Burnt Fingers

written by: Hannah England

@workinglife2016

My fingers are burnt. I saw their tips blaze white, then watched in fascination as the red halos began to circle the tissue that had been healthy until minutes ago. The smell was confusingly unmistakable; when had I ever smelled human flesh burning before?

The warning signs had been there, mine to ignore. I had climbed onto that rollercoaster and pulled the faulty restraint down over me, knowing that it could never protect me from the impact. I could see that I was heading for disaster, yet I did not want to get off before the ride began.

My mother had told me he was no good; too old, too rough, too free, for me. But I thought I knew what I was doing. He loved me and that was all the proof I needed to know that we were right for each other. He lived alone in a grotty bedsit, and here I fed off his freedom and bathed in the lack of rules. I borrowed his wings and flew beyond the barriers of my horizon. I befriended his friends who were fascinating and terrifying at the same time; watched as they drank, smoked and found release in each other. I saw the emptiness in the girls’ eyes, and the darkness in the men’s. I felt safe for a while and then saw the edges of the cliff begin to crumble beneath my feet. If I faltered just slightly I knew that I would fall a hundred feet to the foaming waves below. I pictured my matted hair and bloodied body crashing against the rocks at the will of the ocean, and wondered who would find me.

And although I had been willing to risk it, I didn’t slip or tumble from that cliff face. Within three months, he was gone from my life. He had found what he needed in the expressionless eyes of another girl, his own becoming darker and glazed. His veins coursed with chemicals that my own body would never know, and he began to inhabit a different world to me.

I walked back into my teenage bedroom, and tried to fit back into a life that had once been mine. It now seemed childish and boring, and I could not see how I had once been content with it. I heard what they were saying about me; the writing was on the wall, of course it would end in tears, no surprise she got hurt. But I have been without him for as long as I was with him, and my mind is still raw. My heart had beat only for him. So as I brought my finger tips down on the hot ceramic plate, I wondered if the pain could restart my broken heart.

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Ciel Noir

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We are such            clever creatures to divide
Most everything             into its different sides
With chaos versus             order, dark and light 
The stark duality of         wrong and right
We even split the very        world in two
With human versus human,       we and you
But still no matter how much      we divide
Each thing has infinitely many      sides

Death came to stay...

I was asleep that day when Death knocked
on my door
just wanting to pass the time-as you do.
he left a message,
nicely written it was
full of lovely words.
After reading I put it in my drawer
for safe keeping
determined to be out when he called again.

I don't mind Death,
I'm not prejudiced,
but once is enough-
and I'd rather he kept it at that.

I heard on the grapevine that he
was busy with my neighbours-
from that point on had little spare time as it were,
his hands full with administering to the sick,
taking succour to the old
and generally being a guardian angel to everyone.


Its was years before he returned,
this time when he knocked I opened the door and invited
him in. I had tea and biscuits ready,
a jam sandwich or two.
I let him sit on my most comfortable chair
and turned on the TV.
I watched him die. It was a good death.
I threw his bones into a black bag and left it
the following morning by my dustbin,
said a prayer over his remains
and walked slowly towards eternity.

Do you still love me?

Mikhaila do you still love me do you still love m do you still love do you still lov do you still lo do you still l do you still do you stil do you sti do you st do you s do you do yo do y do d di did did y did yo did you did you e did you ev did you eve did you ever did you ever l did you ever lo did you ever lov did you ever love did you ever love m did you ever love me

GOD AND SON

God and son

High he rode, high above,
no one to hate
in the clouds, no one to love,
lost in thin, ensnaring fate,
he fitted heaven, hand in glove.

From his perch, 
at YHWH's ponderous side,
he would lurch
like the morning tide,
reaching out to clutch.

sullen of face,
mesmerised by YHWH's poignant glare
he failed to trace
in the ancient one, infinite fear,
The old one with infinite grace.

They played chess under Sirius
drank wine near the sun
becoming delirious 
when YHWH called him his son.
He yelled back: 'You can't be seious!'

But now, in his failure,
the two rarely speak,
for god he's now a blur
a loser, hopeless and weak,
a blunderer and cur.

'Dad', he says quietly,
'there's plenty of planets around
i can visit each nightly
with one hop, and one bound.'
God acknowledged him but slightly.

God nods in the sunshine,
not listening it seems,
now senile, snorting a line
the ancient one dreams.
It will, he thinks vaguely, all be fine!

Scraped Up

Scraped up from life
torn between shame and lust,
body-fixated
body-dimmed
we are the cattle in the stranger's mouth
the broken eyes in the valley
watching time break away.

A son who is not a son

A son who is not a son,
A child who is not a child,
Thats how the genes run
Some to glow, others to deride;
Grasping to his arcane breast
The small town spawn
Failing every loving test
Failing each savage dawn.

In memory, you lived
A beautiful boy,
In memory we grieved
Now darkness, before joy./sans

Between knickers and bra

Yeah, I stand on highheels
looking for sunlight:
a man caught between knickers and bra
thinking of my feminine side
in a rush of tearing biceps,
oh death
where is thy sword-
up my arse?

I stood there like a working girl
waiting for punters
my highheels shining red and gold,
I looked a thousand dollars
I thought.
But hey, I'm 7 feet
I looked like an over made-up lamp post
suffering from powder burns,
a trans with a big cock
and maybe, just maybe, a real bad, bad attitude.

AMERICA: ALLEN GINSBERG

America

by Allen Ginsberg

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America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.