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. |
SwallowedEat 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 blueThat 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
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 BeastsI 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!
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Bilibin's dreamLike 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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