Bodies of Difference
A Different Body Experiences
A Different Universe Endlessly subject to
re-interpretation
re-formation


   
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Quickening past collar it provokes

Difference the lips sharp, dust circular off cheekbones.
Enveloped
glass sinew, jaw turning reflected,
retold years
slid pain clean.
Told not quite knowing.
Shoulder, chest, pulled before, much like glass might.
Fluid dripped it's way, slid down skin past jaw,
intimates glimmered, traced tendons, ligaments,
disappearing beyond edges casually lying apart.
There worness lay,
too much blood loss
not wanting to be reinstated
but ebb,
throw back the past.
She flesh slipped - to floor, basin, burnt?









and here I am just messing about but not in sloop, water slapping,
self-possessedly tired after an adventurous day but just the empty shelf I inhabit, a book, an object not of desire but
a device when needed, then useful, used and replaced until next time.
Now I've decided dust I prefer to wear, static, intractable until I
become as invisible as object as I am as person.









Daffodil birds poised on edge of shed roof
taking the air, necks craned, eager for flight,
the next up-draft and...
If only, no, the pre-plotted gardener will soon bed them out,
nicely categorised, rival freezer cabinet display, now spring
soon summer discarded - if only the labels would do.
The daffodils, pansies, michelmas daises then left alone
could spread their growth, cloud a landscape









Comparative anatomy
with mine always found lacking.
Yet why
when yours,
conforms
to mass,
skeleton conventional. A normal
form. Nothing to get excited about,
write home about. See one, seen them all,
undistinguished in a crowd.
Mine though a universe of difference.
Bones
fine
reformed through pain,
intense through time.  
Unrepeatable forms sculpting an unparalleled skeleton.
A landscape all its own, savvy to each subtle movement.
On personal terms me and my bones, no anonymous here.









A reporter said, "flames were licking the outside of the buildings",
tasting what, the years of living, the bones groaning, one reality
succeeding another until the weight of their illusions made this man's
fingers reach for fire? He then retold mind misused in red flat
tongue, agile muscle not easily curbed, unleasing its searing lash.
Not everyone's fingers reach to redress unfulfilled promise, some
prevail against the burn others can't endure. But smoke chokes all.









Watching the film and romance, oh yes.
A breathless affirmation.
Swift action light relief of life
but not that long looking,
extending moments until they
snap with the stretch -
more waiting than arrival, more wanting than attainment.

Why is it this way always for some,
what's carried or absent in genes or early self reflected?

Ida though remembering, is scared of the stranger becoming sudden intimacy, close living with no space for breath.









Bodies out of bounds - outbound

This my face disconnected, head unclosed, ready for
armies marching their wish fulfilment, meagre schemes.
This my hands full of singers, mouths burning in frozen o's,
fingers stalking flash red poppies

Bodies out of bounds - outbound









I can't cope with women
I don't know where difference lies
With men I'm sure
they're other to my other -
alien rather than female,
respect might sliver an existence
though time increasingly
puts this in doubt.









Searching through scattered pieces of life, items ricochet,
irregular snooker balls, until momentum's lost in soft waiting corners.
Somewhere reflected, we glance a drawer neatly investigated. Systematically,
as tellers cash counting, corners are curve folded between forefinger and thumb,
with the sheets, page or cloth, hardly disturbed.
Balanced above, a glass mirrors the chest, both square. Jutting it's assertive,
placid self, the chest inconsistent in a narrow passage causing deferral
in all who seek to pass.
Just so she likes it.
Scattered life pieces falling to judgment
ricochet from me to you
irregular in commitment
inconsistent in a narrow passage
Somewhere reflected we glance a drawer neatly investigated
Then the nostalgia began,
applying the razor at just the right pressure
subtle judgment
underlying complexity
Scattered life pieces falling to judgment
ricochet from me to you
irregular in commitment
pocketed in an inconsistent passage.
Somewhere reflected a drawer neatly investigated
Then the nostalgia, once begun, lays hold of razor judgment and, applying just the right pressure, blunts it.









Left, the land develops separate resources,
it's own force, it's own fear.
Land left. You and me
The crack between,
layers not synchronised.









Some men surrounded, are born
amongst coloured foam chippings,
speaking in anger, in arrogance,
hard, rainbow shards fly from their
mouths, they though are cushioned,
foam forming a useful insulation.









Pain-Ourselves
I, the flies nest disturbed,
the swarm vibrating.
Cohering by significance.
Backgrounded, always I am
the sound of movement,
you witness the illusion
not the swarm









On Not Being Able To Write Today

Words didn't run from me, they weren't flooding,
sharking their way through truth,
opening avenues,
periodic tissues.
No they left the fancied,
lay still as death,
as floating logs disguised as crocodiles.









"Oh Charlie don't ask, you say such silly things.
Look I'm alright. It's all alright whatever they say.
I know they didn't want you to see me but just ignore all that
there's no risk. I know there isn't. I just want to get in the car and go.
No now, I can't wait anymore, if it doesn't happen now it won't"
"You don't understand the pressures"
"There are none now. The pressures have been waiting on their say so, having my life ruled, even who touches me and when. I can't abide that. Anything's better than that. I even wanted to die, at least I'd decide.
Let's go"
"Okay. Allright. Just don't say things like that. I can't hear those things from you"
"Allright, it's a bargain, I won't say and we'll leave right now."
"We'll have to be quick then, before they notice"
"Even if they do they can't stop us"
"No?"
"No, they might think they own me, own my body but they don't, know one does not even me. Just push.
No take the door backwards, it's easier remember.
Yes that's right"
"Ouch, no don't stop, it doesn't matter it was just my, no it was nothing, just push. Take that turn there, no the other way.
Yes I know but you came up the stairs, the lifts the other way."









His feet looked like molten marbles in the flames,
I had to help, one blow and they'd have made an
unmatched pair of yellow vases. Yes, of course he
complained but more against life, fate, than me -
he's a railer, I can't quite work out if he was born that way









Arnold Fin class 3x
Seebcrome
Teacher: Miss Jameson
Sunday, February 22, 1998

I have recently read the novel 'The Ancient Carrier' by Josephus Miscrablet. This book is a fact posing as science fiction recipes. It is dark, chaotic, and hot.

'Why Frank We The Look Of Dogs' was by Miscrablet too. He lived in the century before time and our society is indebted to him. His life was far from hard, the way men in all times and before it too have lived. He wasn't married, even at that timeless century women made themselves available, believing one thing about relationships whilst continuously experiencing another. He died in the arms of the bereft

It develops the theme, by food analogies and allergies, of the discovery of seconds, these were then extended to minutes and finally ages. Men moved, time moved them

It covers the period before time, which was an immense task. We are given the flavour of the time without time, by the succulent dishes he annotates for us. He does this by using the style of various TV cooks, yes even before the clock there was TV. The atmosphere is profound and domestic, with more than a hint of biological mystery.

The character Bert in this novel made a strong impression on me. S/he refused to give in to time and men, one being the other. Bert is witty because s/he found time and motion men, a hoot.

He moves from complex patterning of dayless speech, to potent details of various foods. He seems obsessed with the taste of vegetables out of season and other things too, exploring his mouth from where the dayless speech issues, as if contradicting the complexity of language with the feel of food.

It changed my life. It changed what I shall do with my time as I sit here holding it between my toes.









Disguised
The future was she only goes out in secret.
she adopts various disguises.
A waspish interpreter sends a snapshot to sister.
her spirited generous cousin do painting together
Haunted by guilt, searches
The future was the next 5 seconds
retrains the fridge - studies astronomy
Feminist restauranteur sends a saucepan to his brother-in-law.
She needs to get the tomato
Pleased when she begins seeking knowledge - seeking sewing learning
Vivacious fortune teller - outspoken trust her
Brash hair stylist brings a dog to her cousin.
Her employee sucks rebel general to get the lock.
Prostitute begins seeking self-realization.
Motivated by sense of adventure, reserved shop keeper lover in a caravan
Her client punishes to get the dart
Guard sends a picture to her
Flamboyant agree to have sex at sea
Impotent adventure walk in a factory
do sewing together
Camera operator admits unemployed farmer contacted his member
Couch potato operator forces brave table dancer to destroy a sculpture









Caught by camera, sucked up people,
sucks out what was most active in them at that moment









when people know, yes when people know
their thoughts are on you, like so much
dead weight. They crush your cheekbones -

yet without, there is no possible comfort

Drag, by it's hinged handles, the tin box from under the bed
black enamel, metallic grey or maybe you see   
another colour, green perhaps?
With cancer we become a box full of other people's contents
The sides and back, yes the back remain ours, the base too
for who else would sit and wait in that particular anxiety
if not us. The lid we all decorate or strip bare, polishing the grooves
to reduce to a word, The Word

Shadowing fact, shadowing fiction
A woman lives through, we do not know, we are not told, just
'dying', 'dies', 'dead', 'cancer'.
She the frame for the story. I'm left wondering
what did she feel knowing,
did she know, did she intuit as she held him
a baby just born that later...?
at ten her son believed he'd redeemed her from death
but at fourteen, no longer in honesty able to pray that his
survival depended on hers, which was the deal, the promise,
(What strange ideas of God to provide
such options for child and adolescent)
now at an age to cope without his mother, he'd said rather, thy will be done
and walked away. She died a few days later, the boy, adult now, tells us.

At some point she'd chosen or fell into Christianity, she and the boy had argued
about this, her abandonment of Judaism, her ancestral religion

(How did this happen, was her conversion gradual, a sharp conscious
decision, even opportune, what lead to it, why, no one says)

was it more her abandonment of him, her child, the absence which is death,
the leaving behind, transposed to the nice intellectual debate of belief,
of religion - a seamless way to rage, remove guilt, replace on the other.

Listening to him, past the half way mark of life, has he silently whispered
this story, patterning neuro-receptors to accept simple explanation
devoid of layered feelings, sensations interacting. Strange, men so
strong on their power to provide life, sustain, not though in lengthened
nurturing but one redemptive push, give birth to salvation. Is this birth
power missed so imaginatively sought? Might it have been different
if God had sent her daughter? Perhaps she did but the narrative was withheld,
shadows fact, shadows fiction.









a contemplatative photograph is lead by the environment.
dust haunts the dense photograph, quickly the photograph remembers, the dust remembers but without care, the photograph then speaks a pink dust
the dust sweats
the happy dust
spontaneously the dust fights

seeds in the skin of words

on skin the
words feel
skin thin
the dust
feels dense,
dust
remembers, is photograph
Pink dust on frozen skin haunts a dense environment
bodies appeared on the words
then speaks a pink dust populated
bodies appeared on the skin of the words alleviated
dense photograph, quick environment.
Dust haunts the
words
dust the dust
dust on the photograph, photograph the dust
what skin speaks the mirage, fights the photograph,
then speaks a pink dust dethroned?
frozen fields, bodies a pink dust
dust fields remember not what the photograph remembers
remember by contemplatative photograph
the dust remembers but
the dust sweats no delicacies
then nothing brightened


house of frozen whispers
seeds in the skin of words
breaths and porous meanings
context our future
a disputed historical telling
Down on the frozen embankments bodies appeared on the kitchen table, what they think and feel was it a mirage?  
Passion evoked
clinging ribcage in breaths biography
their lips silently sequence the meanings
leaving evoked scenes
terrain nape of desire
disputed torso erase

sharp conscious









glancing at the TV
I look at a photograph, eyes stare back.
Around his neck a fur stole falls,
his chest hangs a carcass in the shadows,
trousers low on his hips reveal,
"he's showing his fur", she says and I wonder
which she's referring to

later she tells how she hadn't noticed the stole









still lives

we crossed the landing together, our steps blurred,
the boundaries between our [different] selves dissolved,
we became not each other but remote, floating particles,
a living dust
[is this close living?]









She haunted herself.
The mother she wasn't
looked over her shoulder,
children she hadn't had
lay over her mind,
the toilet she didn't Domestos
protect for her first grandchild
sat clenched between her thighs

Whilst watching, who do I identify with?









"You shouldn't wear that body"

You shouldn't wear that body keep it in the closet for best,
for now just wear your invisibility, the worn garment,
the tried and tested garment we're all familiar with,
safe, no radical reinterpretations needed.
So I did,
not wanting to disturb,
afraid to crack your fossil body,
your static
(mis-)
conceptions.









"I won't end up in a wheelchair, will I?" she said
What's so bloody wrong with wheelchairs?
People don't mind wheeled seats when
they're Fords or Peugot's,
these their asses are super-glued to.









Shadows and rain usurped whispers in their house, where cupboard doors were left open not to signal failure but to show the structure of their familial relationships, to show that uncle Ted hated being kept down.
Uncle Ted had been in the army, though it turned out to be the army of his imaginings. Each day as he'd swept a set of numbers he'd reflected on

(I didn't let myself know what he reflected on... but I liked its start with its open cupboard doors
I learnt something from Ted, he lives (in the same way as he was in the army) in the American mid-west and I realised, we all watch TV, see so many American films that some of my selves live in various places in USA - New York apartments. tenement blocks, prairie farms, yet I've never left Britain,  lived in this house since I was 'nearly 6'
Perhaps this is a way could write more about character, situation yet not be filling in all the logic, the reasoned connections?)









"you're not coming in, you've no right, get away, get away I say.
If you so much as touch this door again I'll electrify the grain"
leaving the door, removing flattened hands, sweat palm marks left behind, she sits on the bed and cools herself with her favourite literature taken from her archive of circulars.
She pokes under the floorboards moving the past around until each layer is unequivocally the way she knew it should be.

(I liked her library of circulars - I can just imagine her but if I filled in the pieces, the story around her (If I could which is doubtful), if I made sense of her and her situation, that's what makes me apprehensive, I don't want her pinned down, I don't want to pin her down. It's funny with my phobia, some elements are about my not wanting to write in certain kind of ways, yet feeling that's what I'm supposed to do for how else write fictions..?)
(I like these fragment characters, particularly this one with her library of circulars - but I don't know where to take it. I don't want to fill in details like in a short story, I can't or is it won't write details, we never know these about people in reality, just fragments - she's like a character you'd find if just clicked on a city map but what to do with them...)









An iguana trots outside the teapot - yells under the park - smokes on the bus. The host said, "well, it's the last time an invitation goes out to that character" but we all knew this wouldn't be the case, we were too hooked, too attached to the thrill of disgust, with this righteous indignation the party cohered around our elation.
---
His mother sits with weird sculptures and harmfully sits beside sofas
---
He comes out, thin body, coat flapping, too long a style, which era is he leaving, which entering?
Out I went taking the key needed to get back, a different key to return than to get out. I attached right chest and shoulder, adjusted to cope with the world - an inner, almost FBI gun holster charged with leather, stiff pain, hide badly tanned.
Out I went taking the key to ambiguities









She sits in the car, sits in the footwell of the back seat, to call this the floor of the car would suggest spaciousness and this doesn't exist where she's curled, cramped even but secure, half dreaming a world
- it's a very old car, her father was rejuvenating it but he'd gone now, her mother said she hadn't the heart to get rid of it, yet she'd always complained bout/about it to her father, shouted he wouldn't be able to escape to that heap for ever.
- and the eatable smell of leather, her jaws ached longing to chew it, in the same way she wanted to bite chunks out of the old wardrobe. She loved it's woody, moth-ball smell and imagined the splintered edge where her teeth would leave their bite. Her friend said this showed she'd got an addictive personality. She didn't know what it meant, Mark, her friend, didn't either she thought secretly but she was frightened by the sound of 'addictive', what was going to be added, would it be added to her and how. She knew what personality meant, well, kind of, she'd heard her mother's friend saying his sister-in-law had personality if nothing else.
Words were odd, slippery, they were supposed to be certain things but somehow never were. Her grandmother had given her a dictionary, she had bequeathed it to her in her will but had given it to her before, telling her it was a necessity for a girl to have one right from the start. It was heavy, so she could understand how people wouldn't want to carry one around, looking up words before they used them, anyway talking slipped along so fast she wondered how all those meanings could be worked out before they were said.









I wish I could see the emperor's new clothes, even his old ones would do but as a disabled, aged, lower class woman my experience perhaps isn't the proper sort to have this perception









On considering the role of father in the work of William Burroughs -
questioning William Tell as role model

Watching a film about the writer William Burroughs I
couldn't help but think, why didn't he look after his
son when he'd shot his mother. Who washed this boy's
clothes, made dental appointments, stroked  his hand
when he had a fever, went to school concerts, read
school reports? Burroughs sent objects from around
the world, a beautifully coloured Amazonian butterfly,
I think they said - dead like his mother.
What a shadow to live under.

I can't hold a gun, hands too weak to lift one,
I think though, if I had killed someone, anyone at
all but all the more if there'd been affection, regard
between us - and there must have been something,
sex not needing marriage - I'd never want to touch
a gun, handle a weapon again. This thought passes as  
the film shows a definite fascination for the feel of
weapons. Burroughs wields one after another, blows
into a dart-gun, drags from a clothes drawer a knife,
loops around his wrist a cudgel, like a boy he plays,
this respected, admired 'prophet'.

If re-writing Joan, his wife, she'd said,
"let's play, shoot the apple off a head, bags I  
William, you be my son", would this film be the same?
Would it even have been made, if Joan the one to die
peacefully at 83, with Burroughs, shot dead by his wife
before any writing done? We might've had hers though,
for 'bright', 'brilliant' she was too. And the son, not
William Tell's but William Burroughs', would he still be
dead before the compiling of the film, addictions, bodies
failing, denying a long life, he not like father, like mother?
As I watch a film about the writer William Burroughs
a persistent thought develops, how men are boys and
never know the privilege and shallowness of this situation,
how can they, how can we, it's the atmosphere surrounding
all our imaginings, all concepts and understanding.









(Saying - Consider too the language/use of language which has status and the language which doesn't - why and how)

WARD NOTES

Relay narratives - Passing on the narrative.
Passing on multiple narratives, each time nursing staff change shift a senior staff member from the previous shift tells the 'story' of each individual patient to as many as are available of the present shift. - relaying of information, statistics, instructions
and telling the story too, re-forming the story - developing the character/personality, changing with each retelling.
Each person who hears the tale takes/forms a somewhat different story about the person, about the tenor of the shift too, about what has passed before they arrived
As a baton passed on by relay team

WARD NOTES
Considering a film idea where one or two people keep changing identity, changing in some way quite radical not just superficial. How this could be
Thought of as a journey, then realised I'd like something where 1 or 2 older women main characters involved - also seemed to connect with the changing, developing narrative as reports verbally as well as written  (care plans for each patient) are passed on with each shift change by nursing staff
(What a pity nurse the same word as the mother 'nursing' her baby. And for the Latin see what's male, what female
Latin:- nutricius -i -- m. a tutor, guardian
(tutor m. a watcher, protector; esp the guardian of a woman, minor, or imbecile)
nutrico -are and nutricor -ari -- dep. to suckle, nourish, to support, sustain
nutricula -ae -- f. nurse, nanny
nutrimen -inis -- n. nourishment
nutimentum -i -- n. nourishment, support, training
nutrio -ire and nutrior -iri -- dep. to suckle, nourish, bring up; to make good, support, sustain
nutrix -icis -- f. a nurse, foster-mother)

What about using older woman patient who not so much moves out of ward situation but so we don't know if it's actually happening after a stay in hospital or parallel life. (I thought of my night walk to look at the new image of Cheethams ward, now they have rabbits a kind of park surrounded or in the building almost - perhaps I met up with older woman but couldn't be nurse, perhaps a nurse from now meeting my ghost wandering self)
I don't really want anything to be specific hospital, yet I think organising of ward is interesting to do something about
Need a way where this acknowledged yet not usual hospital stuff, either so ambiguous where taking place or obviously not hospital at all but with some referents to?

Could set in a mix of taxis' and waiting rooms - never knowing where waiting rooms are, what the character(s) are waiting for - this could bring in fleetingly, new characters
(this connect with different types of sitting gesture idea too perhaps)

(I've a few ideas using relay narrative, they're not thought through but might suit film or installation performance. Mike often mentions my coming up with ideas for film, I've done this a couple of times but they were more issue ideas, in hospital I thought again. I'd wanted to have a character, an older woman, who changed identity, actually appearing different by being different people but it seemed difficult to do. I started then to think of having someone taking around the 'documentation', a 'file' containing the contradictory, complex life (stories, info, statistics etc, constantly changing though) of this character, trying always to 'pass on' this indefinite narrative, to witness this life to people who, on the whole, don't want to know or want only certain elements)

-

Whispers - (murmur, mutter, mumble, undertone, underbreath)
the old woman whispering as she gets into and lies on the bed, each time too as she wakes and falls asleep again - whispering what?
Whispering to herself like a rote, what she said to her visitors, their replies; what she's going to do; the price of bargains from Asda; two for one tokens in the newspaper
Did she say good night now, to whom? her husband dead 18 months since? - "as good as gold he was"

Prattle, rattle, tattle, scuttlebutt, babble, burble, hear the say,
A whisper said to oneself is it to hear-the-say under-the-breath?

(speaking, seeing and breathing whispers in a bed Just finished)

-

Age
Plastic surgery to look young, to retain youth - more involved with concept of attractiveness for women, not necessarily specifically 'attracting the opposite sex' but looking old, being old is state of disinterest, becoming an old body is to become a no-body, of no interest/consequence to men and women alike

Plastic surgery might steal the look of youth but not deceive an instant of time to alter the treatment you receive when your actual age is known. This can mean being left to recover or die without any assistance, including medication, a bed in an intensive care unit, or even just on a ward with monitoring facilities.
Chronological age, birth certificates count, not lypo-suction, lifts & tucks, silicon implants, plumped up lips on face and vagina, all discounted. It's death by chronology, better to pay to have your records altered, knock off the years on your documentation not your appearance

---
Touch
Touch upon a subject









Nature contained in cities, enclosed, trapped 'zoos, gardens' Liz Lochead writes but is it?
The other side of town - the invisible, the hidden in a city
photo-wryt-diagram-imagine-/-diagram-information scientific
what happens to the earth, layers geological beneath buildings?
Cockroaches, beetles, spiders, dust and dirt building up against the meeting of building and pavement, accumulating
and something almost different
glass - the history of materials, the accumulation of a city, history of processes used, engineering

-- Don't stress one thing more than another

history walls in, walls out
enfaced? defaced
flat planes of glass spider flaws now flawless
perfection yet crystal crack make up

yet crystal crack plain as glass bland perfection riotous flaws loosed by nature as nature

the dirt beneath my feet skipped a rhyme loosed on the world not holding the borrowers but laced with comfort not spoiled

and glass hold hot sand - sand glass liquid held solid









Our annihilation sought always,
no era escapes,
we not escaping.

We humans of-with difference
- difference from childhood, birth, before birth -
through the ages have been denied a life
with which to produce more lives.
So there's no future, no children who
feel, experience, think,
difference is normal,
Instead difference is seen as isolated, insular,
one-off freaks with no place, space made for us,
made for our presence, our history, our
contributions to the present and the future.

A relooking at history through our experiences,
working in the unspoken voices of past people of difference.









besides her there was plenty of room but we didn't eat instead we let the light play on us
revealing the streaked passage of our remoteness
we viewed ourselves with politeness
unashamed lust long since gone
banished with the background of delight
replaced by incipient perusal of statistics
how many, how much, what, when,
is it feasible, can we pass
if it's too late it's never









Everywhere I look everything seems to say 'fuck off'
it says this to me personally with a detached coolness
and when it isn't that, I turn and it's 'piss off' and
if that's absent, faded into the  background
our smiles,
the smiles of strangers, without mutual regard,
suppress the desire in me, until I need nothing









The small tortures, not small because they're slight,
though many incessant slights can make up an extreme
but because they're not documented, not a part of
Amnesty International's records and concerns,
not classified as institutional in the sense of that word,
theoretically or politically but often institutionalised nevertheless.
How these little merciless acts can make up the lives of so many of us,
can be a penetrating part of our social fabric yet invisible, ignored
when it comes to assessing people, philosophies, ideologies.









The Un-Level Exhibition

wooden floor
grain lines, geological layers
ground wood/wood lines the ground
[full]green back pack rests on wood, equidistance from the walls,
requiring detour
stopped I encompass it's fullness with my look

wooden floor
grain lines, geological layers
ground not grass rather we move over planed wood
green back pack,
suggests fell walking, green hillsides
back pack

tripod legs supporting cameras though without placing myself in pain and looking up I do not know this
three black extended legs the pylons of the room









problems with text with direction with letting your mind wander

STRANGE/R

Contradictions - Text to make obvious, as in normalcy oppositions and Text used for subtle, not so much opaque rather a meaning not assigned, open to association, meanings in the context

Normalcy
to aspire to normality
is that extended, curving lashes, a look of nature
soft yet waterproof
is that separating thighs from cheeks from lips
in anxiety seeking surgeons knife
when is normality abnormal,
when is appearance

Normalcy
Eating with fingers -
used in advertisements sexy for non-disabled but
when Disabled people do it....

Words
Thinking of repetition in music and where copies of a pattern played quickly move out of sync to become something else -
words/text to be repeated, perhaps with slight differences, like 'What's wrong?' to 'What's wrong with you?'
anyway, to use the 'what's wrong with you?' without any explanation, for people to make of it and other such phrases what they will
'He's perfect', 'She's perfect', 'Is she alright?', 'What's wrong with her?', 'I wouldn't be seen dead in one of those'









We've got a thing on our ceiling, bathing in the flow streaming off this machine, the monitor speaking to it, telling it secrets, sharing what I long to know. It's long and still, doing no work but absorbing everything. Why can't I let go, endlessly listen?









Ida likes to put things off, likes to have the cup of tea before making the phone-call, before doing, making...
Ann likes to get things over with, out of the way. She says,
"If I killed myself I could make a cup of tea afterwards"

and this is how they are









problems with text with direction with letting your mind wander

I saw a prostitute today
not custom costumed for this service
but prostitution took place nonetheless.
The distinction not in stockings and suspenders
(though who knows what's hidden), no, the
decoration was in letters following his surname
and before his forename 'Mr' not 'Dr'.
I didn't 'see' in sense of consultation,
no he passed by my waiting self,
his gaze was specific, as was his greeting
pleasantly spoken with informal formality,
'you're early, why don't you go for a coffee'
They declined, affably, yet wanting only
this visit to be over, the condition altered,
problem solved not needing to consult anymore.
I wandered ten, no fifteen years, this same space
a different refurbishment, the 2nd or 3rd I'd known,
remembered a relevant discussion on that line of chairs
I caught the tail end
"We're sitting in a different place than last time,
yet he's just gone into the same room"
"Oh you won't see Mr ***"
"but we saw him last time,
his name's on our card,
our appointments with him"
"Did you pay before?"
"Yes"
"but not now?"
they shake their heads.
"Ah, he won't see you, only sees you as long as you pay"
His blonde curly hair, (still blonde after all this time?)
bobs suggestively or should that be obsequiously.
I've only seen him once, such a rude man,
I didn't pay for private services, civility must be extra.









From an incident in a nursing home told on R4

and as the nurse in discontent brought her knee onto the bed, down
onto the old woman's pained, fragile hand,
her lowering to repress, depress, confuse
the hypodermic shot through her from hand to knee, not waiting
intertwining in flesh in sinew growing gorging into bone
fastening, permanent rods of steel. The needles grew from between
fingers from the back of hands between stiff veins around knuckles
now these needles twined, grew into the nurses knee, into flesh,
muscle, attached to bone. The nurse pulled away, tearing herself
and the flesh of the fragile hand but the old woman's face
was content, doped. Now the nurse shot through with hypodermics
spiking out prickly as a minefield, now no one puts their arms around,
no one holds, says love, desire, now freak too, drugged to
contain, to repress, suppress

[Or]

and as the nurse in discontent, brought her knee onto bed, onto life
onto an old woman's pained, fragile hand
her lowering to repress, depress, confuse
Now stiff hypodermic's down through her from hand to knee,
not waiting intertwining flesh finally sinew
puts of into the fastening,
permanent prickly between hand
The needles grew through fingers from the back, gorging veins between around knuckles now knows needles twined
The nurse pained now pulled away, tearing they and bone as of the fragile steel
but in the old woman's face content, doped to the eyeballs,
Now the nurse shot through with hypodermics spiking out
rods of flesh, prickly as a minefield,
now no one holds and desires, no one says love,
now freak too, drugged to contain, to repress, suppress

and these herself love, says woman's desire


Somewhere someone is drugged (to the eyeballs)
- silencing their self, conceal
- preventing them voicing who they are, what they don't want
- senseless, voiceless
Someone's locked up, the key thrown to the sea
they'll never leave
and it's here not another distant country where we can call the countries morals, kettle to teapot this or murmur 'shame', sign petitions, write to dictatorships, to human rights organisations
What a shame, blast I can't remember, in the night I went over and over the few words to stop me forgetting and here I am blank over such a few words too.










Words to accompany No Choice Choices images - father, a 30's school room, photo in cubed desert


he didn't say,
he didn't say much,
he told my mother.
he took after his mother but
he was a lad, he couldn't.
his best friend,
his pal,
his mate,
all lads together,
wearing tea towels to look like Arabs for a photo,
fooling around,
having a game,
all mates together.
it was all a long while ago.
you're a long while dead.
they were nowt but lads.
poor little sheep who've gone astray.
they lost their lives.
little sheep who've lost their way.
men of action, men, action men.
did someone lose them their lives?
the man was lost in action.
nowt but a boy.
given nowt but a broom,
soldiers with make-believe toys, no weapons.
have you seen the weapons they call toys?
oh boys have always played at fighting,
played cowboys and Indians,
used sticks, bows and arrows,
space raiders, invaders,
replica guns, replica missiles,
replica...
head blown off.
long while dead.
oh well boys will be boys.
in shops, boys toys in dull camouflage colours.
did he wear a soldier's cap?
did the helmet hold when they blew his head off,
like a pot of lobby his mother made?
oh well boys will be boys.
lads will be..
you're a long time dead.









But what is writing - the sublime passed through a sieve of the ridiculous - is this fear of being deleted - mind, self, being as white-out as the blank page - as white as a sheet -

bindings, white heavy cotton, linen like, wrapped,
pained body, child body, hard to the bed, hard to
the edge, here cockroaches, beetles homed, then
roamed to a wider world. Our food, our faeces,
sluice and kitchen rapaciousness. White sheets,
winding sheets, burial of the undead life long.









On watching the story of the great able male writer, the great able male artist, the great able male...

I didn't choose to go to any wars
I didn't elect to join any resistance
I didn't decide to live amongst the poor, the uneducated
I am a cripple
I am a woman
Born to the lowly, I live with the lowly, am lowly
Victimised, humiliated, degraded - analysed, discussed,
as if not feel, not think, as if person-less
I survived,
I never wore another's coat
I inherit no literary traditions
I was formed, then not deformed but re-formed
and I choose how I wryt









I'm plug ugly, arrogant and a cripple, thank goodness I was made that way









Genetic manipulation - astronomical cost.
Gives astronomical returns, to whom?
Genetic manipulation. Searching for a blue rose, a new pig.
Searching to know who we all are,
the infinite possibilities in every combination,
every disease you might ever possess.
A few pence to cure the diseases millions needlessly have now,
A few pence, to cure, to prevent, not to abort.
These diseases only names in our western history books,
no astronomical payoffs, just astronomical suffering.
A few pence to cure, to prevent.
Not genetics path to subtler knowledge of who to abort,
disease not cured only human life ended,
astronomical immorality - who cares?









I don't know what to say, don't want to reveal anything to you,
don't want you to cause me any more pain by the lying way you understand,
the lies you seem to need to see,
the lies you seem to need to tell









the dust made its way
He froze in the embankment, when she appeared there, he almost cried
he wouldn't let her know, she might move him around like cutting dust but appearances had to be kept up



More Poetry Wrytings

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Bodies of Difference
A Different Body Experiences
A Different Universe