?
Why should I forgive,
when you never said ‘I love you’?,
until you got awfully, really ill,
and you wrapped me
in embrace,
a blankness on your face.
Because you never could connect.
You always hit my face,
my cheek, my neck.
Yet your depleted, needy form
removes my urge to skill, perform.
And so I sit, allowed and free.
Unforgiving keeps me trapped
between the oldest, youngest you
and a newer, freer me.
Blame is a hot potato:
chuck it at the nearest hands
who’ll catch it, unawares
that it will stick and cloy and brand
them with stuff that isn’t theirs.
inktuition 