Nine Poems by Moss
1. YEAH, BUT DID YOU KNOW?
My class thinks I will give them answers
And I am fucked
If I know
What to give them other than that which we
Should dismantle, smash, abolish NOW
Without
Losing
My Fucking
Job.
Colonial knowledges perpetuated by my precarious employ
And the fuckfuckfuck of relations of power
I wish
We could
Drown
But give them the answers
Cause they
Want a first.
2. AN AFFAIR
Bespectacled, sober:
The morning's birds shake their heads
At what was done in drunken, drug-fuelled darkness
At what behind broken blinds
And bolted doors
Breathed exquisite betrayal
Against your matted monogamy
Monogamy?
Monotony.
"Oh we mustn't, dearest"
Morning's punctured perfume
Of putrid platitudes,
vanquished perfection,
power relations
You will not be mine, of course
Because
We are
Like
An endlessly ampersanded story
Like those told by children on tediously long car journeys
“And and and and and theeen”
Or a hyphenated
Breathe
In-out
In far too long sentences
(Who the fuck writes those sentences anyway?)
But
We are no sentence, babe
Let alone a saga
Just
Parentheses and punctuation
The flows of prose interrupted:
Exclamations of madness, dot-dot-dots of despair
And the enveloping "we will see, we will see"
As I wait for you
To decide
If you
Want
Me
3. SEASHELLS
Tentative, tactile
A tale began of our own making
We spent that time together
No thought of seashells breaking.
For we scoured seashells on the sea-shore.
The shells we scoured on the sea-shore are seashells, and of this I am sure.
For when we scoured seashells on the sea-shore
Then I'm sure we scoured sea-shore shells
And then searched the shore for more.
Less certain now, though, fragile
A story we couldn’t quite make.
We spent more time together
And the shells began to break.
Until we began shelling one another with seashells on the sea-shore,
The shells we shelled on the shore were wells of hurt, and sometimes more.
For when we shelled seashells from the sea-shore,
Then I’m sure we shelled pain at one another,
And dived the depths for more.
Loving, yet furious
A story becomes unwritten.
We’d spent these years together
Neither of us knew how we’d been bitten.
Trapped now in can’t-flee cells as we shunned sea, it’s shore.
The cells we couldn’t flee from were of our own making: aching, grating, sore.
For in these cannot-flee cells
Then then the sea-shore was no more
We were stuck in couldn’t-be cells, without sea-shells, without doors.
Older now, more weathered
Oh, the sea-shores we had seen.
Unlocked from our cells now,
But I was thoughtless, and you mean.
So left on the beach are seashells, by the sea’s shore.
The shells we’d seen ignored now, shunned seashells, for sure.
But if we'd just see seashells on the sea-shore
Then perhaps we'd search beach for sea-shore shells,
Together, like we had, once more.
4. PLAYING GOD WHEN HE'S RELAPSED
Betty bought a bit of butter
But the bit of butter Betty bought was bitter
So she took it back to the shop
And complained
And was
Like:
'I want better butter under consumer rights legislation'
And no, just kidding
But he bought some benzos
To chase down
His bitter brown to make his
Brittle buzz a bit better
And
I want to help
You
I want to make
It,
You,
Us,
Me
Better,
Better.
Better?
Bitter.
I am sweetness and light when you've been back on the gear
And fuck, isn't that second doctor coming soon?
We've been waiting
For ages
And you're out of intensive care
But you're not going to remember my being here
Later,
Anyway
Are you?
Betterbitter
Bitter now but are you better?
'You're so sweet',
Buttered up
Sometimes a thank you, though sometimes a funeral -
Mostly the memory of my so-called 'sweetness'
Erased
In your befogged forgetfulness
And my own bitter
Resentment
Better
I want to help, say I
But really, I want to
Control an outcome
And erase from the universe
The terrible illness that
Bitters butters
That has taken, takes, ensnares
So many
I love
Want
Need
Making Betty's butter bitter
Because they would or
Could
Or should be
Better
Better better.
Bitter now
Because
Bespectacled and in the light of day
You're worse off than when we fucking got here
WHERE THE FUCK IS BETTY?
'You're playing God'
She tells me over and over
And I know
She is right
Because I cannot
Even make butter better
Let alone
Make better
That, whom, what, which
Does not want to be better made
No amount of Naloxone
Nurturing, nursing, nutrition
Will make him
Better
Better better
Bitter because better bears
Burdens, breaks
And bereavements
From which I've yet
To heal
The betrayal of 'making better'
The not-so-benign making better
The bullshit 'betters' you've put me through
Longing for seashells and sea-shores and
Bartering to
Begin again again again again
But I am not
God
Oh, God
I
Am
Just
Another
Junkie
5. THE NIGHT I KILLED THE SNAIL
I'd set up traps and decoys,
I'd hoped they wouldn't fail.
But I hadn't meant to kill it,
The night I killed the snail.
Instead of sleep, I lay there,
On bedding that smelled stale.
No sleep, no peace, no comfort,
The night I tracked the snail.
I was thinking of you, dearest,
How once you'd been a grail.
To put to shame all chalices
"I've got to find that snail."
I knew I had to leave you,
That ‘reason’ must prevail.
My stomach slowly knotting:
I waited for the snail.
I told myself to end it:
To strike first, move on – INHALE!
To be the one who ends it,
“Where is that fucking snail?”
A sneaking panicked cowardice,
As doubt and fear assailed.
I was on the verge of crying,
When I saw the bloody snail!
It had mocked my traps and decoys,
My defences had been frail.
So with a torch and toolkit,
I flew up to stop the snail!
A beam of light, a tissued pinch,
I crunched it in its trail.
I showed no fucking mercy:
And squished that shitting snail.
The obstacles we overcame, love,
Make for a lovely tale.
But there was no happy after,
For us or for the snail.
And once I came to end it,
My madness didn't fail.
And I know that I did kill us,
The night I killed the snail.
6. (UN)MEETING SOMEONE TWICE MY AGE IN DETOX
Our blunder beats in me still.
In each pulse
A misguided syllable:
I
Liked
You
Your hands on, in, my butt
And there are buts of course
Because
Look
How we met
Meet
And
Meaty meanings of affection
I am not supposed to have
But butt
The sickening food in that place where we found one another
As unpalatable “no dating in the first year of recovery, kids”
And I know
I’d had commitments elsewhere
And the realities of bureaucratic racial capitalism;
the cunting cuts that close detoxes around the country
And that we are lucky to have met at all :
Closures, cuts, carceral so-called 'care'
And yes, I know
the year I came out of my mother's cunt
And the year you came out of yours
And that we shouldn't
No!
“No canoodling, go to your rooms!”
And I know
You didn't het-'get' my gender
Because
You said
You are
Too old
For that nonsense.
But butt
Our blunder beats in me still.
In each pulse
A misguided syllable:
I
Liked
You
7. HOSPITAL LINO
I am
But the nurse is angry
Because I am somehow four NHS numbers
And not my real name or gender
Here
I am
But there are tangles
In my hair and eyelashes
Because the drugs
Didn't work
Again
I am
And the doctor tells me
He's met me before but
I am
Forgetful
And I don't know
Who the fuck he is
I am
Aware that this
Is where we promised to love one another
Forever
But where people I fuck
sometimes take me
Now
Instead
I am
Telling practitioners that the Tories are scum
So they know I don't mind waiting
Longer.
I am
Lingering
In corridors
Or splayed up, out, open
Hooked up to an infernal beep-beep-beep and
Does anyone really know what the fuck is in that drip?
I am
Timeless
Because I can't see a clock and my phone's out of charge.
And so
I am
Back
Pacing or puking or putrefying on
Hospital lino.
8. CENTRISTS WHO WANT TO MAKE ME COME, PART ONE
A centrist walks in to a bar
A joke begins:
That somehow you'd make me
Come
A centrist walks into a bar
And offers to buy me
'A proper drink'
But, mate, I'm 12-stepping and
I'll only step
On your liberal, Conversed toes anyway
Still, you say, you want to make me come
A centrist walks into our bar
And I wonder if they're lost
Cause we've got no time for folks you here
And who the fuck told you to come?
A centrist says she’s not a Tory or a TERF
Come, come now!
She voted Corbyn in!
So I should definitely
Allow her to
Make me come
A centrist walks into a bar
And says she loves pleasuring
People of a gender that it is not mine
Gagging to, victorious, make me come
A centrist walks into a bar,
Sees me at my computer
Sipping lime and soda
Her liberal lasciviousness leaking like treacle over my laptop now -
COME ON, CAN'T YOU SEE I'M FUCKING WRITING -
And she'll never, ever make me
Fucking
Come.
9. DATING MYSELF, PART ONE
Lay forks to the left of your resting plate, and knives and spoons to the right
I am attempting a meal
You can rest your utensils in one of two ways when taking a break from eating
But I don’t want to because you are not here
Either with the tips facing each other in an inverted V (slightly angled) or,
And I am in a parallel reality where I am suddenly sober and the world is off its fucking nuts, and
Rest your knife on the top right of your plate (diagonally) with the fork nearby (tines up)
Fuck it, there is no need for me to know the Temporary Placement During Conversation Arrangement
Because
We are
No longer Us
And there is little conversation here
Now
Place the knife and fork parallel with the handles in the four o'clock position on the right rim of the plate; this signals
[To fucking whom does it signal it? To fucking whom?]
That one has finished one’s meal.
Forks to the left, knives and spoons to the right.
Finding myself somewhere between spork and straw
Unable to figure myself into the right utensil
Unable to transform into something useful
Unable to transmit what, where, why, whom I am now meant to be.
Without your love and temper,
Without my snorts and overbearing, forgiving affection
Yet here I am
Trying
Tryingly
Through tears
To finally date myself.
Moss (they / them) is a sometime poet and full-time doctoral researcher currently writing on the Ivory Tower, addiction, recovery, heartbreak and loss.
