GREEN SWIMMING: writing and poetry by Kirsty
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One woman’s vessel is another woman’s temple (or, if you had a child to ‘complete you’, you’re dealing with the wrong end of the cow).

Having never sought fulfilment
in the pursuit of being mother
my body is my temple
for use of no-one other
than my own indulged desires
of aesthetics, pleasure, fun,
so, yes, I fret the stretch marks,
the odd pimple on my bum.

I obsess, in terms of thread veins,
for they make me feel unpretty,
so vain, if that doth make me,
I accept in all its gritty,
ugly notions – for us gals are meant to be
vessels of life-giving, all procreation’ry.

“Oh! I know my body’s purpose”!
the new mother’s apt to cry.
I shall not regret my choices
biologics tick… ticking by.
Does that mean our sad mechanics
are bereft of serving purpose?
It is no hard done-by chore,
our childlessness not cursed us.

When I stand, unclothed and natural
my body has a story
I don’t need the marks of childbirth
to feel a sense of glory.
All this talk of ‘battle scars’
babies sure sound painful,
but, forgive me, all you mothers
should I dare to sound disdainful.

It’s just I feel no less a woman
for not having given birth,
and there is no singular purpose
for this body on this earth.
Like living in a desert
enduring shifting sands,
the bits I’ve never really liked
I cover up with clothes and hands.

I’ve no need to ‘love my body’, thanks
I’m just fine with friendly banter.
Angles, poise and lighting
three small words – a mighty mantra.
Self-love is overrated
when costume is the thing,
and my body wears it well, you see,
and the pleasure that it brings
is proof enough that any scars
may be healed to nothing
without the need for motherhood
and its pushy, panting, puffing.

So curse my sour dismissives!
I’m all said and done,
the female form has every purpose
babies ain’t the only one. 

Swallowed

​Eat the flames within me
spit and hear the hiss
of passion’s trials thus prescribed,
drop jewels in every kiss.
 
Take my flesh unrendered
strip me to the bone
devour every shred of me
brand me as your own. 
 
My mouth shall make the shape of you,
when our chemicals compound
to create exotic fusion
in you I will be drowned.

It's not that I "hate" children, but...

But, when I was child, my Grandmother tells me I used to smack photographs of children and babies in magazines and books and shout "NO"!

As I've always known I prefer peas to carrots, wine that doesn't come in a box and men who treat tweed as a religious experience, I've always similarly just known I never wanted children. 

With alarming regularity (which appears to have increased as I hurtled towards the big four-oh) younger women tilt their heads to one side and say, with a mix of pity and confusion: "How did you know"? As if they wish to remind me that if I change my mind at this late stage, I'd better get working at getting pregnant, like, NOW.

Maybe it's like being gay, or feeling as though you were born a hundred years too late, y'know, when the world moves too fast and you're screaming a silent, internal yowl for a crofters cottage to call your own on some remote Hebridean island where only the sheep can hear you muttering.

I quite like some children. The ones with parents smart enough to realise that if they eschew discipline in favour of letting the kid run amok like a mini-despot in terry towelling, then they're going to end up a) friendless, and b) loathed by their own offspring in equal measure. 

Kids like discipline. I did. I liked having a measure of what to kick back against, what to blatantly flaunt in my parents faces, a threshold of tolerance by which I discovered my place in the world.... and a reason to seek ever-sneakier means of breaking the rules. 

The boy blue

​That boy…. that boy….
Flashing sapphires burn bluer
in a sunloved labourer’s face
than anything Ceylon conceived.
 
That boy.… that boy….
Pebbled in sweat
breaking up concrete
and my heart.
 
That boy, in dusty faded denim
A smooth-seamed teenage dream,
skin riding up on lean muscle
over ribs like Christ’s.
 
A native rock, formed hard into regret,
he swims in a pool
of glittering, sun-shot memory.
 
Rising, dripping and sleek-headed
decorated with a vintage smile.
 
And I eat my already smashed-up heart out
Every. Single. Time.

The Spirit Lab

Picture
Breathing in the dark,
Chemicals cloudy
Aged and coloured,
By the breaking down
Of skin, soft tissues
And dreams.
 
Animals dream, too,
Here in tubular palaces
Captured and floating.
Each footfall vibrates
On singing parquet
And they stir,
Timed by my movement.
 
Breathing in the dark,
Heart settling to a rhythm
Swaying in time,
With these spells of ages
And a Blackbird caws
At the centre of my brain. 
 
In dim-lit netherworld
Songbirds feast
On plastic berry Bacchanalia,
And the owl eyes a mouse
Who has yet to discover
His second death.
 
A fox cub
Infinitely curling about herself,
Shows a varnished bacon tongue.
Cutesy and hot-headed in her starring light.
 
And I…
I stand as still as they.
Suspended in this spirit lab.
A player just as beastly,
Mentally reanimating
Every twitching nose,
Lightless eye
And curious, scratching paw.


The Quietened Beasts

I walk among the quietened beasts
soak up their ancient sorrow
for lives suspended evermore
there can be no tomorrow.

I think we are quite like them
for we may never  be
forward-thinking, pursuant,
nor together, you and me. 

I hand my heart unto the sacred
dagger'd through and split us under.
Choices made in perfect honesty
now roll in me as thunder.

Of time and tide I waited,
believing bright in your return
the hands ran down eventually
but will I ever learn?

For yet I chance my dancing luck!
balanced on the edge,
to tumble into history
or stay within my pledge.

I am split right down the middle
like these taxidermy dreams,
my insides on the outside
coming loose unto my seams. 

I gaze into their marble eyes
dare to touch a proffered paw
I am locked in here forever,
disbelieving what I saw. 

Your face came in from the ages
and I tumbled, caring not,
of promises I had made
the moment time forgot.

Just as I thought you gone forever,
there you are again
and now I'm living with the beasts
my winged heart aflame. 

Fill me up with chemicals
to float suspended in my jar,
my other life is dying
gazed only from afar.

An actress of reality,
I am wholly in pretence,
unable to exert myself
I sit upon the fence.

Just as do the quietened beasts
whom my secrets I shall tell:
I love you, darling, just as much
as I did the day I fell.

In my pose'd capture
of grotesquerie divine,
I am strangely whole again
myself, outside of time. 

Come and walk these rooms once more
pass around my tortured form
organs draped and ribboned,
complete I am, when torn.

Take my body-blocks apart, 
to only you I yield,
and every little shred of me
wrap around you for a shield.

My parts protect in constance
each step upon your path,
in bits of broken wonder
I shall burn upon your hearth.

For love is all that I can give,
and in pieces there are more
sides to coat with blessed pain
oh, love! rip me to the core.

The beasts gaze at me so oddly -
I think they feel me vain,
for I don't wish of being whole
just of pieces, torn again.

My destiny is tableaux
if I cannot be with you,
and thus arranged, my pieces,
show only what is true.

That I may never find sweet peace
in this body, only strife.
I must be smashed to smithereens
to be brought back to life. 

Dear beasts, please let me stay a while
you're my family.
And this old house is comfort
my safe menagerie.
Photography permitted, with thanks, by the Powell-Cotton Museum at Quex Park, Birchington, Kent: a palace of whimsy and treasure, my latest fertile seeding ground of inspiration!

Bilibin's dream

​Like the blooming of a little milk in black tea,
sadness comes for me
rising in polite rage.
 
Russian melancholy
creeps within my bones,
a soreness for all time.
 
Give me
a wooden-shingled church
brightly lit,
with a thousand flickering faces.


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