Memoirs of a Life Unlived

They will not look at you while they swerve around you deftly - air in a wind tunnel: you in your reds and greens throwing yourself about, they in the same garb your ancestors drew. They will grow fat and afeard as you start to move in, holding them still to paint them, implacable tastes and customs deciding hosts of fates. The curve of their eyes shows you in full flow -  you might feel the heat leach out of one or two. And they will not gloat when they outlast you.

Stretch me taut in all directions, write instructions on my skin. Call me back in better weather – reel me in. Where you penned in bold italics curlicues and squiggles rest. Render me a walking talking palimpsest. Nothing that you think or know now reaches out or ramifies. Wipe me clean until my meaning clarifies.

With the flowers in full bloom - eyes smarting from pollen fogging the room - she wills the day over. For days she’s seen tomorrow as a stand-alone, no more that deep-breathing stranger on the phone. Clear lines, clean minds; she stays alert to the face at the window very soon. It feels wrong to be in the midst of neither the anticipation nor the blitz relief will bring when tomorrow arrives. She’s been everywhere but standing still. Memories and projections make her ill - bad thoughts, stock still; she writhes but can’t break free of the way time just sits. There’s no control in a photograph: no sounds, no hot and cold, no way to craft one moment seamlessly into the next. She’s dreamed in film all her life, knows the subtlety of shade from mum to wife but now, at once, she packs up all she knew, leans back in the chair at last.

We envy your slab of perspex -  our visits are sight unseen - and sidestep the spikes and gin traps to sit with our King and Queen. Twice daily we get an hour with only a butter knife to cut through a skein of feeling built up in a limbo life. We're peering round every corner with mirrors on sticks and straws, absorbing the smallest detail the mist of each day obscures.

For She Knows Who Your eyes - delicate as crystal – show me how. The warmth of your voice carries your soul, Brushes me with all I need; and now, Like rubbing brass, I find my pattern and my role. It’s hard to think before you. Not a void, More a strenuous paving of the way: I’m a child again, hungry and annoyed And an ice cream van’s been on my street all day. This is how I’m meant to be, like this: Holding you within me and without, Freezing forward motion with a kiss, Whispering when all I ever did was shout.

Swollen trains bear them in: the Children of Nature. Slackers left slumbering. Boys ogle desperately female flesh – stops come sporadically. Dreams, clear at daybreak start to sink – drowning in train shakes. Last thing at night the Children of Nature plan the Great Fight; solid and resistant then valuing freedom – tired minds wondering; red eyes wandering round potential troops uniform in suits slowly shut the world out and the welcome dark changes things about: No more war. Children of Nature children evermore.

Wherever the pen is set it travels back, despite his best intentions falls into the habit of threading drivel - each smooth stroke another worm. The open fields of London deserve a fresh set of ploughshares, cry out for a new chronicler. They do no more than mirror badly things he can ’ t control, or understand. Pen in hand, he tries again.

They ’ ll be waiting for him at the back of the building again – God knows why he still goes home that way: day after day after day the habit of the violence keeps him strong.

Like walking on eggshells I ’ ve heard them say to describe this kind of wariness; but it’s worse than cliché – it’s daydreaming of future good with sleep closing in to numb and sap and steal it all. It ’ s worse than free-fall. I don’t crave control but my trigger ’ s constantly cocked and I ’ m so ready for the onslaught it hurts.

the girls jostle for attention performing teenage tricks laughing at some untold joke saving and spewing laughter like lava the audience of one concentrates on walking correctly lest they make fun soldierly erect barely containing white-hot outrage not at the photograph showing the rabbi and swastikas daubed on white marble graves but at the fact that this matters more walking correctly comforting finery public display lest they make fun quietly leaving trampling daisies canter to gallop the audience of one breathes again an unseen tree root forces to fly into the night the indelible spray paint can

Blossom drooping under a hunk of snow: you struggle to recall when it first shot up, filling space with new self; sun-fed, glowing at dusk. Seems it has always been obscured, born into this balance of power, never felt fresh cells divide, expectant, glorying in growth. The snow shears, slides off; wait for it to spring back up.

A break – she stares so hard that it might bring him back; the trees clumped near the main road tell nothing of his reappearance. So she breathes, looks around at grass, big sky, eyes watering from the breeze, thinks what to do: be sad, or be strong. And while she decides, she looks again at the trees, hungry for those indefinable moves that set him apart even at ant distance. And this is the only thing she really wants to do.