10,000 POEMS – Posted freshly most days
She has our crushed boxes
of wedding pictures
and our Christmas decorations –
our cheap jewels brought out
on a shortened day –
a day requiring a ladder
to help us lug up
our November weights of Sussex
that bonfire costume crate
pushed through our knocked out
loft’s gape
and exchanged for seasonal stuff
This will be my first Christmas
without our hung reminders –
without her late anniversary card
There – done – ripped apart
then left on a slunked chair
or hung on the fat bannister –
then the glee-torn wrappings
are bagged – either ‘re’ –
or ‘not-re’ – ‘cyclable
I sit in my Christmas jumper
and hear the thankless mumbles
from others for their useless gifts –
We never know how to lie
on Christmas Day
And tomorrow there will be bags
of this year’s unwanted stuff
heading to the cancer shop
or to fill the unlocked industrial bins –
to become lumpen beds
for the badly-wrapped tenants
Through this sludge-week
before your lit Yuletide –
this path of slopped rain
sucks hard on my boots
as I traipse in my circles
of the dog-dug conditions –
through which I’m set fast
by your barked-out orders –
Only return home
with a well-cut one –
which will not then tip –
not ’til the twelfth day –
Such held superstitions –
erected by lost Popes –
were claims on short nights
over our pagan ways –
I’d rather keep cold gods
from the warm living room –
I hold no love
for your desiccated tree
Sunlight is unexpected today
but welcome across the floor
it is heightened by blown clouds
and their linear crossing of the blaze
such quick shadows are soft removed
and before this all the branches dart
outside my front bay
those bared arteries conduct the skies.
These yearly demands unto revelry
with tipped back long stem glasses of Italian blood and French piss
are now taken in our blinded stride
through this season
which we should claim back from baby fucking Jesus
to now take the true Yuletide home into the debauchery we once had
good and bad
more traditional than trees and yo-fucking-ho
resurrect
before Easter
the true solstice.
I dropped the car’s roof
with a pull on the switch
to make a high space
for the felled decoration
and drove over six miles
to home with the tree
there propped in your space
and at sixty miles an hour
the top of that cut tree
sung every forest song
that she could recall
before her Xmas demise
It will be another end
to another slowing year –
my tightening body
under pain’s besmear
A letterbox drop –
cards on my hall floor –
there to remain
as I can’t bend any more
Christmas on pause –
slight hints of freeze
until the carer’s arrival
to attend to me –
if she turns up –
if she’s the same one –
my hour will lighten
and a bath will be run
A text from my child –
now a mum on her own –
they’ll be here by three
We are never alone
One lesson I’ve learnt
under disease’s deep rub
is that life is still wonderful
when treated with love
Better Lives. Together.
November is National Family Caregivers Month. The Parkinson’s Foundation is here for care partners and family members with support and guidance to help you build a better life with Parkinson’s.
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Today I met Santa Claus,
queued up for the 29,
off to Tunbridge Wells,
he was stood quietly in line.
I just had to stop and ask
how work is for him now,
he replied quite sternly:
They’ve removed the sense of wow..
..it’s a mad, mad world we live in,
child abuse… kids left to die:
I’ve stopped all home deliveries,
in case I’m banged-up Christmas night.
I’ve now outsourced to Hermes,
it’s as efficient as the sleigh:
And what’s it bloomin’ all about?
More credit cards to repay!
I left him, stood there fuming,
grumbling, quite profane,
I’m glad I didn’t ask him
if I’d be getting socks again.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 