We can ask.

It’s a question we always ask: which one is better, safer-

Confronting or ignoring?

Perhaps I should crowdsource the answer:

What would harassers like better?

Or perhaps they can’t be generalised, like the rest of us. 

Let us take a nuanced, case-by-case approach. 

When someone accosts you on the street, blocks your path with their car, 

demands your number as price for your freedom, 

Whip out your survey form. 

If he cannot be shamed, let us name, place, animal and thing him

Let us drown him in nouns and adjectives, 

Pin him and predict him and molest him with our microscope

Let us debate him at dinner tables and on primetime TV

To make ourselves feel better: contributing to #EndSexualViolence

While ignoring that our nephew (/uncle/cousin) does some rather strange things when drunk;

One of the older males must be asked to speak to him one of these days,

Otherwise one of these girls nowadays—you know what they are—will MeToo him. 

Potential energy

I like the idea of potential energy:

Shock absorbers, 

Vigilant grand-aunts;

A world where consequence lies in wait.

The dam’s face, mighty and ordered,

The waiting lake that drowns dissent,

The steady releases the turbines run on,

The hungry deluge when the storm comes.

I relate to it—

An appearance of composure

And a store of suffering 

Have their uses.

Explanations

You’re too smart to be religious, people have said.

I know you wanted to, other people have said. 

Yet other people, with Grade-x subtlety,

Wheedle, ‘Apparently so-and-so and you…’

Mind-reading is cultural competence hereabouts,

And I’m often scolded by those who see it 

As also Love’s labour. 

Sometimes I wish I were more adept at picking up 

The shot blanks, the loneliness. 

At other times, I am offended by the claim. 

Beneath my ego’s visor, my heart jittery and swollen,

I offer my best silences, reverence for your unknown, 

Restraint of the grasping, fumbling guesses:

So that you can speak and be learnt from.

‘No, thank you’ is fine. ‘What a fool’ is unacceptable.

On Powder Mountain

They say there is a mountain somewhere,

Far away. In Utah, U.S.A. 

A whole mountain—pro-grade ski runs, 

Picture-ripe cabins, lithe cafés—

Dedicated to the self-discovery 

Of people who’ll venture capital for a mountain 

To ditch the bad vibes of those types

Who seem not to afford good investments.

I had thought mountains were unbuyable, 

Which those retreating to them were to emulate:

Alone, in howling caves and shivering frames, daring

One-sided discourse with an immovable infinite. 

The change these days may be that inner peace

Is now a totem to hold at bay not 

Outer turmoil, but inner silence. 

Or that they seek ‘To be a beacon 

of inspiration and a light in the world’

Via a city on a hill that cannot be hidden,

But (thank heaven) can be fenced.

Admirer

A crow has been haunting my window sill, to catch a glimpse of me.

Every morning at eleven I hear his claws clatter, 

the inquisitive tap as he presses his beak to the glass,

His round eye inquires: Well, is she…? 

Once he's satisfied I’m still there, he flies away.

I doubt kissing him would produce any effect,

Other than scratches and a possible gouge or two

For me, and storm clouds in that round crow eye

And a confused racing in that grey crow chest

And maybe a fear more potent than admiration.

In any case, I’m zero princes short of a happy ending:

An admirer who isn’t creepy, 

A well-wisher who allows me my space,

And me with something to look forward to, every eleven o’clock.

good girl

It is like I am little,
And Ma is encouraging me—instructing, really—
To hand over Hungry Hippos—my favourite game—
to the little boy in the drawing room who wanted it.
He's smaller than you, she says, he wants it so
—I can hear him crying, it's brightly lit out there—
Be a good girl and give it to him.

I did, but I don't remember that bit. It
Didn't seem to matter if he was grateful.
I wouldn't have been allowed to throw a fit like that, the brat.
I only remember my mother's urging, be good.
Alright, I must have thought. If she's sure.

I'm told I'm an accommodating type. My family
Would laugh at that, but my friends do agree—
That lesson has stayed. I will do almost anything
To be thought of as good. I will learn, keep on learning,
What good is.

It sounds fine, but there are key points when
To be thought good by the most people is a failing:
To intervene in a popular instance of bullying.
To never explain how angry you are, and why.
Even hungry to be patted on the head by those I love:
Like a dog—even if they are wrong, they are the masters
Of biscuits, the controllers of the ball.

Not my parents any longer, they will object. Like most kids,
I've gone through the rebellious phase; any principles but theirs,
I seem to have vowed. Unluckily for me, there were always
Others to love and put in their place.
Most would say luckily, I know.

I am holding the Hungry Hippos box, already packed up for giving,
And only the pleading look is left to me. Since then I have had
Much more to keep than I had to give away then; I tell myself
I haven't the right to question whether selfishness might have been
The better course. And of course, I haven't the courage
to pat my own head and take the consequences.

An evening of Rummy

In a hand that looked like a winner when you picked it up

There are cards that already line up—‘pure sets’—

And cards that might and cards that surely won’t, 

Unless others decide likewise 

And you’re clever enough to take leavings.

Foraging what you can get

From what others don’t value, 

And, just sometimes, getting what you want

By wanting it harder,

Is the game. 

That is all fine as far as it goes,

But what happens when you’re 

Irrationally drawn to spades

—so sharp and dark—

And scathing of diamonds,

Or when you drop a card someone wants,

See them pounce on it, and grit your teeth

In moral quandary? 

(All the while trying to seduce 

The one across the table with

your skills and winning?)

Holding your cards in a tight fan

—too tight, not how the pros do it—

Trying to look as convincing as those who take it seriously

While knowing you don’t, you can’t, you can’t afford to.

The food dwindles and the clock pirouettes and 

You’re learning about the others—she’s surprisingly clever—

and everyone has a strategy, and they all seem unfamiliar;

It’s with relief that when someone proposes Snap,

We descend from our card-ramparts,

Squealing at the advent of—what a stroke of brilliance!—chips.

inflammable

'Could you turn it down?' he says,

Looking up from his book-

'I love you, but not that much.'

And grins, lopsidedly, that grin I adore—

Secretly, far too much.

What can I do? 

The knobs are dysfunctional, the 

Gradation markings erased over time;

Once turned on, you just have to

Keep checking I won’t burn you.

Perhaps that’s why I keep warming to those 

Whose hearts are marked Non-flammable.

competition

I ought to be typing. 

The others, in the silence of the quiet study section,

Are vociferously typing. 

Power, F says, is everywhere, its roots creeping

Unseen into our psyches, freezing us so immobile

That our shoots only wave in the gales;

And little clicks in the silence

Are the sounds of sap creaking, sighing.

'Are you hunting for whatsapps upon the floor,
Or pings upon the stairs?
Worried that the beeps and cheeps and rings
Were muffled by the carpet hairs?
Is your inbox overflowing (yet empty)?
Your face in a glassy stare?
Are you searching for signs of love forgot
And finding ones that didn't care?'

Oyster Card

I remember the London buses
Like cheap postcards, fridge magnets and plastic models
—Pillarbox red and memorabilious.
I remember, on our free day off
From our carefully-chosen tour package
—Most places–least cost–'local' food—
we took a Red Bus tour.

I remember my father fumbling
with coins from that all-important belly-bag.
I remember the people behind us in queue
With blank faces. I remember
the shame—I could do this faster. I
don't remember the guilt that it was
His savings he was counting out, reduced to coins
And each one strange and precious.

I remember sitting upstairs in the drizzle,
Droplets obscuring the panes of the half-roof;
We still keep photographs of a glassy, dim London and
The freezing thrill of leaving
Our tourist dog-collars behind
at Trafalgar Square bus stop.

cravings

A soft ringing: the phone, somewhere under the blanket. Forget it. 

Ten minutes later, it rings again. She squirms, finds it grazing her thigh, shyly vibrating. 

It’s him, both him. It falls silent as she looks at it, thankfully. 

He hasn’t called in days; she has sallied forth every day 

Dressed to meet him by accident. She sees in him

Past lovers, her pattern. She feels she knows him,

Two brief conversations to the contrary failing to withstand. 

This will be all of them gone right. 

Or… at least she knows what she's getting into.

Or who.

But this afternoon, with the warm sunlight trapped in her doubly reinforced windows;

The wind of a carefree rebuff in her sails, making the leaves and shadows jump; 

The warmth of her intense body sliding against soft sheets

And the drowsiness after; the phone knows it doesn’t need answering.

There’s no call to arms more potent; 

Sweat shining, her depths in paroxysms

Of laughter.

The sink got clogged today. I airily said I would take care of it,
waved a nonchalant hand at my mother and spared her retches.
'No of course I won't lose my appetite.'

After breakfast, I returned with the plunger
But it only made little sucking noises and water slop-spurted out
from the little slit under the tap
Like the sink vomiting on me. At me.
Little things were floating around in the water,
not disgusting but ghosts of things disgusting.
I prodded deeper in the pipe with a straightened-out clotheshanger,
And roused greenish-black memories that drifted eerily in the clean water,
Returning to haunt those who had no concern for the plumber.

Pleasure provokes description; pain, analysis. 
Perhaps because I cannot explain why a thing was beautiful, 
or how it hurt.

A day without you

A day without you is not a good thing.
Nothing so romantic as not being able to breathe.
Turning blue. Choking. Being put on ventilator.
Nothing like that.
It's not starvation. Not like going without lunch
And then wondering why the world looks bloody black.
Why its hard to work, why people I usually like seem infuriating,
Why I'm treating the empty boxes in the kitchen cupboard
As though they stone-pelted my dog.
No, not like that.
It's not hunger in other parts, either. I know how to deal with that by now.

On a day without you, I don't feel inclined to
hang a white flag in my window. The sky doesn't pour tears.
It doesn't feel clammy in my favourite ruined shoes,
I don't shiver with a premonition of pneumonia.
On such a day I don't viciously click through Photos of You,
looking for Her face. I don't expect to find tokens of phantom lovers
While sniffing for you on your cast-aside clothing.
(Your nicer clothing, of course.
Your socks smell of you, but not in a way I want to remember.)

A day without you is not a day spent missing you.
A day without you is only a day at the end of which
I'll wish I could tell you about it—you'd
understand this day better than anyone else I could tell.

I shall practice self-development.

"I've really wanted to read this!" I say, and pick it up.
She says I can have it. I pick it up, reluctantly.

I remember to take it home. Two hours later,
When I'm ready to read, (casting aside all its predecessors)
I proceed to begin. (Skip author's note and, hm, preface)
Midway through the first page, I half-giggle,
and so I pause and think, the writing's quite wry.
In five pages' time, I stop to consider a twist in the tale.
Oh! This is a book which cares about holding my attention!
A chapter later, I have checked my phone again, and
told myself to call my parents in ten minutes.
In five, I recall calls I have not made,
WhatsApp buzzes to life, my mind stutters over
A sentence it has not read thrice now...for that matter,
The whole paragraph is looking unfamiliar.
And those calls must be made. Dinner cooked.
Bath taken. I wish someone would read it out to me.
Audiobooks are flat and always in the wrong accent.
I cast a doleful look at the four books I still say I'm reading.
And the newspaper. And work.

And on the inside, this:
This time I imagine as entirely my own is peeling away like dead skin, scattering as dust, deserving to be painful but I haven't the sensitivity.  If each moment were a coin pouring into a vault and I in it, I could suffocate in anticipation. So what if this eight-hour long book will soften several thousand hours to come? Perhaps I will find a summary on the internet. 

Reasons you need a best friend.

1. World falling apart
2. Not getting laid
3. Others putting you through shit
4. That shit is a mess you made.
5. Endless, lonely anxiety
6. Shivering, with no one to ward off the cold
and
7. For a secret never to be told.

Today's Keats has no need of French

(An adaptation of the unfortunately titled La Belle Dame Sans Merci)


I dreamt that you texted me to call you.

I awoke, and you hadn't texted me at all.

The screen is echoing with an absence of texts

And no birds sing.

summer breeze froze in winter's bite
bed empty,
night stifling.

a dry bough cracks at numb sunrise
night endured,
now day's trifling.

The debating circuit

In debates at school we despised extreme statements.
Just a single example would disprove them: no need for skill at all.

By college, to prove All A is B was the true measure of worth.
We set ourselves to complex and nuanced reasoning
Why A must be B
—whether A wished to be B, knew she was B, or showed any sign of being B,
Or not—
We marshalled History, Economics, Politics and Society
To confirm it. Who could withstand that terrible nexus?

Certainly not the adjudicator.
How clever we have been, here is the trophy to prove it.

How dull were those who resented debate on the grounds that
A isn't, after all, B, and
That we didn't think it important to know it
When we could simply argue.