Baby Girl

I did not think that you could look severe

But with vertical ribs to hold you in

You let them build the bars around you dear

A cage of crinoline

You wear whalebone

Second skeleton around your own

The edges are softened with petticoats

And lacy flairs lie in a flurried drift

Layers enough, you dare not walk, it floats

            Beneath the hem you lift

            A fragile foot

But cannot stray too far from where you’re put

I cannot recognise you under there

Beneath your hair set fast in rigid curls

How I loved you more when your feet were bare

Plaything of little girls

Now locked inside

Under the layer of makeup, hollow-eyed

Holy Fools

You found God you say?

How cliché.

Hallelujah baby. Good for you.

The angels only sing that

‘cos Leonard Cohen made it cool

not like back in school

when you sung it monotoned

aged five, tinsel-haloed

when you thrived,

on Mummy’s love.

Dressed in Jesus white

and only you mattered

‘cos they flattered you

and said you were a star.

He found you in the bar

slumped in cocktails and cheap sin

when your star was gone.

Nothing to believe in

except for him.

You say he saved you -

wiped the slate clean

of the grime

of the times with the drugs

and the late nights alone

when you’re dead inside.

Phone off the hook

and dead eyes.

He sang Hallelujah softly

in the morning light

in his quiet voice

when he’d stayed the night.

Hallelujah baby.

Said he’d treat you right,

Ran a finger down your check

and smiled.

Little child you gave in

‘cos he’d wash away that sin.

Protect you like your Daddy did

and you could be that angel

once again.

Amen.

This is one of the poems I performed at a reading a while back. I wrote it because I wanted something a bit different to my normal style. I suppose it's a bit of an odd one in some senses. One of the rare occasions when I write and a voice that's not my own comes out of nowhere. This isn't exactly a peom about religion. More than anything it's a poem about people.


I think when I first read this out, one or two people thought I'd been listening to too much Leonard Cohen. If you're interested, this is the actual song that was going round my head when I came out with the first (very rough) draft. I wouldn't say the poem is based on it but I guess this is one of the seeds from which it grew into something completely different.

There's something strangely viral about the word Hallelujah. It can breed very quickly in the mind once you've heard it a few times.

Purging Purgatoro

Between acceptable conflicts of dazzle and nightlife
Sleet and waiting
I writhe
In an electrocution of thought
Tempesting emplacements
Full of desperado
To create a bed in the deafening storm
The collage nibbles at me
Prickling the bared skin
I railing on
The worship unconscious of my weariness
Lightning flickers and gluts
Life signatures of my digital disposition
My desperation now
Only the volts
Silken from stumbling
Fumbling in the dark