Roz Kaveney's Blog, page 9

For today

Remembrance Sunday

For every poet gas flame in their throats
Who scramble scrawled last verses in the mud
Each child whose flower blasted in the bud,
Musician detonation deafened notes

Nurses their wounds unbandaged and no bed
To make for them except a random grave
Civilian dead whom voting working praying did not save.
This is the day we're silent for the dead.

Whom praying cannot help. And there is gold
In vaults somewhere that's smeared with so much blood.
Some planner might have stopped it - yes they could -
Yet profited from calculation cold.

Colder than all those dead. Let memory
Be rage as well as sorrowsympathy.

A weather poem

FOG

Grey brown sometimes it seeps into your house
Particle droplet heavy in your chest
It closes in at night. Unwelcome guest.
In through each door and hole thin as a mouse

that leaves its small black droppings on your plate.
It wipes more distant towers from your sight
As if not there. It fuzzes breaks up light
as if your eyes were wet. It makes you late

as everything is slow. It eats up days
when hours are so few. You find it hard to wake
because it veils each dawn that does not break
so much as stagger. Yet autumn mists amaze

As charcoal shading can delight the eye,
turn days to mezzotint or to grisaille.

A sort of sequel -Heavy trigger warning for police rape and brutality

VIVIENNE2



Knew better than to run. One more arrest.
Not a big thing. Once policemen had seemed old
Like her big brother who had hurt her. Cold
the night, cell would be warm. Cough in her chest

they'd pour hot tea. They cuffed her. Cuffs were tight.
They stood close. Breath hot. Took her to a cell
One stroked red hair. Touched breast. She felt him swell
against her leg. They did not take all night.

Outside a Judas laugh told them her past.
Hair pulled. Breast punched. A fist against her jaw.
Held not in lust. For several hours more
kicked her and cursed her. Pissed on her at last.

So never trust those fine young men in blue
they did to her. Might do the same to you.

A sort of sequel

VIVIENNE2



Knew better than to run. One more arrest.
Not a big thing. Once policemen had seemed old
Like her big brother who had hurt her. Cold
the night, cell would be warm. Cough in her chest

they'd pour hot tea. They cuffed her. Cuffs were tight.
They stood close. Breath hot. Took her to a cell
One stroked red hair. Touched breast. She felt him swell
against her leg. They did not take all night.

Outside a Judas laugh told them her past.
Hair pulled. Breast punched. A fist against her jaw.
Held not in lust. For several hours more
kicked her and cursed her. Pissed on her at last.

So never trust those fine young men in blue
they did to her. Might do the same to you.

This is sort of a poem for Tara but it is actually about one of my dead

VIVIENNE

A broken dancer mane of wine red hair
cell pacing pale.From time to time she'd start
to step a form from bed to wall. Her heart
brother had torn from. Should not have been there.

Did nothing. As it happens. If she had
should not. Her flutter wounded pride; her face
lost his. His blue friends threw her to this place.
Wanted to smash her. In the end they had.

Six months alone no hope. Shattered once free
white Dresden fragile. Never could quite mend
Stiff as the damaged arm she could not bend
loose in her art. And it could have been me.

Talked us free once then left. Accept the blame
that burned my cheek. Guilt sorrow naked flame.

A poem about mourning

FOR ROCHITA

How to we comfort friends far off who mourn?
We did not know their dead and never will
except as names. And yet those dead names still
beat in their grieving hearts. Words are outworn,

the ones so often used to soothe console
but all we have. I'm sorry for your loss
or for your trouble. Slowly grey-green moss
grows over names on headstones. There's a hole

there in your life unfilled and unassuaged
I cannot help with verse. But I will try.
From my own griefs along with you I'll cry
For my own deaths I've wept. At fate I've raged.

In sympathy, these feelings that we share
for those who were, but are no longer there.

Gosh

VAMPIRIC

I starve ache hollowed out. I will not feed
though teeth core burn from throb referring pain.
I have not killed and will not kill again
even from hunger. Am too dry to bleed
though wet from lust. It is not blood I crave.
Nor will I seek their worship and refuse
if offered. Ecstasies I will not choose
nor suck throngs empty, rule not nor enslave.
Elderly, limping, tired. I will not eat.
I will be what the years have made of me
nor drain their white bared generosity
supple and smooth and red and salt and sweet.
I will not change and I will pass the test
Remain myself and fade into the west.

A more cheerful poem

LIBRARY

I glance along the shelves. She looks askance
over her glasses. Thinks I don't belong
She asks what I am doing, but she's wrong.
I have a member's ticket. So we dance

Apology for doubting. I accept
but still she wonders just how I got in
wearing a biker's jacket. So I win
her trust, by quoting Sappho, How she wept!

That Greek! It is a language we can share
remember to be silent. On the desk
We lie. She snaps my bra. It's like burlesque
How delicate we tease. I stroke her hair.

And this is how we paper over class
Audacity, quotations, a cute arse.

On our times

DARK

Wrap scarves around your mouth. The air is thick.
You need a torch to find your garden path.
Ten minutes outside means you need a bath.
You cough up sooty phlegm. It makes you sick.

I knew this as a child. It took an hour
to walk home from my school. To cross a street
risked life. Sometimes you could not see your feet.
Then it was smog. Today it is their power.

Lies, rape, theft, murders more than you can tell,
and none of us is safe. One day they come
the next you scream out as they break your thumb
'Do it to Julia'. And in her cell

She shouts the same. 'To her and not to me'.
We choke alone on what we cannot see.

My thoughts on Leon Brittan

Let us conduct a thought experiment.

Let us assume for the sake of this thought experiment that Leon Brittan was, personally, utterly innocent of all the accusations that have been brought against him.

Leon Brittan was Home Secretary. That means he was in charge of the oversight of both the police and the security services. While he was in charge, somehow neither the police nor the security services ever told him that a serial sexual offender, Jimmy Saville, was regularly socializing with both the Prime Minister and the Royal family. Moreover, since Saville spent several Christmases at Chequers and so did most of the Cabinet, Brittan was, whether he knew it or not, in the somewhat invidious position of socializing with Saville on several occasions. Either he knew and was silent, or was utterly incompetent, to an extent that makes him complicit by omission,

Somehow, on his watch, Kincora was covered up. Jersey was covered up. Cyril Smith was able to bully journalists with people who posed as Special Branch while raping children with impunity. Parts of the BBC were full of rapists.

At least one dossier was handed to Brittan which he either lost or placed in the circular file.

People are upset with Tom Watson for calling Brittan evil. Even assuming his utter personal innocence as far as actions go, Brittan and his predecessors and successors in one of the high offices of state have to be held accountable to all the victims of abuse in those years for what he did not do to protect them.

I think evil covers it.