Nip it in the Bud
I’ll just take a moment to say what I mean before I mean what I say. I want to make clear that this poem is not blaming anyone, including myself, for mental ill health or abuse. Hell happens. This is a message for people before the brink, who might be able to nip things in the bud. It could be a mental health issue, an addiction, an eating disorder, a behaviour. Usually if you’ve got one, you’ve got the lot – it’s a bit like GCSEs. So my message is: don’t end up like me, be like her. Who’s her? She’s a woman in the audience who was a bit irritated when I read that last poem. Because she was very tempted to go off the deep end in her 20s. But she didn’t, because she managed to nip things in the bud. So now she doesn’t have the certificates of madness or gold medals in gymnastics at the mental health Olympics. And there are extreme experiences she can’t write about because she didn’t do them. What does that woman have? She has years more stability. Hopefully she’s had a stablish home, healthier relationships. And she’s got loads more writing under her belt – she’s practised technique and written about much more interesting subjects (at first, when you get a diagnosis or you learn how you were traumatised, it blows your mind but explosions get really boring after a while). And this woman’s going to get up and read a poem that’s better than mine. Maybe it’s even been published. Maybe she has a collection. Good for her. So: please be like her, not like me. Our depth of feeling is the same. Pain is an unlimited reservoir, it’s not reserved for people with certificates. By all means, do get professional help but it’s not all about professionals. It can’t be, not least because of waiting lists – there are waiting lists for crises these days. So let’s support each other to do whatever it takes. Because if you keep leaving pieces of your brain and your soul and your vagina around Manchester, eventually there’ll be parts you can’t get back. Better to be intact. OK, let’s nip this in the bud.
This bright voice
has been here since the beginning
amid the watery Word and its blood.
The centre of life
has always been sacrifice.
What we let happen will leave us undone.
And I’ve been with you and through you
And in you and to you
since you were a child, just a shrug.
I’ve whispered, I’ve gleamed,
sent signs, sonnet-screams
full of unrequited love.
So I saw your Mum’s scowls, whiplashes
of whisky that snapped elastically
back to her cups.
And you, floored, crosslegged,
dimlit and deadheaded,
learning that quiet means good.
Then your Fagin father greeting your long-drift
with a paper-thin gift:
a twenty note flicked like a crumb.
You took it like a tissue,
as a hollow box kiss, you
resolved never to nip kids in the bud.
Of course you will, as I do,
as sure as bruises back blue
but pruning can grow roses’ ruds –
healths of reds driving green
(the best gardening’s unseen).
What if your flowers stood up?
Mistake-me-not, evil’s real.
It reels in devils’ detailed deals.
Nota bene: negotiation must
start and end with a “no”.
So when he alleys you – no.
And when he hotels you – no.
And when he unwraps you – no.
And when he unseals you – no.
And when he tethers you – no.
And when he severs you – no.
And when I’m too late –
Yes. I felt how it hurt in your
softest place that night - cut-kite -
he nipped your body in the bud.
So you’re spiralling,
high-wiring,
releasing reality
and Piccadilly Gardens-ing.
Did you know it’s Freudian:
“repetition compulsion”?
No one can blame
your fallings like rain
but, water – where does it end?
When you wake up in a puddle
in a hovel
behind a locked door?
When you evaporate for days,
come leaking home,
your memory condensed? Or
all these tricklings
until, what, the weight of water
depths your dawning?
Darling, I’m afraid, no matter how heavy,
you have no rock bottom –
I’ve slugged through levels of hells of muds.
I’ve sunk past slimes of seabeds
to the cold side of the moon.
Believe me, there’s nothing good.
Now I’m crying
while I’m writing this.
My tears washing years like the flood
of waste, a sewer,
I felt run like blood through her.
How I wish she’d nipped those bad buds.
Imagine the poems!
Lost in landfill. In shit.
The only art is the art that becomes.
Next time you’re circling like a drain,
pour yourself down a page –
its architect’s magic, the pipework leads up.
Listen, you’re just as cared for and complex
minus diagnosis’ capital kisses,
pre-pills, ante-attempts, beforewards.
Attempt a poem! Make pen friends.
The first healers are artists
who are priests who, unsheathed, are God’s bards.
Go set watch to a stage!
Like a window, it’s mirror-image:
we’re both here for each other’s looks.
Take it from me, do re mi,
the glass ones will never see
and the paned-people already would.
Poets are seers. We see
permutations of places
you don’t need to go – cos I know you could
have rhymed it redder,
end-said it deader, but you conjugate
blood better when you kill buds.
When you’re ready, I’ll bring you rooms
the size of brooms. I’ll spell silences –
canvases. You’ll tell some.
Life-wise we’ll sit,
yes, opposite,
minds meeting on the same side of
archaeologied hate.
Truth-tooled, I’ll help excavate
back to your mantle, past books of rust.
Under-dark, I promise
you’re already a person with pages of face
and an alethiometer gut.
You’ll come to calibrate breakdown,
prophesy end days nounbound.
At crossroads’ crux, you’ll North love.
The strength that’d take!
Please, for her’s sake,
reverse your Hollywood hearse, buckle up.
Till one day you’ll tall into a hall,
mic-maestro over your hill of ill,
your wall of well. To perform good.
I’ll be so proud of you.
Round pride up to two!
She’s as proud as punches of motherhood.
And when you ever worry your war’s
small or invisible, you’ll see me
in the street, in a brew, in a book.
Your pupils, spades of pain, will tunnel
me through it. Eye’ll say “you can do it”.
You can keep nipping this in the bud.
Well, this haunting from an
undead poet is all I can leave you.
Daughter, I hope it’s enough.
Plainly: I see you. I choose you.
I cheer you. I root you
to nip what you must in the bud.