All posts tagged: women

‘A Love Sonnet For The Collective He’ – DVerse Poets Form Challenge

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I pretended not to hate you last night, knees pressed into your pelvis like stone fists, your cold, clever lips there against my wrist with promises you would make things alright once the morning at last brought home some light and you could show me why we must persist, how without you, I would barely exist, and why it was pointless for me to fight. But I kept count of those lies and those kisses. every feathered touch up, along my ire, and each time I should have taken your tongue when your arrogance stocked up this fire and told me I did not have strength to rise when you were the one crawling all along. Bjorn is hosting the first Poetry Form night of at the DVerse Poets Pub and he’s picked an old fling to throw up as the first challenge. While I played with sonnets years ago, I went off them in the same way I went off most fixed form poetry. However, anyone who’s been around this blog for the last …

Standardized Time

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Whoever standardized time did a piss-poor job. I could tell them for a fact that Wednesday move more slowly when there is less to do, and Mondays always arrive much quicker than they leave, yet Fridays take their sweet time no matter the cheering from the stands because let’s face it they’ve worked out who’s top dog before the firing pistol went off and they don’t need to rush to prove their walking home with gold. Whoever standardized time, did a piss poor job of the whole damn thing. Because a second becomes a moment when the right person holds it, and a minute becomes an hour, when your waiting for the answer or the result, or the next sentence in a conversation you really don’t want to see through. Worst of all is the touch, that barely lasts at all, that goes before you noticed it and leaves you wondering for months if you should have seen it coming.

Words For Silent, Empty Rooms

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I’m still getting used to this lion in my mouth. But sometimes the notion of seen and not heard still aches in my chest, despite the waterfall of words I seem to spout whenever my lips part.   When you’re trying to stay silent, some times it helps if you cover up the abscene with something meaningless and hollow, like empty poetry.   Laughter is also good. If you can laugh about it, it can’t of been so bad.   But time can chip away at you if you let it. Too much silence can eat the soul of you completely. Not matter how small the seed.   If we just don’t mention it, ignore it and carry on, then it’s not that big of a deal so why make a fuss.   Women always make a fuss.   At night I feel silly, walking with my car keys turned to the sharp edge of a key-chain, cold and hard against my palm   Alone is when I think about the school corridor, his face …

The Office Bitch

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He called her The Office Bitch, to her face. Drops the comment like a hot coal before she climbs into a taxi home and I turn my car keys over in my hand, heels sharp on the concrete, the elastic in my shoulders twisting tighter as the words sink in.   I can’t help but repeat it, turn the words over in my mouth the needles of the teeth still there, as I wonder if he’d of said the same were she a man. Would she have had to swallow it, if she were a man. Because at worst he would have been a bastard. Not The Office One.   I wanted to add another stanza to this but nothing seemed to work so I’m going to sleep on it any maybe come back to this piece another day. In the meantime I’m relatively happy with how it works at the moment. I’d love to hear your feedback though.

Legs Eleven

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I don’t mind if you wolf-whistle across the street, my insecurities won’t believe you’re looking at me anyway. If you tell me I’m pretty the worst I’ll do is blush and smile because I don’t count flirting as an offence and I know that you’re mostly likely looking past me to the blonde I walked in with.   The other day I changed twice before work, not because I did not like the outfit or I felt it was not flattering enough but for the stretch of skin from mid-thigh to knee that I have loved since fourteen suddenly striking fear into me.   It takes one conversation to reduce a woman to the worth of her shape. I learnt that during an informal meeting where my supervisor passed on words she did not believe herself and told me not to worry too much about it, just to wear darker tights next time so people were less likely to notice.   At nineteen I sat in McDonalds in Bath after a poetry evening in the …

Quite Possibly

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Eloise placed the wine glass down on the table untouched. ‘You didn’t seriously…?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘You just…?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Does that mean…?’ ‘Quite possibly.’ ‘Well shit.’ Eloise shook her head. ‘We’ll be needing something stronger than this then.’ She stood and skirted around the armchair that Mandy occupied, squeezing her friend’s shoulder as she passed. ‘Have you told Lim yet?’ Mandy shook her head. ‘Right, of course,’ Eloise nodded. ‘You can’t.’ ‘You know the rules. I’m not really supposed to be telling you any of this, it’s only because your clearance allows for a bit of leeway that I’m even here.’ ‘Not this much leeway Mand, we both know you’re only telling me this so you have some sort of net if everything goes wrong.’ Mandy grimaced. ‘It won’t go wrong though, will it? You’re the best and you’re going to come home.’ She handed Mandy a tumbler of whisky and returned to the settee. ‘Drink up before my Grandfather’s ghost turns up to tell us off for wasting his best bottle on such a gloomy night. He …

#IWD – What It Means To Me

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Until five minutes ago I had no idea that tomorrow was International Women’s Day. I knew that the day existed, but it has existed on the periphery of my consciousnesses and I haven’t paid it as much attention as I should have done. Especially as being a woman impacts on pretty much everything I do. Take for instance my ten year plan. Please ignore the tea stains and the ripped edges, this is very much an ‘under construction’ version of plan. Ten Year Plan – Commencing June 2015 [Graduation] Get a Job. [Tick! Working as an Accounts Assistant.] Finish my AAT Level Two Accountancy Qualification. [Tick. I decided to do this to help with my job and to add another string to my bow so to speak.] Buy a house. [Tick. The boyfriend and I did this last June.] Finish my book Shadow Dawn. [62,000 words in and going well.] Get and agent and a publisher. Publish book. Get married June 23rd 2018. [No. 5 and No. 6 overlap timewise.] Try to make enough money as …

The Celebrated Mrs Macaulay

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May I introduce you all to the celebrated Mrs Macaulay! For those who you who haven’t read my profile, (not blaming you, I’m not really a profile reader either), and for those of you who have simply forgotten what it says, (I think it is mentioned), I am currently studying for my history degree at Bath Spa University. The core module for second years, the very enticingly named HY5001 module, is basically looking at how and why history was written, with case studies of Historians such as Herodotus (Greek historian; so called ‘Father of History’) and others such as Catherine Macaulay (First female British historian.) Catherine Macaulay is the topic of my joint presentation which is due in on the 9th of December. So this weekend I am working my war through a lever-arch-file, of about one inch in thickness, all of which is either journal articles on Mrs Macaulay or the first segment of her History of England. (I think the printer must have been short of the letter ‘s’ when it was printed …