Author: Jane

Last week, you and I went together

Down the path to investigate.

We saw a river. A permanent feature

Strewn with logs. We saw wrong.  

.

It was flooding in the tunnel.

Here, others had lain

Sticks, logs, a broken baby stroller,

Reflections across the surface.  

.

I tried to continue the journey

Laughing, I wobbled along a log

But ended up with a soggy trainer.

I retreated. Never fear:  

.

I’ll try again a different day.

Yesterday, I sent you another image

Yourself as a baby. You messaged back

“I look scary.” I am reassured:  

.

There are phases in these lives we live

I trust the floods will recede.

In fact, I don’t even recognize you

As that baby. Not anymore.

Sometimes, when I cut open my orange
I peel off the translucent film inside to study
All the tiny, separate globules
Sharing close quarters in each segment.

“There’s so much going on right here and now”
They seem to say, “But not much room to move
Or look around”. At least they don’t need
To know their purpose, I think. Simpletons unite.

As for you and me – I’m telling you, cheer up! –
We get to choose from a plethora of juicy options:
Lemons, mandarins, grapefruits, all
Cleansing, flavoursome and nutritious fruits.

Unless…we both are safe inside already. If so,
I’m squished so tight I can’t see whether
I’m someone in between roles or right inside one.
Nor can I quite tell if you’re in the same place.

So let’s be quick, if you’re with me! Just in case
Something much bigger than ourselves depends
On who I am and who you are and if together
And aware, our naked selves will make a splash;

Let’s undress each other.

In a rented garden you didn’t grow,
Thick with weeds and rubble so
You dig out shards of glass and bricks and roots
Sift through construction debris
And take it to the refuse centre.

The sun strikes your dirt-encrusted feet,
They nudge worms back into the good soil
You found underneath
And create space for something new
To plant.

But what?
Or who?

Searching in the mirror every day,
All you see is someone else’s face and body.
“How did I used to be?”
You ask, because you need to remember
Which you you do not want to be,

All yous and thems contending from the past so
Luring. Notice, on each side of the broken fence
The you who loves spiders
And each fly bound with web?
These options still, laid in

An unmade bed, before and after.
Yet, there are no make-over-hauls of history
Just broken thread counts,
Embedded conversations loosened
Far too confidential to repeat,

So you delete. Hose off
The site of excavation and a sheet.
Oh look! Can you see the rainbow where you are spraying
Water in the air? It lands where you are standing
Green again.

You are quite mistaken if you think it is my quiet time right now.

Even if it seems that

The walls are safe around me

And all I do is sleep…

---

In here, my headphones are blasting. Crashing me on

To run and get away and burst out

To live a thing that’s not been lived by others

A big adventure mapping out in dreams…

I just don’t quite know the way I’ll go yet

Or where I would fit.

Remember, I don’t have money.

No, I don’t want a job.

---

If only you could see inside my head

You’d understand the wrenching nightmare.

Where girl and woman are one and the same

But one is extricating herself from the other

Myself from myself

Or maybe, I should say, in a metamorphosis of common sorts

One is creating the other

Myself from myself

In my own image – flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones –

Either way

---

One of us is being taken

---

Through the channels, flickering.

Though there seems to be no one else around

Someone watching has seen this sort of thing happen before.

And every hidden body is peering from their black soul windows

As myself and myself are transiting furtively

Past the bystanders,

Sidling against their walls

As if we’re actors in their favourite show, the episode

Of the kidnap –

Stop.

Arrest that woman…

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No one comes to help.

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Surely surely surely surely something must happen next.

Because this is getting so long.

We must be going somewhere along the wall.

Or the wall must lead somewhere at least or

Do I have to make a doorway that fits?

---

That’s me. That shape. And here we are.

And where do we go to from here?

---

And so, that is what I have to say about this event:

Yes, there is a child being taken.


She is me.

On the ending edge of Friday

You brush past me on the street opposite St Pancras Station

But, stop! It’s dark and I don’t seem to have this right.

Maybe it’s me who is peripheral passing,

You are still.

---

Yet you seem to arrest me from every side

With your solid see-through faces.

I turn towards you

And the evening slows.

I no longer want to move.

So I stand, minilithic next to You, in my camouflage coat

Belittled to blobbiness.

Already tonight I noticed how, lost in the station crowd, I was

Hardly there, bare-faceted as I queued

Between blanking strangers.

Here, in comparison, it’s worse. I might as well be

Amoeba.

Away from its home.

---

I cosy into my hood

Draw my breath from the faux fur on either side,

But I’m still uncomfortable…

It’s as if you’re trying to scare me

Grey Monster

With your Presence and the Grandness

Of your Cave Curves.

---

But then, Sweet Relief, People I’ve met before

Surround me on the pathway.

I still have the power of speech

So I ask them

“What is this building?”

A man doesn’t meet my eye,

but says he’s sure it’s something to do with

DNA

It seems the sculpture in front

Reveals some sort of Mission:

---

To unpick, unravel and untangle

Slice and Smash into shards

Melt and then reshape Large

Leaning out towards me

Looming Babel.

---

More precise please!

I search my tiny screen and find the Explanation

Designed

For bio-medical research, You just cost

£700 million to create.

Even so, someone writes, you amplify the noise inside

So more than 1,000 scientists find you

Hard to collaborate within

I read you harbour a Pathogen 4 which, fatal to humans,

Has no cure.

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The thought leaves me dawdling…

Through the valley of shadow and evil

Like death

For all humankind

Looking at Mirror images of each other

But seeing only cell deep

Fearing fearing fearing Not

To find a cure to every thing

I must remember if I can

---

I am.

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Or, if God, as they dictate, is dead,

Are you, Institution, their new god?

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This: in another London attempt to Keep Together Calm

They may, these

Different bits and pieces assembled in certain patterns,

Explain it all away this way:

To disinfect the dust

Heal the detail from the sick

Walk beside me on the puddles through to the spaces between the concrete

All those scientists expiring so I need not suffer

To rise from the dead.

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Under the dim streetlamps on Midland Road I wonder

What would become of me if I got

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Dissected into the minutes left?

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You’ll have to wait forever to find out.

It’s the end of the working week anyway

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And I am moving on to morning.