No sleep till Moulescoomb..

It's late, and I really, really, should be in bed. I'm sat up in the dark in my pink hooded top, my comfy jeans, and the room is chilly. I'm wondering again, wondering, wondering where it all will end - this mind of mine and this beating chest, these legs of mine that just want to run. Running away from; running towards. My legs go, fast as summer, like a young girl racing to catch the ball that spins through the air in a perfect arch between her parents' fingers.

I run from, I run towards. Across the beach. Through backstreets. Beside car parks. Past bushes and streams. Up mountains. In the rain. Down the front steps. And it's the shadow of the sun on my face that tells me how alive I really am.

I don't feel eloquent. Or articulate. I am back in the world trying to carve out some bread and butter and a way to hold my head up, but... I'd always rather be at home, under the cover of night, communing with the angels and demons that fly around my head. Inside my flat can be a bit of a raucous party, with all the interesting beings that gather there to cause pandemonium and guffawing, who light candles and sing and bring stars out from under their pleated skirts as gifts for me, and occasionally, throw up on my carpet. Evenings here are never dull, that's for sure. We sit together and eat and tell each other our stories. We dance and make love. We fight. We pore over ancient manuscripts. We invent new languages. Especially when I am disciplined enough to turn off Eastenders.

And of course, they all go back to from where they came, whenever guests pop by, or when I am forced out from behind my safe walls into the real world where people stare if you bring out strange creatures, and buses crash if the haloes around you suddenly start singing. No, I go with notepad and pen, a look of efficiency on my face. But tonight I got lost around Moulescoomb in the dark, and, as I wandered around searching for a house number 113 that didn't seem to exist, and waiting to get my head kicked in, I did wonder what the fuck I was doing there. Trying to earn my crust. And that's what it is. 89p, Co-op own-brand white crust. Without butter on. The dryest thing in the Western Hemisphere.

So I come to you, my keyboard and my letters, to cheer me up, and to keep me from falling on the concrete, and the narrow, narrow roads. I pray to you, poetry, like a guardian angel, to keep me always, always, safe at the hearth, in the homes where I belong. Let the creatures guide me across the sea and ice, let the holy ones light up my face when all has gone dark, and let the ones who will never see me, keep warm in their jumpers at night, when the moon has turned her whitest cycle in the reddest sky, for the very last time.

Hope To God I'm No Greeting Card

I've not done any substantial writing for a long time now, it feels. I've spent most of today and yesterday either at, or at least hovering around my piano keyboard in some tense, exploding state of consciousness. Creating makes me feel like the bird that has just broken out of an egg. Exhilarated, breathing, insane.

I pace the flat for something to distract me from the inevitable truth of those black and white keys. And still I haven't written anything of note for a long time now. The novel, or at least the drive towards a novel, on the 'back burner', that is, crept back into the recesses of my mind. A book of short stories, is reduced to two ideas only: birds' nests and windy places.

The post sinks into the ground. I am more preoccupied with things that make no sense than those that do. I walk to the shop. I walk back.

This thing I call creativity makes me happier than any sex, is as great as the greatest love. And sadder than all sorrows put together. I like myself a lot when I write, because I am not hindered by my own 'thereness', I am free to wander into whichever room of experience I please, untroubled by my own preferences and predelictions. And I sometimes hate all that I am too, saddled by my insecurities and cracking bravados, on nights like these.

Tonight, experience is painful and the rain dances.

But creating is giving birth, it is about something being birthed, born. And as I feel like the chick out of the egg, I also feel like the bloody mother, I can feel my body torn in labour. So this is a necessary pain, a necessary tension. Like new teeth pushing through gums. Skin ripping open.

And for what? For what reason do we give birth in this way? For sure, there is no fulfllment for me without it, to let the words or the song come into fruition without the tension of struggle, without working for it. Those slippy slidy works of supposed art, that trip so easily and so correctly off the smoothest tongue, they leave me unmoved by their composure, by their lack of a crime scene. No dying bull to trace in the sand, no ideal to stretch to the limit. Art can never be hidden behind, but exposes it all, all the workings. Ah, we are all so clever at this, still we try and tame the animal, lassoo it all so it belongs to us, not the other way round. Idiots, we are.

Can we make poetry with the head? Some people seem to think so. We can stare out to space with special instruments, we can calculate the mass of the world. We can float in space suits far above this bluest planet and watch the gases and the atmosphere, imbibe the greens and the corals and the turquoise patches, sail the infinite seas above, notating the wonders with a biro pen. And what does that make us? If we don't see it, it is all just another TV show, just an interesting experiment.

Poetry is not an interesting experiment. It is living, life itself. It is the often agonising process of opening up to what this universe is made of, and looking around, taking it in.

It is a space ship that travels to places otherwise unreachable, no other vehicle has the engine power, the correct design. It brings this human back, with the wonders and horrors of the world, of space, to write shakily some 'feeble approximation of starlight'.

It also travels underwater, to where the plants and the jellied fish grow. To where light cuts out under the ice, where sound is an ancient song from far above tides.

Descends, descends, past trees and caves and earth and matter and stone, into the stone it goes, the greyest, smoothest stone. Then the peat, and the ashes, the burnt out coal, the embers, the black chalk in the fire, soil and worms. Feel it in your hand, cool dark and sodden.

To the people, the stares, the unrelenting dreams. We say we are a million miles from the sky and the wood and the ground, from under the water.

No, we are the same life. In the human, there is always the valley and the rock, the repetitive seasons and the swimming fish. Discovered lakes, so much unchartered territory. The horrors of the flesh, the sinking stone, buried under ivy, human sleeps with fur and paw, eats its brother, dazzles with the sunlight and becomes dawn itself.

We are the night and the day, the afternoon, Northern Lights. We are neutron stars, gas and pollution. Moving in a haze of cloud. Whiskers. Dead creatures. Our own faeces. The blazing cottage. The never born girl child, left in a dream. A window, this book you hold, spent, spent, always spent.

This is all poetry to me. And to sit with that, is to sit with life itself. And the bravest poets are the Captains of the Boats at roughest sea. They bring the words home, they inspire, touch the fabric, rub the thread between their old warm fingers.

If I ever doubt poetry has a purpose, I think of this. I think of the bold. The death defyers. On a night like tonight, that I can be so bold, take these controls and launch again, is all I ask.

honey off the razor's edge

It's hard to accept that what moves me in life isn't always what I like to think it is. Yes, the birds and the starlight and the stretches of riverbeds in Summer, the moon and the edges of hats worn by old ladies on the number 49 bus - these joys are all very acceptable to me.

     But what of all the things that go bump in the night, that step into my doorway with a stranger light? What of the things that aren't supposed to stir up joy in my soul, like the sight of blood, the edge of terror, the unfolding of betrayal, the foulest weather? I thought those days were done, but when I look in the mirror I see a desire which knows no bounds, and is uncomplicated by morals or reason or sense. Desire finds me at every turn, under every shade and nook it hides, waiting for its days to come. And so what move me are the strangest things, sometimes the very things which destroy me, that will cause me pain. And self-control will have the upper hand in practice, and kindness will play its part too. But I cannot forget the never-ending seeking of endless pleasure and torment that governs my heart, and not look all surprised when the great axe falls, not look shocked when the next bloody bull that they drag out of the ring has my name on it.

     I said I'd left Lorca behind, that I wasn't interested in duende anymore. I wasn't fussed about watching Pete Doherty on TV or reading about the lives of doomed poets. Instead, I open up to wilderness skylines and tall buildings. I walk the line. I tread in honest communication and self-respect. I behave like an adult. Most of the time. But appearances can be deceptive, and I was never a simple girl, life never was built upon solid ground but on rocks and water and broken glass and fire. I remember to howl. There is nothing else for it, if this world isn't to be one of endless adultery and murder. But I will not squash the devil in me. She's way too pretty. Lick the honey off the razor's edge (but there's no running home to Mummy). Taste the sweetness; wreck the car (it fell down the hillside before I could reach it). Worship those demons in my head. So tell me a story I've never heard before. Go on; tell it me. I know I'd die for a poetic sensibility, whether it's foolish or not, I know I'd spread my legs for the devil himself if he were to show me a glimpse of reality. Maybe I'm just some kind of cosmic slut, whoring myself out to the wind and the rain. Maybe I just never learnt any manners (though I was a well brought up girl). Maybe I was only meant to live in graveyards, or to sleep with the dead. Show me a knife mark, a naked ambition, tinkle cups at dawn, reveal a little perversion, wipe across continents with your muddy fingers. I'm so sweet inside I'm choking up on it, I'm so sweet inside, it's pure depravity.