Notes To Self

Poetry By Sissy Jerrard

Acknowledgements

For Florence, Phoebe, Lily, Dulcie, Nina, Alberto, Shiloh and Cosmo

I love you to the shed and back

Image By Grace

Chill Out Mama

One minute you’re squishing tiny arms into woollen yarns, sleeves too long; woollen; fussy. Next she’s asking you for money and tells you to chill out mama, take a pill or something. And I do because nature’s kind and hands you menopause perfectly timed with adolescence! Make up your mind mother nature, one or the other, I can’t do both, I’m losing my mind.

Imperfectly timed I’m feeling hot; She is not; She is Cool. I am not!

May Crows

The May crows cast their shadow with caws heard overhead. Signalling an augury, speaking a language I respect, connecting my mind I push him forth. The silence sets, but for his entry. I touch his body attached to mine, sticky like a sea anemone and place him to my heart weeping equivocal tears, am I enough? He paws at my breast; suckling, for now we are weighted in love unconditionally and the pains from my wombs labour attest. This seal of lactation drains me, sated, we rest until his rosebud lips touch my skin, and from within I find balance and rootedness. And I confess to an inner strength of magnitude never seen before in my body. His dewy skin glows, he knows I laboured for him like a warrior, he knows I fought for this like a mother. And I inhale the May Lily, its sweet scent prevails in all its purity as it kisses bad spirits away.

Lady I know

My wedge shoes click and slide in my rush to get to the front of the oncoming bus, queue. The lady speaking trouble was a first that day, and as such, I knew ———I didn’t want to be the one to say ‘why me’ in the face of a stranger’s emotional debris. And she follows me like an impassioned acolyte of tattoos, comparing hers to mine. And when somebody tells you ‘it’s up to you’, is it really up to you or is it just dereliction on their part? And she has this bovine drawl, and she was abused, and she hates them all and she tells me all ————of this on the number 10 bus. And I have a box where my heart’s locked up. And lady I know, we’re on this journey together. She loves to hate and I hate to love, and each of us is alone on this bus. And I can’t forgive him for his selfish part, so in the box it stays and she can only hate them for their part, they played ———And she drinks to blur her days and I purge to clear the haze. And lady I know, we have a way to go.

DriftingAway

My bravado hides an emptiness secreted within a well tempered heart; misinterpreted as nonchalance the day we gathered to send you away. And after, I gnawed on the bones of resentment; and choked on the shards of pain: And cakes remained untouched as the bones drifted away. And as we raised a glass to your life your fingers repaired the harm that was done and ground the bones to dust: and I heard you atone as we scattered your ashes that day. My chagrin, a knife thrust to my soul my loss a gaping hole. And I see your face as I stare at my sister and I hear your voice in a gentle whisper, drifting away.

Your Furious Song

You’re stuck behind the blind in panic like this manic being in the vagueness of the early morning haze. I don't belong is your furious song, your stridulated hum almost demonic; thrumming. My tragicomic attempts to flap you out, amuse passers-by. Your mixtape of sounds more prominent than your odourless pheromones or a purring sonnet I haven't heard. Your furious song drones on. I have no ally. Each failed attempt you make to escape triggers my negligent kins spheksophobia and our inherent panphobia for everything. Thank you for that.

Wasp

Out Of Tune Spinet

My nerves are exploding with excessive emotion, call it hysteria or call it an out of tune Spinet, and a recalcitrant neighbour. And my head is hurting as I untangle the ends of my wits, as the fruits of my labour join in. Hijacking my space, the dog in my face, I walk out

And sit, where too little is too little and too much is too much. Where night draws its veil on the shadows of dusk. Where my fingers are tracing the shape of the stars, the curve of the moon and where a piano untuned spills its ethereal tune and Jasmine’s sweet blooms ease my stress.

That’s Love

Inside out a heart is turned, Can’t count the beats anymore as a heart adores to pieces. Churned and turned, shaken and beaten until its weakened. That’s love.

Les Platanes

We sit beneath their umbra lungs in the punishing heat of the August sun, these giants of Occitanie, impress; and every year that we senesce my American friend And I, (as I manically swat the flies), loiter beneath. She talks of her journals and I of my words, and she drops the ‘H’ when she speaks of the ‘erbs of the Garrigue – lavender, sage and wild thyme and how New York City skyscrapers compare, to les platanes and the Guggenheim and Magritte’s lumières, of the Albères, at night. And there’s a man on a bench, he looks like he’s dead! He’s sleeping instead in this pyrexic heat, and I wish I had wings to fly in the wind; with the starlings, but the spring migrators have long since flown, and I am reminded again this is no longer home. And the towering platanes of great noblesse, will continue to thrive in my absence. And who knows what they’ll overhear as they continue giving shade for a thousand more years.

Photo by Claudiu Maxim

Notes To Self

I write notes to self. Self be kinder, self eat, find a hobby; don’t be boring self; get out more self; don’t be hard self; you can do it self. And self can’t you see? The notes written by me? Self take your meds, self go to bed, self wake up early, feel the sun on your face, self meditate, self create. But self can’t see, self can’t hear, self is near to dying.

And no one can save self but me. I must find my self, hold my self, love my self, heal my self, put back together my self. To become truly myself to be free.

Everlasting Coffee

How is it then that everlasting coffee appeals? I’m writing a a book and the relentless pouring steals my time. And hydrangeas that I pass on the way, I’m allergic to! And I hate house plants; they suck you in with their waxy ways, green strays pleading to share your space. You think okay, well normal people do, I say “not today mother fuckers!” I know how to play them, I just don’t entertain them. Troy has a sister she kills them too!

And by the coffee pot is a photograph of you It’s not a problem but still, give me everlasting coffee.

Homing Instinct

In the quietude of my pause, time passes slowly, alone with my thoughts and a sickenly sweet latte, I’m stirring. My spoon thick with ingredients not needed, but there, like dead flowers rotting in a vase; tangible memories that last; but are dead. And my thoughts are baited by the shrill of my phone, realising again I'm alone but not alone. I ignore the call. And a pigeon aligned with the curb, lays dead, half eaten. Gone but still there, iridescent feathers tinted and stuck to the verdigris tones of the wet paving stones. Splashes of

blood frame the head. It rings again, but I’m watching instead a pigeon that’s lost another, sit undercover can’t leave the other; alone. This spiritualistic ostend feeds a heart discerped and torn in duality; a soul that is weak and lost in dismality. Does a pigeon ask more from the other; can a pigeon love more, take more, give more than the other? I look at this casualty and see my reality. Like a pigeon I want to take flight but my homing instinct ignites. I take the call.

Buttered-Muslin

Vomit like ectoplasm, foamy clear, curls around my fingers and then drips to the floor like a message from the dead, incarnating. This is not joy, this is unseen, and “others just get on with it” he said; “like your sister”.And I think of a place I’d rather be than here and it looks like hell, and it smells like carbonara on a plate. My deathbed a paradoxical weight upon the shoulders of others; no buttered- muslin here, just an arbitrary

struggle. And there’s a blot on your scan they say and she tells me ‘stop your crying’ and she squares the corners of my bed and reminds me I’m not dying. This is not joy; this is between, and “others don’t complain” he said, “like your sister”. And I’m wishing I was anywhere but here and it looks like heaven and smells like buttered toast on a plate, conjured to attenuate the old school air; no pious fraud here, just a miraculous conception. And a ghostly apparition tells me that he loves me and haunts the corridor each night, he is joy, this is love. ‘And others blossom’ I say, ‘like my sister’. And there is no other place I’d rather be than in his arms, until another ectenic force bombards. And we picture our life as a unit of three and it looks like home, and it smells unwonted; no evil here, just all we wanted.