John D Robinson is a UK poet: His work appears widely in the small press: his latest chapbooks are 'The Making Of An Outlaw' (Scars Publications 2017) 'These Poems Stole Your Lunch Money' with Bradley Mason Hamlin (Holy&intoxicated Publications 2018)
3 FLOORS UP
I gazed at her face a long
while before I climbed off
the bed: she looked older
than any grandma: I had
no recall of the previous
night or this fully
clothed elderly stranger
I had awoken next to:
I made it to a window,
opened it up and
vomited into the street
3 floors below: I was a
long way from home, I
recognised nothing: on
the 2nd floor slept a
loudly snoring, toothless
old naked man: I found
the bathroom and then
the kitchen: I took
beer, bread and cheese
and stepped out into
a brand new day that
was just waking up:
I lit a cigarette as the
street-lamps switched off,
my footsteps sounded
with an early triumph
as I walked away.
LIKE STARVING RATS
The only constant in her nearly
18 years has been abuse and
pain: raped at 7 years old, she
is the eldest of 5 children who
witnessed their drunken
father beat their mother and
then disappear from their lives:
she raised and protected her
siblings as the sexual
assaults continued against
her: she began self-harming,
razors to her arms and
legs and torso, forcefully
head-butting walls and
not eating for 2 – 3 weeks,
swallowing pills of overdose
and the heaviness of
such despicable human
hell will not let her alone
and gnaws like starving
rats at her young soul
and since aged 15 she has
been in psychiatric
hospitals and in a few
days time she will be 18,
an adult, with no
childhood behind her and
the outside world
awaits this youthful
woman to enter it’s arena,
and she will,
expecting nothing from it
and it’s nothing she will get
from this world that
seems angry with itself
and no thought
or time for a
soul, already,
so very broken.
ONE OF THEIR GIRLS
‘There were 3 of them: I was one
of their 20 girls and they fed us
with heroin and takeaway pizzas:
they continuously assaulted and
gang-raped us, burnt us with
cigarettes and cut our hair’
and then she started crying,
there were no tracks on her
arms but her legs were
riddled and ugly, somehow,
through it all she had kept
a presence of herself as an
individual: I could see it
through the tears that
tumbled down her face: I
could see it as she lifted her
eyes to mine: I could see it,
that she was alive within
herself, that those bastards
hadn’t succeeded in
taking her heart.
MISUNDERSTOOOD
‘My mother doesn’t understand me
and it’s upsetting me that she
doesn’t understand’ she said to me:
a 64 year old squat, bald, toothless
guy who had recently and
superficially, changed his gender:
he was no longer Colin but
Julie and wore a huge and
hideous oversized blonde wig, a
dazzling orange dress, cosmetics
smeared and clumsy, a pair of
bright red flat shoes: she told
me that when she first visited
mother in the Care Home as
Julie, her mother laughed,
for the first time in years,
she laughed thinking it was a joke
and it took a while before she could
explain to her that she’d had
these feelings all her life and now
was the time to let-free her
inner-self and mother said that
she would never be able to bring
herself to call ‘him’ Julie and
that he’d always be her son Colin
and that it was probably just a
phase he was going through
and that he would out-grow it:
‘Maybe she needs time’ I suggested:
‘She hasn’t got a lot of time left,
she’s 96’ she replied:
‘Maybe shaving the beard would
help some’ I offered:
‘I’ve been thinking about that’
said Julie.
LIFE BECOMES REAL
Life becomes real
when your woman
walks into the
morning kitchen
and simultaneously
belches and passes
wind as Schubert
plays softly from
the radio and the 2
cats jump onto the
kitchen table and
the kettle is boiling
for tea
as a dog is
howling in the
neighbourhood and
your bosses are
expecting you on
time and the rain
clouds are gathering,
life becomes real
all of a sudden.
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