 
Motor Neurone Neon Eel
The cold slab nakedness
of his felled neck
flops over like some weeping mistake
of unspeakable flesh,
retrieved and sewn together
by cack-handed quacksalvers
In this infirm aquarium
wound lickers fishmonger the spoil
of his spilled gills,
their warm wrap enclosing his
nimble eyes with unwanted gifts
The Lightwriter flickers, stutters,
each letter a staccato lighthouse beam
Thoughts crash on rocks whilst waiting
to be spelt out
S-T-O-P-!
Go to hell.
He is there.
You can all leave.
With your feet.
And his big toe gives them the finger.
Yet in his stagnant body
ideas still twitch and swim
like neon eels that
seethe backwards for shelter
whilst facing the net;
a luminescent shock in the tumble
of the tedious sea
Continued...
Larry’s War
Larry learned to fight back at five
At fifteen he lied about his age
to escape and fight like a man
Saw things he should never have seen
younger than he should ever have been
to liberate Belsen
to kill Malayan insurgents
with his bare, embattled hands
Larry came home,
his honourable discharge
washed down with pills and gin
Taught his son to be nothing
taught his daughter things
she should never have been taught
Pushed those kids faces into
their disobedient dinners
He fell unconscious once,
on the floor next to his wife’s bruises
whiskied smile like a plaster on his mean mouth
There was a full hour’s debate before
anyone called an ambulance
Long after I lost touch with his family
I let Larry take me bird watching,
show me things I would never have seen
the brick–red underbelly of a bar-tailed godwit
a pale white sunset on the black soil Fens
Then we’d walk back to my car,
Larry chuckling at his own jokes and
me telling myself there was good in the man
linking arms
under huge Fenland skies,
violent with emptiness
The Horse Whisperer
She tore at the air
clawed its slaughterhouse gasp
pawed the burying earth
with her woven hooves
and the floor quaked
and all the walls trembled
and the thin door howled.
Still I sat and
grasped the reins with
arms that ached but would
never ache like her arms
preparing to mother him
out of this truncated life.
She looked at me with wild
eyes that did not see,
and I,
inexpert Xenophon,
knowing there was all to fear,
reached inside her blinded sight
and bent her loss till its black light
met mine
and we rode together for a while,
which was all I knew.
That night I kissed my boy,
urgently
and he looked at me lightly like I was a fool,
laughing
while I stood saddled with unwanted wisdom.
When Gill isn’t working in the hospice she stays alive by reading and writing poetry. When Gill isn’t writing poetry she dances at festivals, dabbles with oil paints and trains her telescope on avocets.
In the summer of 2006 Gill was runner up in a lyric writing competition held by the band The Guillemots with the lyrics ‘Summer Brings You In’.
Her poems have appeared in online arts magazines, Empowerment4Women and La Luciole and UK poetry magazines, Citizen 32 and Poetic Licence. She will have poetry published in ‘Nothing But Red’, an anthology out later this spring that speaks out against violence against women. Gill has performed at poetry venues in South and Central London. She doesn’t mind not being rich. You can visit Gill at myspace.
Last update : 26-02-2008 21:29
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