Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Crime Fiction









Marcella Season 3 showing.
Bodies are littered
No dignity in staged death.

There's a serial killer, a mass murderer
in my city too 
But there isn't a saviour.

Not yet, anyway.
We have appealed, prayed, begged.

Bodies are littered in hospitals,
in crematoria, in garbage trucks
But we are on the internet.

Outside an ambulance pulls up
Shrouded men disembark.
We close our windows.

We  cannot bear witness anymore
to what we have done to our world.

A poster goes up on their door.
Covid 19 - Do not visit. Phone screens light up momently
with their names and house number.


We order more masks, more gloves,
More shields, more sanitisers
More seasons on the internet.

We will escape forever.
Now to wait for Marcella.

Marcella who had dark hair
Marcella who became blonde
Marcella a wife and mother, turned whore and avenger
She who killed her own, but still saved others.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Pickled Already

10 June 2020

Silence stretches from my study to the bed

I live in this jar these days

I am hiding from a virus.

I count days gone by 
Loving, birthing, breaking, leaving
Coming together again.

It used to matter so much
pearl and diamond days; sapphire nights
Rubies like blood transforming into wine.

I felt consecrated.
And then the service ended abruptly.
Children grew up; greys descended.

Now this!
Is it time to leave already?
I meant to live some more.

I meant to have the time
But not all of it.
Some silence - but not of this deathly kind.

So, I am hiding, hoping
waiting desperately.
But for what exactly?

Actually it doesn't matter anymore.
From the study to the bed 
is a vacuum. 

I am preserving
in juices of memory
Now tart and vinegary. 


I will likely endure
like a relish in the larder.


Too pungent, brought out occasionally.