Poetry From The Back Of My Hand

That the sun doesn’t always shine
even though it’s always in the sky.
That I love you doesn’t mean what it used to
That love is a card you buy for £2.50 and
a box of chocolates, if you’re lucky or sometimes “special.”

That reality is more important than anything.
That staying sane isn’t easy.
That families either hold you up or push you down.
That silence is not golden but steel.
That laughter comes sometimes when crying should.
That you always loose what you most take for granted.
That blue and black are the same if in the dark.
That white isn’t white and black not black.
That women abuse too.
That silence isn’t golden but steel,
not necessary merely binding.
That Christmas starts in September
and Easter in January.

Not Helen of Troy
Not Emma, not Juliet, not Shakespeare’s Beatrice,
but Beatriz Espinosa de Guevara
Beautiful, noble, gentle, rich, coverted Beatrice.

Skin as white as barium lilies,
taupe hair
breasts as supple as raw calf meat.
Silky hair waterfalls from her shoulders.

A thousand smiling suits,
a thousand mansions,
but Beatrice would not accept
any.

Suddenly- like the rain-
Don Martin de Scopoli-
cue- enter from the right
to go to stage centre.

Love and passion for Beatrice
grows as quickly and thickly as weeds aflame,
but suitors barricaded the entrance
to his love.

Bodies sowed along the streets like corn-
(not Penelope- but Beatrice)-
tombs sprung up like weeds
chasing Don Martin’s shadow.

Beatrice falls–fast, and furiously
as though she had jumped
from Sleeping Beauty’s tower,
for his wit, beauty, words.

In this once upon a time however
she was sad and couldn’t find
her happily ever after
while ghosts filled the streets like Autumn leaves.

A prayer to Santa Luca-
a brazier, charcoal and a flame.
A wish, a desire, a threat.
She puts flame to face.
Veils her face with the brazier,
corroding, melting, disfiguring her skin
that bleeds,
and bleeds.

The smell of burning flesh- a scream-
sound of feet on steps-
herbs and vinegar lathered onto flaying skin.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO HER SUITOR?

Eyes now pot holes under burnt eyebrows,
now no longer brows but bloodied scars,
skin now melted like plastic
covered by a black veil,

I did it so that he stops lloving me-
stops killing-
to save lives-
so that he no longer loves me.

Ah Beatriz, I love you.
Not for your beauty, just for your moral behaviours.
You are a good and generous lady.
Your noble and your soul is pure.

A lifting of a black and red spotted veil-
a kiss-
blood and burnt flesh on lips-
a ring and a happily ever after.

When you’re away
stars splinter,
moons shatter,
and the sun spills onto the lake like gold.

When you’re away
lakes freeze over,
trees turn to paper dolls,
and the grass burns.

When you’re away
streams ripple backwards,
snow crawls upwards,
clouds rain blood.

When you’re away
clocks stop,
springs fall,
corners become rounded.

Eyes firmly shut, left arm stretched out as if already a ghost, she begins to walk. The street lights are closing with the day, like petals folding in on themselves, but she does not, can not see this. The humid smell of the streets settles in her lungs like dust in bellows. She carries a cane, that she swings as if to music.

In the photograph in her pocket her mother has her on her lap, listening to her muffled heart beat to the ticking of the clock, that provides the background music to her dreams.

The fumes of bleach and fish invade his dreams,
spurs firmly pointed ahead,
bare back on horses whose skin glisten like wet berries.

Two hours ago the floor that now grips onto him,
held fish guts and flaying skin.
The bleach, now dominant scars the air and his dreams.

He would cut the fish wrench the guts out with his bare hands.
The light breaks as he cuts,
marking out a million rainbows on the flesh that oozes like blood.

Seeped in cheap perfume, his wife straddles the streets
with a dress that grabs onto her like clingfilm
as she undoes the first American belt of many.

I recall every vowel you cut,
every syllable you elongated,
the movement of your eyes and
that nervous tick of your of
brushing your fingers through your hair.

I replay you in my mind,
pressing pause
and changing the language to chinease,
a language I don’t understand,
just so that I can concentrate on your lips.

It’s only when he shows me footage of you,
that I remember that you did exist,
that you were real,
and that you were mine,
even if it was for just one second.