never more than seven

We are paper people, made from mashed up trees. Once we reached for the sky, but now we lie side by side and flattened. We carry truths that could make the world turn in reverse. We mention that you need to buy some milk. We fold to keep our secrets within. Or live bold lives with letters scarred across our skins, bearing messages of love or hate or everything in between. We fold into flightless cranes or lotus flowers that never see the sun. We are kept close at hand. To refer, remember, remind. Rewind. We are crumpled and flung, torn and burned. We are left in the rain, to grow thin and indistinct - edging close to pulpy surrender.

a long way down

She had always wanted to join them, high in the sky hopes and all. She said she dreamed the same dreams, schemed the same schemes. And at first all seemed well. She talked the talk, she squawked the squawk - and they even forgave her when she didn’t know the truth about bluebirds. But while ignorance is bliss, bad birds must be punished.

And yesterday the eagles passed judgement. They took her up to the top of the tallest tree to remind her of the rules of the game. They said you mustn’t use your feathers as weapons. They should lift you high, and let you see the world laid out below, all gameboard smiles. They said feathers are light, but sharp too. They should be used to draw comparisons, and sometimes even conclusions, but never to draw blood.

Yesterday the eagles passed judgement. They plucked 180 feathers from her wings and sent her down to live out life on the ground.

piece signs

I’m prone to ramble in those little comments boxes. This will not come as news to those people I visit regularly. But this is the first time a comment has grown into a post of its own. When I saw this recent image in the box of delights that is grey dandelion feather, my mind went into flood alert.

I'm not religious, but certain scraps of christianity come together when I see this. The shroud of turin, stained with the blood of the crucifixion. Warnings about original sin, and the spilled juice of the first forbidden fruits.

I see innocence. But innocence lost, or innocence stolen never to be returned to its rightful owner. Kissed laid gently on skin that never sees the light of day. A well intentioned touch that burns and leaves a scar.

I picture a beautiful woman walking through the sun, fan in hand, caught in a downpour - washed suddenly from youth to old age.

I’ve said too much, I haven’t said enough. But I’ll stop, and leave some breath left in the room for you to make of this picture whatever you will.

for the restless

The following letter was found under a dented pillow in an empty bed. Folded and refolded and faint with age. Over the years the ink has seeped through the pillowcase, infusing each and every feather, eventually passing through to mark the skin of the sleeper. Should you encounter this person, who you will surely recognise, please tell them they have lost their letter.

negligence #1

I hear a chainsaw slicing through the breeze. Sharp against the edges of the morning. A sound disembodied from its owner. By a wall, taller than me, or a me smaller than the wall. They’re cutting down the ghosts in the graveyard, my dear.

The ghost of trees grown too big for their roots. Or their boots. Their footsteps set to disturb the ancient sleepers, grown mossy from too much dreaming. Chiselled names faded, memories ivy-strung and jaded. They’re cutting down the ghosts in the graveyard, my dear. And you don’t care.

hand in glove

The other week I had a thought about a childs glove dropped in the snow. Colour sudden amid absence of colour. A knitted hand unravelled from its owner. I wondered if the child lost the glove or if the glove lost the child. I cant recall where this thought came from - like the glove I am well worn and am often losing my threads.

Then yesterday I saw a cigar dropped in the street, still in its plastic wrapper. And I wondered again. About the cigar, and the smoker. I wondered if it was meant as a celebratory cigar, to mark the birth of a baby. A baby never born, hence the drop. The child never grown up to wear the glove found in last weeks thought snow.

Unanswerable questions. Time now to drop this train of thought and let it lie buried as more snow falls, unlikely but not impossible in June. Maybe I will rediscover it come thaw. Maybe it will have grown into a glove tree, blooming with new girls to wear new gloves. Maybe they can tell me where the thought came from, and more importantly why it came to me.

reading the tea leaves

Once upon a time I used to care about numbers. It mattered how many times the bell above the door rang to say that a customer had come into my shop of second-hand thoughts and lovingly refurbished ideas. But that doesn’t matter much any more. Now I smile when familiar faces place their footprints on the welcome mat, when they buy an antique smile or a battered hat.

But I’m still fascinated by the signposts that strangers follow to get here. Because as we know this little shop isn’t clear on the maps, and permanent ink never does what it claims to. So people gaze deep into their teacups and see the fortunes the leaves spell out to them - sometimes the message is clear, and those people end up here.

Recently someone called in the hope of finding ‘how do you loop jelly bracelets on your wrist’ - sadly I have no idea, although I’m sure it’s a useful skill to know. Another came looking for ‘Tales from the Rainbowed Seas’ - but I was all out of stories that day and even my poems were coming through in black and white. Lots of people seem interested in the path ‘through boredom into fascination’ - and so am I, but I’m still perfecting my route. And someone unnerved me a little by looking for something that says ‘Horror is important. It reminds you that you can bleed. It scares the life out of you just to show you how safe y…’ which is strangely familiar, in fact I’m sure its something I said once before. But it seems like some nasty creature, hungry for overblown words, ate that traveller before they arrived, so we’d best keep our voices down.

Once upon a time my signpost was newly painted and the destinations clear. But the weather came and flaked the paint and made some of the letters disappear. For the record, I gave up travelling when I learned to walk - I gave up praying when I learned to talk. But if I can make a pilgrimage then my holyland is beckoning - and its a place of shadows and spotlights with shabby gods dressed in unlikely suits. And for nothing more than the hymns we sing its worth abandoning without and stepping within.

broken windows

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with wings on our feet

I have the smallest feet of anyone I know. I have feet like a birds. Feet like a babies. I have feet like creatures with too many feet to count - where each does a tiny percentage of the work of an average foot. Feet like a water strider, designed to do a jesus dance on the surface of a still pond.

I barely make a sound when I walk, even with my big black boots on. I don’t disturb the dust as I spin in your corners. And you’d hardly know I was passing through, apart from the stop-start buzzing of my thoughts.

When I walk in the rain the drops don’t try to move out of the way like they do for you. Even if I throw myself against them with all force they wont mind, they wont be bruised.

I can climb leaves as if they were ladders, even when they are brittle with autumn surrender. I can tightrope my way across the ceiling using a spiders web, and never look down. I can stand upon your head and you would just think thoughts a little darker from the shadow I cast.

colour is its own reward

Some of the things we were taught at school that seem quite incredible now. Like the lessons about what to do in case of a nuclear attack. How to store tinned foods and make shelters using doors and mattresses. All the symptoms of radiation sickness we were introduced too. I feel out of time - as if I grew up in war time, or in some far flung future. Or maybe it was just the curriculum in my village!

But I remember it cropping up in film and television too. Small talk about powerful men with their fingers hovering over the big red button. I always worried that they might slip or sneeze or have a bad day and launch missiles without really meaning too.

I thought I didn’t have to worry as much these days. Till I realise that now we all have a button. And its probably right beside you now, to your right or possibly your left. It still only needs the press of one finger or possibly a thumb. Its missiles are more varied but no less dangerous. Gambling, buying, selling, investing, chatting, dating, emailing. You name it, you can launch it. All those ‘are you sure’, ‘click to confirm’, ‘proceed’ boxes blinking and begging for detonation. So next time you prepare to click, take a second to think what reaction you are setting in motion before you press that button.

tread softly

I recently watched a programme called The Human Footprint. It offered visual reconstructions of my wildest dreams and my worst nightmares. It also clarified one big reason why I regularly feel at odds with my world.

Apparently in the UK 3% of the population cannot read at all. But more worrying is that 40% can but choose not to read. And worst of all, more households own 2 cars than 2 novels.

Based on these statistics they calculated that the average citizen would use the equivalent of 24 trees to manufacture their lifetime reading needs.

On average I digest about 50 books a year - so I guess I will destroy way more trees than most people. This is not good - I love reading, but I love trees too. But I guess I can take solace in the fact that I am a great recycler of books.

Books are beautiful when they are new, crisp clean tight white pages held firm in unbroken covers. But somehow they are even better when they come with a history. With other readers thumbprints laid gently on the edges of the pages, other peoples exclamations and sighs tickling the margins. Their bindings a little looser from the distances they have travelled. Their corners a little bent from the spaces they have jammed into. (and what goes for books also goes for people - I prefer recycled friends)

And then I realise its not just books I love to recycle. Its their components too. Playing anagram games with letters - the taste of tongue twisters. Stirring words to make new sentences from old recipes. Mix and match questions and answers - a game of snap played by the wrong rules, where you cant cheat but you always win.

back to neverneverland

Maybe the lack of April showers is letting our minds grow dusty - but there seems to be a lot of people suffering from the Tinkerbell Effect at the moment. Don’t laugh, its real, it must be because it even has a Wikipedia entry. Albeit a slender one - defining it as ‘those things that exist only because people believe in them’.

And its all around me. Its there when she says she wont throw it away, because it once meant so much - a souvenir from another day. Even though he said it tarnished long ago - and anyway, he always preferred the pea-green boat to the runcible spoon. A fairy tale postcard brought home from a pick and mix honeymoon.

Its there when he says he has seen the future. An amateur fortune teller with a mirrorball. And so she walks in the direction of his pointed finger - out onto the water - despite the holes in her feet where the rusty nails went in. And she still believes the only way is up when there is so far to fall, because there’s no choice when the autumn leaves don’t return your call.

adrift in a world of my own

I always wear the wrong costume. When I am meant to be playing the part of the philosopher - having pulled that dusty cloak from the fancy dress box - I get weighed down by my concrete boots. And when I am quill in hand pretending to be the poet, I am adorned in an array of abstract feathers.

So earlier this week, I sat down to write about bridges. Wanting to wield words to build solid sentences. To show others the bridges I have seen and the streams I have crossed. But as ever I drifted away on an abstract tide - always headed for the sea.

I thought about the postcard I had as a child - an elongated image of the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking like the land at the end of the rainbow, before I realised that the only place a rainbow leads is round the bend. I thought about bridges built of hopes and fears - wasted wishes scribbled onto faded playing cards. I thought of you stood high and mighty, casting off your shadow to walk lighter into another future, further into an unwritten past. I thought about fish tanks and river banks and Winnie-the-Pooh. I thought about two of her and two of him and only ever one of me.

mixing memory and desire

Last week she gave me flowers. She knows the power of the petal to brush away the clouds that can gather in a week where everyday is everyday.

Amid the crush of carnations and chrysanthemums stood three gerbera. Proud to be lifted straight from a childs painting of the perfect flower. Burning bright with innate vividity (if its not a word then it should be).

But within two days two had drooped. Bowed down and stooped under their own weight. But not a weight of grammes or eighths of ounces - a weight of colour. Over saturated by the depth of their own orange nature.

And once again I learn a lesson from the quietest voices. That some people live gerbera lives. Doomed to demand attention, to strike the eye or the mind. To bloom bright but to fade fast. To fall to the floor too soon, too soon - before you even left the room.

confessions #1, #2 and #3

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message in a bottle

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to have and to hold

Sometimes I know what I want to say - I have my target clearly in sight, I take aim and fire my words home. But sometimes I like to roam - around the houses and through endless dictionaries. To let whatever comes come.

I like to keep up with the tales of the albatross girl. I see a little of me in her, a little of her in me. Me back when I still had a flicker of faith in something more than this, more than me. A time before my heart turned to gilded jade.

And she prompts me to return to questions long overgrown with the dust of incomprehension. And so I ponder what is truly worth its weight in gilded jade? Only something that you can carry in your hand. That you can find in a smoke filled room with your eyes closed. Or swim across a channel with it tight beneath your tongue. Only if its still there on a rainy morning after an endless night. Something no-one can steal, break or turn to dust. A thing that can carry on after you have turned the page, turned off the lights and gone home. If not all this and more then what?

midnight rambler

[with photographic thanks to dandelion]

No need to mourn. No need to shed idle tears. She is not gone. She is just forgotten. By others and lately by herself. Even time has moved on without her.

by her bed
the glass of water
gathers dust

No longer keen to rise from the nest she builds each night. Within this haven she can roam where she likes.

sheets become sea -
pillows billow
as sky

And with dreams like these who would ask her to wake?

tidal persuasion

Sometimes its like I have so many thoughts - one at least for every stone on this, my favourite, beach. Each unique and coloured to suit and begging to be picked up and cherished, taken home and kept on the mantelpiece for a week or two. But they never stay still, they rattle and sway. The waves sweep in and reorganise, deliver a few new, wash one or two away.

And as I gaze at these words that seem to make their own way across my page, out of the corner of my eye the waves come and go. And I start to feel a little dizzy. As if I am the one swaying - ebbing and flowing, coming and going.

And from up here - standing firm on concrete and painted iron, jutting out over water and stone. From up here the gulls rise from beneath me - leaping from shredded surf to intermittent blue. Sea to sky in one breath. And it feels like I am conducting them - directing a never-ending symphony of feather and beaded eye. Until a wing winks across the sun to remind me. Who am I to pretend to command something so supremely free?

filed notes #3

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