Got a minute?

After

There are moments
pinned to you as latent engrams
when life coagulates in one drop of blood
water sweat semen tears ink

her
hand wore a raven ring
the room intense with cold
when she took the whole pack of morphine pills the 400mg calculated by
current weight of 7 stone (but does that include the lumps)
and the tiniest globulous sip of water
3 days before
my first birthday without her

sweat
trickles down my freckled breasts it drops on the tiles I’ve mopped badly
so that the grime line is visible under the steel refrigerator doors
where I retrieve the bowl of Nectarines Aux Armagnac for the portly businessman
with the lechy colleague who asked me if I was aware of my own destiny
sniggering at the waitressy reply I give
since it would belittle me to talk philosophy
with a man who spat in his hors d’oeuvres so his partner would not try them

I touched
her shoulder and wondered if we would hug today
since her husband declared he no longer loved her or their two year old son
but preferred Natalia who had long straight hair and looked like
the photos of our mother in her sixties mini-skirt and kohl
who made jewellery for women to wear whilst sleeping with their husbands
while she was slumped into rolls of fat breasts and belly and my hand didn’t span her upper arm which used to look like Kate Moss’s
protruding from her ‘pulling dress’ with spaghetti straps from Jakarta
and the only tears she shed were for
boys who looked like girls
or her mutilated grey Siamese

dropping the pizza
off the edge of the perfect white plate
to stare at the amniotic fluid pooling under my table on the laminate flooring you laid by hand on your cracked knee for three days with Brad
while you looked for the watch timer you forgot you were wearing
and I stared at the black interior of a holdall containing the doll sized nappies
I doubted I could fasten around the waist of a doll let alone a red faced squalling thing with heart and lungs and pearlescent fingernails
that you would hold in your arms two hours later
while I investigated the hospital shower stall
and watched paint red blood
cascade down my inner thighs
to swill with water down the Art Deco floor grill

drops
from a sable brush
with a thick handle shaped like a carved chair leg
to make sweeping calligraphy flow inkily across the stretched cotton frame
of the T-shirt that Caisa hung in her flat in Göteborg that she sent the photo of
her wearing when we saw Ulrika outside the museum on Götaplatsen
and I stood in the window next to some Europeans and thought will I always feel English unable to see the future where my children speak Valenciano
and I read the digital European news emailed to me because
I need to find out if they’ve printed the article about our battle to save the Carrascal Mountain from urban developers
or if my poem’s in print
on that forum

on a tree stump
near the London to Cambridge railway line
in the shade cast behind the corona glare of a station lamppost
his penis constricted by the black mesh of my fishnets I refused
to remove, his penetrating finger adorned me with the scarlet blush
of my first orgasm
caused as much by the sight of his purple prick dripping
as by the hoot of the train
and the backdraft whoosh
and the stars coming into view
after.

The best game in the world?

Reading the Inner Minx’s blog-site the other day (innerminx.blogspot.com) I discovered this wonderful game. Put your name and the word ‘needs’ into Google and find out the secrets of life. For instance, I discovered that:

Penny needs to switch meds. (Really?)
Penny needs a Bra – Bad. (How do they know these things?)
Penny needs your help to be able to continue on her antibiotics and to get her serum (Bit of a theme here...)
Penny needs a home as she was found on the side of the road completely feral (I do apologise and I’ll never drink Strawberry Daiquiris again.)
Penny needs to be supervised (Ask my boss)
Penny needs to stick with Spanish films, because that's what she does best (Ok I’ll try)
Penny needs surgery as the screws holding her wrist together have worked loose. (Blimey, better quit this typing then.)

Go give it a try. Blog-sites are addictive for the wonderful insight they give into other people’s lives. It’s the ultimate voyeurism. My favourites right now are theshamelesslionswritingcircle.blogspot.com - reallybadmovies.blogspot.com- athomedaddy.blogspot.com - singularcake.blogspot.com and wherelizardsrun.blogspot.com- although www.thebloggingtimes.com and www.blogher.org are also fun. Course, I slipped my blog in there. Us bloggers are shameless.

Monthlies

So it seems I am only capable of writing a blogpoint once a month now. Following a predictable trend, I wrote regularly for about three months, then in bursts, and now I'm lucky if a sanguine moment occurs each month. But then my full-time work overspills into my weekends now, and the three girls are spiralling off into the ether with their plans and crazes, and I get dragged in their tailspin from time to time, plus Joe, plus the needs of the house....

Let alone the fact that when you write for a living, finding something unique to say that you haven't already put in print elsewhere, occurs only at unreliable erratic moments, like 3am, when the laptop is sleeping three floors away downstairs in the dark.

Hmm. How will I ever finish the three/four novels, one filmscript, one play? In fact, do I even want to finish them? Isn't their ongoing process the best bit about writing?

I can see why some writers only make it posthumously.

What Next?

So they've invented see-through frogs. I must be having a menopausal limber up because the idea of a 'team of scientists' (bastards! It's always them, isn't it) deciding jointly to invent frogs with transparent skin, makes my skin crawl. Presumably these frogs will be highly susceptible to changes in heat and light which may damage their exposed internal organs. Well, I presume that's why we're not all see-through, isn't it?
And why clear frogs? Because they will not have to be dissected to be useful in experiments. Scientists can simply watch their organs, to see whether the disease they have been given is shrivelling them, or causing heart failure, or respiratory problems.
How handy – now they can avoid problems from those noisy anti-vivisection protestors. Never mind that the frogs may be suffering from life with see-through skin.

This triggers a memory of reading on the internet about the outrageous Eduardo Kac. Kac (pronounced Katz) is a Brazilian-American artist who persuaded a French laboratory to create a rabbit crossed with jellyfish genes that glows green in the dark. ‘Alba Bunny GPS’ then became an art exhibit. He wanted to get her out of the lab afterwards, but the mad scientists refused. Perhaps he wanted her in his hallway to save on lamps.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favour of avant-garde artists. And I LURVE crazy ole scientists (when they are doing something useful for the rest of the human race) but what is going on here?? After five minutes on Kac’s website, my brain hurt from trying to comprehend his ‘Plant that grows solely on light emitted by a computer triggered by art-lover’s and the unfathomable ‘bee doing a bee dance’ idea. His ideas are fantastic. And I suppose only by putting them into practise can he claim them as ART. But I felt the need to scream “Was the frog thing your idea too?”

So what is the logical conclusion of all this tampering? I feel my next sci-fi novel coming on. ... “I would like to thank my mother, Eduardo Kac and the godlike Margaret Atwood when I accept this Oscar for the screenplay of Green Rabbits and Clear Frogs: The Movie.”

Seriously, can anyone surmise where the world is going with this ‘livestock-could-eat -livestock Mad Cow theme? Will genetically tampered vermin roam the sewers of Madrid, happily glowing in the sludge? Will it be see-through babies next, to make it easier to spot when they swallow a pentop?

Sci-fi Wi-Fi and Utopia

Margaret Atwood once said: “More than one commentator has mentioned that science fiction as a form is where theological narrative went after Paradise Lost, and this is undoubtedly true..... Understanding the imagination is no longer a pastime, but a necessity; because increasingly, if we can imagine it, we'll be able to do it”

And this is why I want to defend videogames. Science fiction films are now huge at the box office as entertainment, but videogames are demonised as triggers for serial killers, when they could instead play a vital role.

Our world is embracing technology faster than you can say Wi-Fi. Statistics (those old chestnuts) suggest that by 2049 a 1,000 dollar computer will exceed the thinking capacity of the human race. The amount of new technological information is currently doubling every two years and will double every two hours by 2010. And that’s not far away.

Videogames are programmed simulations of life. Some even come close to affecting real life on a large scale – look at Second Life, and its list of pioneering firsts, like the recently announced link-up with Google Earth, or it’s first real-world millionaire as a result of her virtual-world business. This is the training ground where we will plan our future, and that future is racing fast towards us. We are talking research and development for the human race.

Writers, game designers and the entertainment industry already accept that all of their artforms are valid, crucial development even, but so far the mass media has lagged behind. Get with the program! Bizarrely, the United States may have a real part to play in saving the human race. Nintendo spent more money on R&D last year than the federal government spent on education. Perhaps we have to look at education in a different sense. I am not advocating that we let children become numbed with handheld game machines. But I am arguing that science-fiction has become science fact, and unless this generation of parents learns to welcome technology then we will be left in the hands of our children, who can already make global decisions at the flick of a mouse. Banking, policing and healthcare are joining hands globally through the internet. Travel is moving into the galactic sphere, since we can already traverse the globe in less than a day. These changes are just the forerunners of what will come, quicker than the final Harry Potter film. Unless we understand that we can explore our future choices now, using entertainment media like movies, novels or online gaming, we risk leaving the shape of things to come to a handful of media moguls, with the financial savvy to see the future before we do.

We can discuss and disseminate the conclusions that we draw instantly, democratically and globally through the blog world. So let’s get our best and brightest brains on the case, so that what we’re racing towards is the human race finally realising its potential.

The long way home...

The strangest things occur to you when blog-hopping.

I love checking out other parents blogs, for sadistic reasons - I hope they struggle from time to time as I do. This means I'm not a freak of nature in my parent troubles.

And I spot recurring phenomena. For instance, the first six months to a year as a new parent are full of 'firsts'. Every stage documented - solid food, tottering steps, saying mama - or referred to obliquely by the media-savvy bloggers who know how intrusive blogs can be. But then there is invariably a hiatus. Around one year, many parents hit a kind of mental barrier. I think your own life begins to come back, choices about work and childcare loom, the novelty wears off, or baby two could be on the horizon. Whatever the reason, parent bloggers often go quiet as stresses take their toll. Then, when the problem has been surmounted, back the blog entries come in a flurry of excitement.

I am interested in the patterns. Some of us blog like crazy to deal with issues as they arise. Others take a period of solitude to process thoughts before committing them to blogdom. Which are you? A blog-first, think later? Or a concrete blogger - I know what I'm saying, man!

And I bet some of this is gender based. There's probably a course on the psychology of blogging at a university near you right now. But here in the boondocks (can a village in the mountains be in the boondocks?) I don't have a course tutor, and I'm just winging it. Hey, you out there! Tell me what you think.

Meanwhile, the kids have found Clan TVE cartoons and are filling their heads with multi-coloured pixillated images that seem to send them haywire later. Gotta close down and go do parenty things with poster paints, breadsticks and baby wipes.

The Mother Mystery

It struck me today, that I've been complicit in a deceit.

The continuing deceit, in fact, of generations of girls by their mothers.

If I paint you a picture, it may seem familiar. My mum worked in the home - made dinners, cleaned the house, organised everyone, - and, at times, took on variously paid work out of the home. She didn't complain. (That was the arena for the next generation of feminists.) My mum's feminism never sat still - it involved supporting kids, husband and home in a never-ending whirl of activity. She listened to my father, endured our constant queries, gave late-night telephone support to countless female friends as they divorced, dated, and divorced again. She found time to join in the divorce boom herself, and subsequently listened as my sister and I contemplated lives that would avoid marriages and mortgages.

Now, I work silently in the home, bringing up my three kids, coaxing my partner through the daily tribulations of his own business, and putting in the maximum hours in my paid job that childminders and Easter playschemes will allow.

Am I telling my girls the secret truths of what I've learned? Do I dash their hopes by telling them they will work harder for less money than their male counterparts? Do I tell them now that they will breastfeed through the night while their partner sleeps soundly? Do I counsel celibacy or life on a Kibbutz? Do I remind them that Spanish law was changed recently to give equal responsibility for housework to both partners, the failure of which can be cited in divorce proceedings, even though in our house it's just females who hoover and polish?

Or do I rant in the blogosphere... and keep my girls in blissful ignorance for a while longer.

Perhaps some mothers of boys out there are busy instilling new values in their offspring, that will bring about a true revolution... I can't see how they could do this? Maybe by paying childcarers as much as minders? By citing empathy and love for your children as really manly traits?

My mum also used to say 'Be careful what you wish for - for you will get it.' Hmmmm.

Maserof

In the beginning

A deceptive Eden

Carob-green and aromatic with thyme

Uninhabited, except by fist-sized arachnids

And a lone dog

In summer verdancy

Each sun-split stone springs a bloom

Desert-rare and startling

Hot violet, gentian-blue, spike yellow

Like flesh in a convent

The cooling season

Still surprises with pregnant heat

And the breath of the Maserof

Tip-tilts up the valleys runway to the blue ache

Of sky

Standing at full height on a ridge

Child’s hand in mine

I can hear voices rise from the gorge

Ethereal, like a dream spoken aloud

The sounds dissipate.

Sept 2004

Tattoo You.

She was as tall as the men stood at the bar. One bared shoulder displayed a greeny-blue tattoo; on the other, hung her empty rucksack. As Irish hodcarriers vied for position with Italian plumbers, Carrie commanded the bartender’s attention with a simple flip of her head.

“Guinness,” she stated, placing coins to the left of the copper line marked ‘Solo Camereros’.

She drank the pint in slow gulps, savouring the malty weight. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she hooked up her leather jacket from the floor and swung herself into it, dispelling a cloud of sawdust into Quinn’s pint. He harrumphed, but drank it anyway.

As she turned to the door for another shot at the motorway, Big Paul stopped her.

“Let’s see that tattoo.”

She studied him for a moment, chewing her lip, and then slid one arm from her jacket. A crowd gathered, craning necks.

The tattoo was a remarkable design – a bubble reflecting two worlds. One, the interior world, was a desert island with palm tree and exotic blooms. The other, was a reflection on the exterior of the bubble, revealing a bar-room and a figure in silhouette at a window.

“Hey, that’s some pretty shit!” Big Paul declared, and heads nodded approval. “Where d’you get that? Looks Polynesian.”

Guffaws broke out among a table of heavyset men. Big Paul silenced them with a wave.

“It’s Marquesan, ain’t it?” He squared his shoulders, anticipating her reply.

“Too right. You been to Tahiti or the islands?”

“Nah. Me mate did a tattoo convention though.” He glared at the hangers-on until men peeled away to tables, stools and the pool table.

“Is it Enata?” he asked, in a lowered voice, his eyes furtively finding hers.

“It’s unique. Enata AND Etua. Look, can I get a lift outta here? There’s trouble following me down the road and I need to outrun it. But if you’re chickenshit…”

She left the words in the air, where they spiralled in clear sight.

“I got a rig out back.”

He grabbed a checked shirt from a chair back, and they exited, squaring their shoulders in unison.

Opening paragraph of The Answer, 2007.

Personal Responsibility

There I was blathering on to a friend about taking personal responsibility for all the bothersome things we’ve done to the planet when I read about the Contract With America. This was a document released by the Republican Party of the United States during the 1994 Congressional election campaign – including a section called The Personal Responsibility Act

An act to cut spending for welfare programs by means of discouraging illegitimacy and teen pregnancy. This would be achieved by prohibiting welfare to mothers under 18 years of age, denying increased support for additional children while on welfare, and enacting a ‘two-years-and-out’ provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.

Calling this Personal Responsibility is like saying a gun promotes peace. Yes, but at what cost? And now – if anyone reads my blog, which is debatable in the first place – people may assume that my tagline means I’m all for this sort of knee-jerk, right-wing malarkey.

This is how we erode our innate sense of right and wrong, our will to community and humanity. The Nanny State tells us what we should do, instead of empowering us to make the right decisions ourselves.

When a child learns to take personal responsibility it is usually as a result of learning by making a mistake. So to punish those who make a mistake ensures they will not learn from it, but instead will feel aggrieved at those who punish him/her. Anyone with a grievance is dangerous to society as it turns their will to help and co-operate into an overwhelming sense of self-preservation ie it makes conservatives out of socialists! Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

So now I’m right pissed off with the state of things, since where America leads, so much of the English speaking world seems to follow. But I want to take a stand – and I’m sure many free-thinking Americans want the same. So although the Contract With America may have had limited affect, possibly increasing the majority of Republicans in the Senate in 1994, I am determined to re-claim the concept of Personal Responsibility, and turn it into a meaningful statement 2007 style.

Singular Cake – take one slice, you greedy fascists! Stop killing in the name of state or country or Capitalist dogma, and learn to control your goddamn rage….er, like me.

How the world goes round

I get up in the morning with a plan to sail smoothly through the day.

I will NOT shout at the children.
I will NOT get wound up about the state of the house.
I will NOT get sidetracked by pointless tasks and MSN conversations and then rush through lunch and dinner desperately playing catch-up.

By 1.30 lunchtime it has all gone pear-shaped. I will feel guilty from now until the kids are asleep tonight, possibly around 10.30pm. Then, I will find a few minutes of tranquillity, clutch hold of the wraith that is my inner ME, and sternly tell myself to do better tomorrow. Suitably chastened, I will shed the guilt and relax. During this moment, I will somehow convince myself that I am an okay parent, that I do give my job the attention it deserves, that my partner is happy to be with me, and that life is just peachy.

I seem to have a fruit metaphor obsession.

I also seem to live my life in circular patterns of behaviour (from Pear to Peach and Back again). This feels unsatisfying, but somehow normal.

What about you?

Sniff it and see

…softening approach to dissonance

I’ll brush my teeth in case I need to kiss you goodbye

prepare my parting words.

to be inscribed via Kafka’s device upon your chest

change my T for a plunging V

brush my hair for windsweeping effect

and trail perfume on my wrist -

you looked as if you’d let the sun

touch your skin

its pigment veered traitorously towards a summer

I couldn’t envisage

my eyes declined the heat

and my skin itched to be somewhere else

under a freeze frame of you

your hand in the small of my back

proprietarily.

Instead the goodbye evaporated

from the skin of my intent

as skeins above the rim of a coffee cup

are pulled into the air. You recede from view

out of my history

like a time traveller husband

returning to your wife in your real but parallel universe.

Taken from a selection of poetry submitted to Libros International in 2006