Aileen Kelly

Seven Flights

Seven floors down's where The Children play
and bad mothers let them play without watching.
Bad mothers sometimes leave Baby and walk
down there and back when the lift isn't working
and bad mothers sometimes keep The Children
caged in the flat, deprived of play
or bad mothers ask someone else to watch them.

It's on TV, it's in the papers:
bad mothers' kids are kidnapped or grow
up into trouble for lack of attention,
bad mothers let themselves get depressed,
neglect their skin, get hooked on tranqs
and mad mothers one day go suddenly Bad.

All down darkness

Darkness rises and I strike it down
Rises and I strike it
down Darkness
Strike it down

These are the rituals to end doubt:
finger the hand's black crust where
flies have ceased to fossick;
punch a fist
between broken staves into sliding vitals.

These rituals do not answer.

Darkness rises and I
strike it down

These are the rituals to sanctify
the cold dripped human tallow:
pure beeswax lifted with song to the lampstand;
white robes, water's promise.

They do not answer.

What rises? I punch
it down What
rises? Punch
Darkness down

In the cavern
light
lifted high.

Show it the questions.
It does not answer.

Darkness rises
hub of the filament's arc.
Here is unstoppable blood, the punctured wrists,
the gaped chestcavern.
Darkness. Strike it.
Darkness answer,
play the prophet.
It does not answer.

Boxing Day

Surrounded all of a sudden
by half-known adult faces
who used to be teenage nieces
shrill nephews and minor cousins

but now have leapt fully formed
from the adolescent frowns
in suits and after-5 gowns
quite unselfconscious, armed

with expertise and credentials
you wouldn't believe. Here's one
talks of 'my lawyer'; our son
is her lawyer. The essentials

of solid citizenship
burp on shoulder and knee;
young Dad and toddler agree
or pout the family lip.

In-and-outlaws I've barely met
and more seem pregnant than prudent.
I grow old, we grow old, dear heart
but on average the clan
(says our actuarial student)
is getting younger again.

Aunt Ellen

I will sit one more day beside Aunt Ellen,
beside the machine that breathes her.
I will lie to the fading grip of her fingers,
deny that her house looks empty,
that her furniture is scratched beyond hope of polish
by thrown brick and sharding glass.
Avoid her ironic eye.

The doctors, like children, imagine they understand:
one more poor old thing whose safety is cracked
by the strike of virtual lightning.
They walk their wards
plugged in, fizzing with power, unafraid of the new.

Forty, divorced,
Aunt Ellen rode a Harley into my teens:
black leather, Camus and Ginsberg,
two fingers for Hell's Angels.
Thirty years she's mapped me all the tough journeys.

So find a Beowulf for your grey halls dear doctors:
whatever prowls breaking this woman's windows
unfazed by your sceptical eyebrows or even hers
is old as the backstab, old as the black worm,
old as the chambered rocks.

Imaginary Friend

My fingers drumming on the wheel
waiting for the green
She's sitting in the car next to mine
combing through her long wet hair
tug tug tug
waiting for the green
through the long red of cars across
and turn arrows waiting for
get on with it
tug tug tug

her face full of waiting the muscles of her
arm tug tug
just after nine and the children dropped
but the car is full of voices and
Mum she Mum he did I never you
tug tug tug
just after nine and late for work

her hair long and wet
her arm full of muscle and
the lights long red and
the car full of voices and
late for work and
tug tug tug
alongside me through the glass
wet with rain rolling among dust-film
alongside my desk and the dry
chatter of fingers from key and key to screen.

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