Part 2 of Ladydreaming Poems.

JANE TOLD ME

Jane told me
When life is bleak
You can come and join us at the radiator,
Five or six million of us, who can count the
Use it intensively, warm to the back
Occasionally
When the stereo's latest product catches
we even dance.
 
Jane's invitation
could hardly have been better timed
living in the place I was,
Sailing the clouds, lady dreaming
When the real woman involved
Very definitely knows
Who switches her radiator on.
 

SELF- HATE

At this moment still I feel
I would abandon all
to pursue a phantom,
Wraith that calls me to destruction.
 
Reason explains I merely seek to recreate
love founded upon hatred
Death on life,
and feed upon the corpse myself.
 
In such a situation I would turn for aid
as a small child - mother,
Yet, each fantasy stemming from my own
I alone can lay my dreams.
 
At the crossroads of the human soul
the blandishments of death are subtler, with an
demanding life to die with.
The hand of life asks for life, too
to return it, intermingle so we each may grow.
Acknowledging my backward glance
affirms life — a dead life would not look backward.
 
But when I look to Life,
I see, behind me
a soul, shrivelled as a child
Dying in a Golgotha of dead ashes,
Calling, calling,
"In my hate, I love
"In indifference, care
Oh, take me from the dry ashes!"
 
And I cannot, it feeds upon me as it pleads
until my strength
would diminish into endless winter.
I will not die, although the call in me is piteous,
But I must stay, mist-bound, for a little
or sunlight has no meaning.

 

WAITING FOR THE RAIN

I drift on a soul cloud
And watch the cunning white shapes unfold
There is a strange, strong perception as the rain
Your flesh, separate, withdrawn
so that you sit, hanging over experience
only permitting emptiness.
 
And the emptiness numbs me
Evades the meanings of caressing
till I also feel wizened
Unable any more to respond to the moment.
Where did the deep sadness thrust in
reduce me with wisdom and detachment
express our soul's warmth in a look?
 
Deny me stimulus and I will explode
All the meanings of existence on the tip of my
I crave only to fill in the space,
Avoid the exigency of decision and commitment
Here — at last — is the downpour.

 

COMMUNE'S END

They're taking my child away, my God!
They're taking my child away.
Form Mum and Dad, and good and bad
They're taking my child away
 
They're taking my love away, my God!
They're taking my Love away.
From mine and yours to theirs and ours
They're taking my love away.
 
But I have had a mum and dad
And mine was hers and yours was his
And though they lived in misery
They made the world just what it is.
 
So what it is is what I am
Because my feelings tell me so
Because my loom is woven so
And so I'll never be at home
Unless I am at home, at home
At home I will be when I am
And everybody tells me so
Because of that I have to go.
 
I cannot stray so far, so long
The loom has called its siren song
We've played our game, my youth has gone
Now love has shown me I was wrong
To try to turn from paths so worn
Run back, run back and quickly now the eye is in
 
Once, it is said, the warp and weft were made
of different stuff —
We grew up in a gang
of cousins uncles, nephews, aunts,
and sundry other folks.
It's true, the men still warred and proved their
and women's skirts alone had children at the side
But then, the thought of love's great thrill
was cellular constriction.
 
I can flash brightly here and there
Explore dimensions like a star
But distances are traversed in a dream
Soon I'll return to life's deep stream
I knew I'd never really go too far
My parents reap in me their loving care.
 
Communes', collectives' tinsel lustre fades
like froth on beer, for families lubricate
the parts that other systems cannot reach.
That is no accident, the family made the parts it
And if you want to change the game, you have to
Deep down inside yourself.

 

THERAPY GAMES

How about a little therapy
to wend you on your winding road?
I am an adept of bio-energetics
A Freudian Patriarch.
Jungian symbolism is wine to my palate
And I have coughed and spluttered
through many sessions of transactional
 
My encounter work is manna from the Gods
While godless Zen steadies my consciousness
traversing the calm waters of unknowing.
My mind has often toyed
with taking of the Orange (not the sash)
Or screaming out my feelings, freshly nurtured
      by red therapists
on the bus.
The contributions scatter from my lips like
— In short, my therapeutic tendencies are waking
 
Perhaps I could conjure up a villa
All whitewashed walls and sundrench
where the faithful would embrace my knees;
Become the feminist Guru of a therapeutic
Rejuvenate your soul for princely sums.
But no-one yet has taught me of the way
To quiet my cursed conscience as I milk.

 

GROWING AWAY

I can't count small days like walking on ice any
Madness numbs my brain and I want to tread the
Hearts that break under the strain;
Voices that give out for the pity
encircling huge wells of bitterness
at what they do.
 
Them, over there, little ones,
growing up, growing away from us
to run rasps through flesh and laugh at the ruin.
In their name
Science
Reason
Policy
In their institution
Industry
Politics
Education.
Mountains of excrement; our only nutrition.
 
Glazed eyed, they follow the call of King Kong
and what do we do, but succour necrophiliacs?
Let us live and love each other, just a little.
Yes, there is sweetness in life
The knowledge of what might be
Shining in your eyes.

 

THE VIETNAMESE FISHERGIRL

On my wall, the sea image
fearless Vietnamese fishergirl...
Destroyed.
But not by sea beasts - the grey wings come from
 
I play at mystical dreamings late at night
while you are with your lover.
In such a quiet, wind moves beyond the curtain
of this small room, tulips flowing flat in the sea
I think that in the past we met before
And simply play a scene in which the
contact of elusive souls through time in endless
like waves
transcends particular existence.
 
Lift your head, quiet, in a quiet place,
Alert to time
I think you'll hear the murmurings
of sea beasts too.
Destiny has a calmness
and foam and ragged rocks are patterns.
 
Unless there is cruelty.
Is there a monster to be roused in me?
A vision of red violence, bar-heated furnace of
terrible danger, deep, deep under.
Tremble and take fright.
 
I cannot find it in me now, running with sand and
round my feet along a white beach.
Maybe, as Buddhists say, we all sit on a beast
pleasant than ancient sea beasts, calling.
Or is it sexed, a lurking scourge in maleness,
Curse of heredity.
 
Wild wind takes me to the hills where it
is never still; relives me experience
beyond all fires and chemical fantasies.
There is no other beast, except the one I make
anew each day, and have to sit upon.
There is a love, and time chases of souls —
sea beasts' calls.
I have seen this, and the fangs are not in me, or
The wheel turns and turns, we meet and meet:
forever there is no forever.
Rites and energy pulsating
shimmering, answering the sea beasts,
turning, twisting through the waves.
No wonder they could not defeat you.

 

AUTUMN

Suddenly it's Autumn
I might have seen you by now at a women's
but I can't remember.
Does that count as an anniversary?
 
Autumn, did you notice?
Only a moment ago, spring,
poems flowing like dead leaves from the trees
Before the summer recession...
 
Autumn, a new season,
Keats' time again, when we get a couple of still
Diving back deep into Atlantis
in my leaky suit
Losing myself in moorland dews.
 
Here you are, all the time
Weaving hopefully inside you, take care, take
That's it, the surge of Autumn
It has to be still for it to take you.
Yellow sun falls shorter daily
moistens the car windows -
Street lamps knowing they've got their work cut
But it's not quite started yet.
 
Marking time...
What about the deeps, depressions if it doesn't
Marking time...
still students? There again, a flock of sparrows
Demanding bread when I want the whole loaf.
Marking time...
tot growing, timorous, still fearing.
Marking time...
like the days when the yellow leaves drift
and you come into my sleep with your dreams.
 
You bring the surge again -
stately steps along Minoan pavements
Priestess, noticed, gazed at by the crowd
the women understand, the men, so rightly, awed.
Living there in the warm sun
seeing the selected leaping at the bull,
and twisting, up and over.
Bare my arm to snakes in the deep dark places
so I can have the mystic dream I found again on
And be a proper priestess.
 
The surge again from you
as we pull meanings from the Tarot
Jangling recalcitrant cards into their psychic
I can fly back to Kato Zakro,
Phaestos, secret conspiracy of Greek tour guides
to reconstitute the matriarchy upon this soil.
 
Think of it, the surge again from you
Matriarchy's here and now
Tomorrow morning's wakening in our streets
when Mayoresses walk the Pier head
And Lime Street is a robing room
with all the slums as monuments,
Cathedrals disappeared as in a nightmare over
and husbands (consorts) properly respectful.
Where mothers proudly look you in the eye
While squads of Amazons dunk disheveled
into the purifying Mersey
To learn good manners.
 
Yes, it is Autumn
I might have seen you by now
The anniversary awaits.

 

MAKE-UP

At your art
you are at work, mirror easel.
Pour colours blend and shade
no pastel more delicately defines
the shape and form
But as you do your work, you hate it
despise its creator
deride its imitator
Yet you subtly train her
outlining the contradictions
Alienated layers without end.
 

DUTY CALLS

Duty is calling me again
Far off voice
thought long forgotten,
But, prizing open some trap door
Here it is.
 
A well stocked cellar underneath
Sometimes I think I'll never fish anything
out of it
at all
only
stir up
a little dust.
 
And when my back is turned,
All its contents are likely to emerge
Unrepentant.
Sneaky lot,
pawing me over
uninvited caresses
Hard to resist such old friends.
 

A SWEET REVENGE

Resplendent to you once I came
I knew your path, your way, your life.
For a moment tremulous in awe you stood
then, understanding, softly stretched your foot.
I tripped and fell and rose again —
I cannot doubt your foot began to ache
So when, at last, my form was supine, could not
It needed but one kick to clear the way.
 

DISCOVERING MAYAKOVSKY

I discovered Mayakovsky
Who lived through a revolutionary epoch
And killed himself for Love of her
I discovered "It"
In the form of a young woman
local, tight, single minded rather
 
It's May, d'you understand, and the spring
Leaves, not seeing sun, chilled, still swaddled.
In this fiat they bloomed prematurely, it seems
forced, hot house.
They'll wilt!
Watch out!
Keep your heart off your sleeve-
Your own foot's on it;
Slowly press
till it
Bursts...
 
We sent each other pretty poems
Focussed gifts of energy
They're contemplated with warmth, momentarily
and redirected elsewhere.
I'm trying that too, at Last
To take one's foot off one's heart...
 
This creature, crouching, cornered
Despairing in a little room
Wanting, wanting, wanting
Pitiable woman thing —
Buy a book or a flower, some jeans
Don't hanker after phantom images.
What do you want, anyway?
 
The audience sits round in the gallery, an
preferably with warm blue skies and wild
pastels and a certain shyness.
Yes, somewhere in the south
And you — over there — you are from the south
Eyes that melting does not account for
Swirl, really, brown as a million southern
It's only my head that spins yet again,
never safe.
New vitality, new destruction in ashes of the
Perhaps I was born to be a carpet
and mightily exceeded my station
Finally rejecting one careless foot.
Only I may tread upon my heart
Proud, arrogant...
 
Dusk gathers,
Behind a Lighted window
is a monolith of complacency.
Go out and buy convention -
Try it on for size, if only I could get a fit,
the colour's wrong, it flaps my ankles,
too tight in the bust.
Still, you behind that window may reach 65
or even 90.
My years are accelerating spacewise -
tears to sleep and tears to wake.
There can't be many more southern eyes to turn
 
In an urban room
In a squalid urban house
With bad wiring popping out of the walls,
A woman is in or out
Engaged
thinking of other things than these —
The light's out over the road, it's come on here
and I'm sitting by the fire, unnoticed;
Hey, you — unnoticed
Look I'll —- unnoticed
Hand in the fire, tread on my heart — unnoticed
Can you give me the key to get out?
What key? Who are you, cry, what are you?
Unnoticed creature, I've no key
1 didn't lock you in, there isn't any door
to open, no room...
Just the moors and the view
over Ingleborough mountain, I don't even stop to
Fleeting it as I race past, seeking brown eyes
to impale myself on.
Brown eyes are my eyes and the foot is mine
that treads me in the dust.
A snail smoothes slowly across this dust
Offers me a tentacle, gingerly.
Look, I've got this little shell, it
moves with me, stops me stabbing myself
too often, if I don't over-extend.
Another cavorts in a death dance
Ironic self-imitation of youth,
Hulking it over the dark grass
till I must be a harlequin,
useless butterfly, faded, shredded -
Don't try to cartwheel, time to go and
hide
under some stone.
 
 
I am witnessing the death of
Mayakovsky, in a re-enactment of
many scenes.
He had the Soviets all about him;
I, as befits a lesser being, get a faint
glow in the East from the Vietnamese
7000 miles away.
Still, that glow warms,
without it hands would
long ago
be frozen solid.

FISH 'N' CHIPS

It's a chintzy cafe on the better side of town
Ladylike afternoon tea displaced by fish 'n' chips
Cold winds feed hunger.
Out across the pallid sea arm, winter rain
The big factories transmute labour into profits
joining the clouds
raining dirt into my flat
Sewering the sea.
Sleek Jaguars in the suburbs or further out,
Smog and scum around, we remain human and
wispy little flames
Portending Jaguar pyres, we consume plaice or

FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS

A lion ought to roar as well as purr
It needs to find out why it's insecure
The problem is to really know for sure
What in its head, or life require a cure.
 
The Catholic church is still inside your head
You morally degrade yourself instead
Remember that toy lions are fine, and red
A proud and independent, healthy breed.
 
Such lions very soon get men in train
It seems they need to cling to lions' manes
Wanting to find a mummy lion again
Beware, 'cause lions very soon get drained.

 

FIREWORKS

For adherents of the big bang theory of
Harnessing the energy to permit a degree of
controlled fusion is the problem
 
I seem to go off in a series of whooshes — like a
Oh to be a gentle sparkler, emitting a
 
Unfortunately, close proximity to you unerringly
And I can't deny that the manufacturer gives
clear instructions to stand back.

 

LADA — THE LITTLE DARLING

(On reading in the Morning Star that, as a result of complaints, Armenian male garage attendents have been replaced by women, after which complaints ceased. Lada is the European name for the most common Soviet car.)

The Soviet Union shines upon us like the sun.
Warmed in its rays, new citizens begin to
In Ladas
From the top down.
The flower of the sun is womanhood
and several mother-heroines signify
the essence of the fragrance of the flower.
 
When Ladas circulate
then Soviet men
intent on perks for services performed
presume to pocked petty proceeds on the fore-
Remove the comrades
hardened as they are in socialism's fiery orb
a gentler breed, perfumed
will serve without complaint, as they are used to
Besides, the sight of flowers makes felicitous
the passing of the citizens in Ladas
from the top down.

 

HOME AND ABROAD

A little more dull voice would be too much
high flames and motor bikes go together,
Fantasy fanners
lost, again and again in that wonderland.
 
City dweller
biting upon your sun and wind and relatively
trying to chew it down
Under the care of the resident neurosis.
 
 
But it does come and take you
With the wind and a little rain
motor biking over the moor
Light playing shadows on your greens and browns
And clouds —
especially with two.
 
I thought the sunshine might last
but now the mist is down hard
Crow degutting a dead sheep
with a polite smile
 
So I've run back to this beautiful old tip of a city
Where I don't get trampled unless I stay out alone
At least not by my friends
and autumn sunlight filters down through the dust.

 

DIVINE REGARD

God looks over
And, as we turn
We must pass through that petrified frown
sculpting stone from flesh.
 
Yet the breath, the hair's caress
contains the whole
The dream's complete
— and unredeemable
from its first moment of reality.
 
I saw us reach out to take the fruit
extend Life to the calcified forest,
Tear natural order's veils;
explore the soft centre
Advertisements never mention.
 
Sculptures are hardening,
doors closing.
God gives a self-satisfied nod —
Lucky that he saw us in time —
such cosmology too brittle to withstand our touch.

 

STUDY GROUP

It doesn't move
It stands.
And then we all congratulate ourselves
As if it moved.

 

AVEBURY WITCHES

We wheel and circle in a fragile sky
suspended in breezes of dissolution and
Suddenly there is a tuned quartet
Whose cigarette infested wanderings
Spin me in a Light energy, back with the loved
Beautiful phoenix, Demeter, extant from dead
 
Halloween witches have risen
Fluttering bats leave the vaults
We are abroad again, challenge
to spectres of a decaying era.
As this decade dies, with Liberalism
Here is ended: the serious
thoughtful peacock stance of our active days,
to float in the dusty moonlight like dark honey
Probing a deep power suspended
Dormant in its own disbelief.
 
In this Aquarian autumn
Ululating night emanations,
is a moment of pilgrimage.
In the clean yellow-brown air
the hill contours of my body have lost five
Trembling against the circled stones
disdained as you aged...
Yet still wickedly alive
feeding hungry from my tears' water,
your cold cheeks claiming,
returning the certain knowledge of yourself.
Cogniscence exists here, now,
stifled in a million encounters
Moon spirit greedy stolen from our wondering
before we cradle our possession.
 
Procession returning through stone avenues
Reverberating, hill growth, to the pregnant
At the end witches sink to rest
Over her yet under on the empty moor
And the day glides, calm as a blue miracle
to its lunar confirmation.
 
Do you dare to assert the chanceness of these
Reclaim, reclaim, stirrings are here —
the spring is no longer dry.
Torrents pour, circles assume rhythms, chants
Unease floods the certainties of the usurping
We will take to ourselves the meaning of our
 
In this new return to flight, know Avebury again
Revere her hugged stones —
Dethrone the King.
 

THE DREAM MACHINE

Can you see a blue and white van, unzipping
In dusk, or sleet, or fumes of lorries hanging
In and out of orange lighting, eager to catch up
 
You can't see it — we're weaving down the
Dark shapes leftwards,
moving hills thundering on the right
till we quiver and get an eyeful of red rear ends.
How did you get here anyway?
You tend to arrive unannounced
tolerant of a disheveled mind.
 
So now you're leaning over my shoulder as we
At least you're a better projection than you were
— all those dreams that don't return at recall,
Here you are, and I'm dreaming myself, awake.
 
What does it mean, you're pregnant?
Nothing, to them.
A mere refuelling, stoking up the fire
so there's a good selection
players to get on with games.
Growing her, nursing her in the arms of your
Who thinks that' s nothing?
You and I know better, others too.
The only hope you are —
to take away our honour shrivels their own souls.
 
The engine putters along, like a sturdy rabbit,
Studying your Tarot, you sit beside me,
Concentrating energy to find a way
to meanings practical reason sealed the doors off
Effort, effort prize them open.
 
I could say, I love you
let this warm fire run out
It's focussed in another way —
on the cards' fall.
 
We went to see this baby girl, together with her
Such a small life form
on her side in a transparent plastic bed,
Wedged in with blankets to keep the smog away
postpone the Liverpool dirt massage.
Nothing? She is what we have and nothing's more
Dimly atomized on a dark planet
sleeping so tight against the world.
Another one to fuel the games
but maybe help to change the rules.
 
And is she nothing?
Cog in a hospital machine
where every meaning that we have is
        questioned
While they throw us a Princess' baby as a
 
All sisters
born into the red dirt of a world torn away
so that games can be played.
Since they need the players
they need the makers of the players
but only so the players will be made.
Well, I propose to spoil the sport
claim that life is real, no, not a game
and we are where it is.
Uncouth I am, ungrateful beast,
Imposer of physical censorship
upon an innocent hop, skip and stamp.
What about a jack boot in the eye,
or bondage for the afternoon diversion?
Such gentle games
A rape along the back road
by the woods in time for tea.
Or,
In the interests of international diplomacy,
snuff out the Palestinians —
that's a good one to cut your teeth on.
Hang a "terrorist" in her cell
so intimate that, like
sorting out the dollies in their house.
Here's one I heard
Cut firemen's pay so they can go on strike
then count the numbers burnt to death
and read them on the news.
 
Oh, pretty games, to keep the ship of state afloat
They make a mother mad, with marriage
Send a social worker down
to take her daughter off
then interview her for her tears.
Now, that's a wholesome sport, and social work's
          a job
that, if you struggle hard
you might retain.
So many lovely games they play
For instance, they can feed you
shit for work, and when you
Spit it out, they'll spit you
On such a social insecurity department
you won't know if your bum end's up or
          tipped.
Powers; master minds
Everywhere you look you'll see a game
In myriad variants glowing in the sun
Incandescent turds of the nuclear bang
Made so scientists could monitor
the slow destruction of survivors
over centuries...
They spill over the sides of lorries passing us on
So swearing drivers
can come home exhausted to boring little
          semis
and beat up their wives while the
telly reports a traffic hold up at
        Staines.
 
"We carry shit, we giant juggernauts of fumes
We carry shit from factory A to depot B
All wrapped and swathed and packaged prettily
We move it here, we move it there
We move detritus everywhere
And what is life? Well, we don't claim to know
But all the lorries keep the shit in flow.
The cleverest games in history are here to play
But you, ungrateful traitor, want to turn away."
 
The long journey to safety unrolls
— you're still there by my side.
Tears roll down for you
for a world without games
for the child's inheritance.
Then, perhaps you drift away, a breeze drawn
Time to dip the headlights
check the petrol gauge
absently put on the news of games.
In a confused eddy, thoughts form and drift
tears gather once more.
What does it mean when I say
I love you, what your living means to me?
Sitting dreaming after a Tarot filled day
Hoping you will notice me tomorrow
and we won't play games.
Is it happiness?
A feeling that nothing fuller could be imagined
than this van ride.
 
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