Coventry Blood, Brummy Heart

Coventry blood, Brummy heart
You have made me
There is no one on earth who can save me
And no State machine will enslave me

The train brought me here
Poetry and beer
Made me freer
Birmingham you are as queer
As the poem I once wrote

About all the girls I have never loved

Before…

When I was a childe
I walked as a childe
(Harold died for Maude
I live to die)
Around the City Centre
The bright lights called me

The shops, the shops, the shops
Enticed me through their doors
Adorning fleshy architecture
I tried not to bore
With my prosaic presence
Brummy women and men
Who were so much prettier
Their conversation far wittier
Than her indoors, aka, Cov(en)tary

Coventry blood, Brummy heart
You have untamed me
But no one can persuade me
That I am amazing

So I amazed me
And read my bloody awful poetry
In pubs and cafes for free
Whilst the audiences shouted for Jasmine Gardosi

Elegy to my Mother

By

Louise M. Hart

Your body betrays you

It is a ghost of its former self

A crumpled hand

Caresses a toiled brow

 

Not long now

Not long now

 

But, you are a warrior

The bearer of two

You have watched men

Come and go

 

Infants and oafs, in skin

Thinner than the curve of your lips

Narrower and shallower lives

Than the hips that bore me well

 

Mother, I love you so

 

I am joyous in your presence

I laugh and cry in equal measures

In bursts of simultaneous ebbs and flows of emotion

That sooth and reveal how I feel about you

 

You fill my days with thoughts

Rich and deep

Invade my dreams

Whilst in the froes of sleep

 

Mother, you made me

So, now, I shall make you

Immortal

In words that rhyme eternal, wondrous and true

 

Everyone is Psychotic

I am the madwoman’s attic

My walls are lined with abandonment

And static

My Insides are wood and glass pain

 

Everyone is psychotic

Quixotic psychotropic drugs

Blight our lives

 

In the haze of our smoke substitutes

We choke on the ash

Of our fragrant decay

And smell of fear

And replacement nicotine milieu

 

Unclean in the rear of our heads

We rub the behinds of our scalps minds

Until they bleed plumes of rosebud red

 

The universe speaks with the voice of unreason

Sanity is so last season

But is positively appealing

To those who are psychotically unreal

And believe that existence is but a delusional idea

That we are all free to think, act

And feel

 

I am sanity’s self-lover

I masturbate undercover of logic’s single sheet of belief

 

Everyone is psychotic

Except me-

Who am too, too sane

To be real

Louise M. Hart (2017)

Big Bren gets Shaved, 8th July 2017

We watched the Big Man being shaved

My pocket containing ten pounds

And Michelle

With her illusory beard

But I bought 2 drinks, anyway

“It’s a beautiful thing,” I thought

“Sacrificing your hair for charity”

And the lamb remained in stillness

Like a 21st century Buddha

Whilst anxiety gripped me

Like a gynaecologist’s fist

From the bottom of my empty pocket

To the nicotine tips of my conscience

My Mother and I had argued, you see

Before I left home

So I fooled myself that I wasn’t all bad-

Pneuma in a cage of beer and cigarette smoke

But smiled, like Satan’s symbiotic sister

Until Patrick walked me to the bus

And my smiles became tears, I didn’t shed

For a Man

Women make better friends, they said

Nails bite like incisors into soft, warm flesh

Women are fluid

 

Then I took

A man with big hands and enormous feet

Whose hair tickles parts of me

About which my Mother didn’t tell

Fingers that sing tricky tunes of love

The bee’s sting of desire

 

I know women

But I love a man

 

I am not a traitor to my sisters’ cause

Punching my fist in the face of ideological rejection

I am the projection of

Purity

Love

Truth

Merely human

 

Louise M. Hart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ode to Ruby Rose

Your hair is sunlight

 

Illuminating your face

 

Strands like fingers

 

Supplying

 

Sweet caresses

 

To your skin

 

Of silken lace

 

 

 

Mine is brittle

 

Whose strands betray

 

And belittle

 

The pulp that lies

 

Beneath my eyes

 

Flesh ruddy and hostile

 

 

 

Your breath kisses the wind

 

Mine is stained with the scent

 

Of cigarettes and sin

 

I have lived amongst men

 

But love only women

 

You love none

 

More than yourself

 

And display your body

 

For a living

 

I display my mind

 

And am a dying monument

 

To life upon the shelf

 

 

 

Your eyes shine like cerulean

 

And the diamonds you wear

 

Suggest the wealth of your talent

 

If only I could rest my head

 

Between your breast’s

 

Heaves of submission

 

And be reborn as beauty

 

Love, truth

 

And death in remission

 

 

 

You are an illustrated woman

 

Your flesh frames

 

Each picture you portray

 

So, I read you with a lascivious look

 

Devour your painted form

 

Like an open book

 

And then I look again

 

And imagine

 

That you have stamped

 

My library card of a heart

 

With a kiss of approval

 

 

 

But you are no more real

 

Than the love I feel

 

When I gaze at photographs

 

Of you

 

For you are young

 

And I am too old and ugly

 

To be loved by one

 

As beautiful as you

 

Fucked up

I wish that I could shut up

Should be in a lock up

Decay of mind and spirit

Not quite with it

 

I am the portal to insanity

For my mind is my only true reality

But my heart is almost free

 

So lay your head on my chest

And listen to the beat,

Beat, beat me

Into a pulp rhapsody

Of thoughts

Which broadcast from me

Like white noise from a turned off TV

 

Open your pocket

And place my heart within it

Like a time bomb of a watch

I shall tick against the skull of your belly

Until you tell me

That I have saved you

From sanity’s padded cell of luxury

And the concept of materiality