The search for my body
Continues.
Can ritual give it shape
Once more. A walking.
healing
Pain’s sweet tooth, remembered
Back in this place again
This place of doom and gloom
Bloated stomach passing for womb
Once I was well and pain
Was something felt from a
Prick of thorn or cut of steel
Not as now when it grows
From a live seed
Planted deep, sown down
In furrows, virulent its saplings writhe
For supremacy, squealing for
Sugar and coffee and tea
Cake and wine and syrup and cream,
Drops will not do, bring
Buckets for bowls, Life must
Be strained and stretched to
Feed Pain’s sweet tooth.
Notes on the poem
I wrote this 14 years ago, when I was struggling with a pituitary tumour and acromegaly.
I’m starting to include poems from this period of my life, from my first site : creativecoping.wordpress.com.
I think the past, in all its forms, memory, history, monument, is useful to the present.
By resurfacing these poems, I hope to remember the lessons life gave me then.
Home safe, at last
The omphalos – the navel
This is my place of healing
This is my life in my
Navelbowl. I must not
Let it spill empty, I must
Keep it full, the seat of
My whole, the connection
That birthed me from
Ancestors, I tried
To exist without it,
It is the door to the
Home that is me, I
Was locked out and
Now I am in, I am
My body, at last.
How old am I? My age is…
A leap of time
Between Death and
Knowing;
Curving
Round my soul,
It streaks out to the
Stars, becoming light,
It fuels
Me on or in or
Back or round,
Depending
On how I look at it or
Listen in.
Patience, patient.
If myself were distilled into
A test tube and held up to the
Light now, it would be two feet,
A bit of br ain between the ey es
And the ache where the lungs meat.
The rest is being kept
In another cabinet,
Access has been barred
And bureaucracy is quick
To thicken the dust on this key
There is the hope of everything
Being in that jar, housing
The organs I once owned.
The promise of wholeness, of
Complete myself, stowed away.
I’ll pay whatever it takes, I’ll
Take whatever works and spit out
Whatever doesn’t and if nothing does
I’ll smash the glass and let my guts
Mingle with the mud, set free forever.
Outside
Take yourself out of
Yourself, just far
Enough to see
Without your glasses
Where the trouble is,
The sore and stinging
Itch, the blister,
There, beside the
Heart, where
Anger and frustration
Have rubbed freckles
Raw and no more
Skin is left to
Shield the soul.
Having stopped to
Look, having seen
The pain, the plaster
Will do to stop
Infection spilling
From the broken
Rim of wound.
Soon the blood will
Do its work and anger will subsist,
Just be sure to
Keep things clean
With love and watchful
Pride.
Being Every Day 