make it okay, II

Part 2 of the dredged up make it okay files. Not exactly what you’d call immensely readable, layout wise.

At times like these a bit of copy/paste comes works a treat. The non-squinty version bunged below:

my eyes are bright with tears & runway lights
I was a child bride, the little fish you should have thrown back. 
But I begged you to keep me. So you watched over me like an old sage, 
saw my hips fill out, my eyes bulge at the slippery oyster that was the world.
I adored you; you taught me everything I knew. You are wise & beautiful 
like an ancient axolotl. 
Your skin has worn more days than I could ever imagine. 
You showed me a person I could become, pointed her out & said: 
   the world is but a succession of tomorrows. 
   this could be you. 
   do you like the look of her?
    & I said yes, yes. I liked the look of her, 
    this unformed mannequin 
    giddy with potential’s aphrodisiac.
I am old now. Well, older. Those were heady days. 
After the day of the runway lights, we never met again. I saw your name 
on the divorce papers. Our lawyers met over boozy lunches 
& orchestrated our undoing. Our hearts filled with red tape.
I was a slip of a thing, your protégée. You saw something in me. 
I was unschooled in the ways of love & you were patient with me. 
I grew hungry for your gaze. & somewhere in it all I became a woman.
I lay beside you every night & thanked the Lord for the gift 
of your gnarled body.
I loved every one of your deformities, touched upon your sores lightly. 
I blossomed. 
You took me to the end of the pier & made me look at the ocean.
You said:  it is time.
   I do not have the right to keep you. 
   the future is bright; it beckons you.
 This was news to me. We passed through the fairground. I threw balls 
  into the stunned open mouths of painted clowns & did my best 
  to understand your meaning. I won a stuffed donkey 
  & gave it your name.
 My tears could have filled many thimbles; they were the ocean in miniature.

angel mouse meets santa mouse

(And they both live happily ever after.)

Tonight Angel Mouse met Santa Mouse. Santa Mouse winged his way to us in a FastPost bag, quite unexpected; Angel Mouse was waiting patiently on the tree. Perhaps she knew all along.

Sometimes you just know these things, even if you don’t know you know them.

Sometimes the nicest surprises come in small parcels.

Sometimes the nicest things are the ones that come out of left field, or from the dark regions of a blindspot.

It is nice to have a companion. Angel Mouse and Santa Mouse were meant to be together.

Angel Mouse has always been my favourite. It’s a pleasure to rediscover her every December. I’m pleased she now has a buddy. They look good together.

I will package them up close together, side by side, when this season is over. For their hibernation. And then they will emerge again, closer than ever.

more than many sparrows

At first I posted this on its own but then realised the words were rubbish and the only truly identifiable things were the cut-out sparrows (which you could have worked out from the title anyway). 

So, a narrative. Si on an interview, which lasts for nearly 2 hrs. I’m supposed to be studying. So instead I talk on the phone to Sally and Singe and attempt to cut out the sparrow in Photoshop while I’m talking to them. I am totally shit at Photoshop. I took a night class earlier this year but then forgot to do my homework. And then I forgot what to do. Sometimes I try and get by using the eraser tool, which is a total cop out, but I couldn’t even master that tonight.

Then I do some work work, and then it comes to me. I will print the sparrow, and the wallpaper, and the Dorothy Sparrow poem I wrote last night in a strange surge before bed. And I will cobble them all together with scissors and glue. I have long been a fan of scissors and glue. They are marvellous, and not just the playthings of sloppy preschoolers. (Arts and crafts has a bit of a stigma attached to it, and for that reason I prefer makeshift art).

I like the concentration and the rough edges. The mess and the incidental, awkward late-night serendipity. The sheer procrastination and total immersion in the task at hand. I don’t think serendipity is quite the word. But it’s like making a found poem out of predetermined elements. You might call that cheating, but I just call it something I prepared earlier.

Like buying supermarket burritos tonight in place of the homemade French crepes the recipe called for… (Well, it’s a week night. I call it enterprising. Plus we have a busted oven (see 14 Sept). If I were being cocky I might even call it the No. 8 Wire mentality raring its ingenious head, but that’s a stretch.)

This belongs to Dorothy.

For ease of reading, it goes like this:

 

more than many sparrows

 

One time someone said to her

something like:

Each hair on your head is worth more

than many sparrows.

 

She loved the person at the time

or it was something akin to love,

or burning.

 

But she never knew what it meant

or how the conclusion had been drawn.

 

He was Confucius-like in wisdom

& the love was monumental,

solemn as a bird bath.

It did not concern itself with petty things.

 

It outlasted not much more than a swallow’s summer

or a swan’s song.

 

Sometimes, now, occasional sparrows

evoke in her

a sort of sadness (occasionally).

 

Who is she to suppose superiority to sparrows?

Who is she to still be banking on the old words of even older lovers

as if they are breadcrusts?