Fragmentation

I sit and
try to write
a poem.
I am a poet.
I am a mother.
I am a sister, a daughter, a carer, a lover.

GET - READY - FOR - BED

The massed amounts
of a day
spent listening to the old.
Listening to The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Trying to like my brother’s favourite music.
Trying to like my brother.

THERE'S A CLEAN NIGHTIE IN YOUR NIGHTIE DRAWER -
PIPPA - STOP THUNDERING...

on the stairs.
The thunder threatened to come
today and
– all we had in common
was our musical taste
especially as his conservative stance
was pure.
Purely done to wind me up.
Yet even while he called me
Greenham Dyke a part
of me was pleased
that he recognised me
before I did.
Perhaps we're not so different.

ARE - YOU - TRYING - TO - DRIVE - ME - CRAZY?

The mood on the poet,
she strives to create art.

BOILED - EGG - AND - TOAST - FINGERS

it used to be battery egg and soldiers
until awareness got the better of me
- and I'll have to wake the baby up
the heat has made him sleep
but perhaps I'll write
the poem later, in a
quiet moment,
as a letter to my brother?

And I never did the washing –
the thunder threatened rain.

Will the poet try again,
awakening in fifteen years or so?
But the muse may
have died by then.

All day I thought
there was a poem.
There was a poem
I wanted.
There was a poem
I wanted to write.


(c) Liz Willows 2000