Caroline Bird Poems

Hey Las Vegas, can nothing save us
from you? Hey bottle-bins and Tesco Metro,
Monday yawnings, flu symptoms, the station pub
at Waterloo. You're all Las Vegas
and I'm hooked on you.

Hey Las Vegas, you're a cheeky sausage,
aren't you? Swapping my lovers while I'm under
the covers watching your tattoo change. Kisses began
in the city of sin - be it York or Durham -
die with you, Las Vegas.

Hey Las Vegas, can a Yorkshire lass match
her drinks with you? I built a bedroom casino,
bet my hotel bible and lost a week. Just one, Las Vegas,
pinch of comatose, powder up the nose
and I'm a queen for you.

Hey Las Vegas, I wore my Elvis costume
for you, a genuflect in Wetherspoons from muscle
cramp: your promise, like a flung bouquet
off Humber Bridge, to break my fall
Las Vegas, like the A63.
...

I thought I was the child in this scenario.
I played the child and you loved me.
I did a grumpy face when the university
took Mr Teddy Rag-Ears,
I got words muddled like "I stood very truck
as the still went through me."

But then today
my future child called me on the telephone
and said, in a squeaky voice, "My mum is dying,
can you come over, I need someone to talk to."

I didn't know where my future child lived.
I had a feeling she was called Bertha
which disappointed me.

"I live in south east west London," she said,
"Where the spies and the cleaners live.
It's spotless and seemingly empty."

On the way over, a terrible pain ripped
through my stomach and I distantly
remembered a woman from my
adulthood I hadn't seen since
that bed-wetting dream.

I passed glass conservatories on Bertha's street.
They were acting as gallows for hanging plants,
"I like that image," says Bertha, knotting the ties
on my hospital gown, shooing me out: "I told you
no more running away from hospital, didn't I?"

Bertha, I went straight back. It's disappeared —
all except the scout-hut used for art therapy
that whiffs a bit. This is my picture of mummy:
that is a tree because she's in a forest, those are
mummy's pink gloves and that's an axe.
...

He says some fascinating themes are unfolding.
I've always wanted to be seen
as part of a social movement
to do with ease or truth.
The filming began a month ago
and he has access
to all my archives.

"It's a good medium for portraying the sly
tussle between intent and fear,
hesitation and resolve, when
a person finishes
a triumphant sentence and then fails
to sustain the steel
in their eyes, looks left,

blinks twice. We never hide anything, not really,
folk just doubt their first reading
but they saw it. They did see it.
What might they see in you?"
. . . Well! I signed the contract right there. Now
he cakes me non-stop
in make-up and praise.

"Do I look like I give a flying macaroon?!"
I commercialise my madness
for him, so he can spread the hype.
"Oh look I'm a big train!"
I said the other day. He loved that.
He wants infrared
lenses for breakfast

which no one's ever done, not even his rival -
a woman in an over-sized
pea-green cagoule and a navy
blue head-band like a small
girl who carries a midget camera-
man on her back and
pops up in every

pocket of corruption with a knife whizzing past
her ear, shouting "Tell me something
I don't know!" in the faces of
hapless area-boys.
"If she leaves a calling card, bin it,"
he tells me, convinced
she wants to steal his

latest muse for the cover of Time magazine:
"me with a coat on looking glum".
I won't answer any questions
about my secret life
or my scorpion jar, or health, and
besides he seems more
worried about ‘art'.
...

I had become increasingly suspicious of those around me
especially after an attempt was made to kidnap me
and two masked soldiers raided my house while I hid
in the grandfather clock. People noticed my language
was no longer that of the peacemaker of Europe. I'd become
addicted to my paramours story, I had specialist books out:
What My Paramour Thinks About So-called Liberal Reforms,
The Ninety-nine Sleeping Positions of My Paramour (with diagrams)
and Instructions My Paramour Feels Your Dog Would Obey.
I couldn't smoke a cigarette without apologising to the walls.
So my friend set me up with sandwiches, a flask of sugary tea
and helped me build the kennel: "There is nothing more relaxed,
more tranquil, than to live alone in a kennel in a church."
I had no more kidnapping scares or menacing phone calls.
No unmarked jeeps waiting in the street for me. I didn't receive
a Valentine's card saying "No one likes you, love from everyone."
Although, I couldn't stand up straight due to the low kennel roof
and living in a church was like living inside a lull in the wind.
I wondered why my friend had been quite so insistent
about fitting the car-clamp onto my left thigh, I'd run out of toffees
and what with no TV, no travel Scrabble, no rowing machine,
there was literally nothing to do but pray.
...

I surrender my weapons:
Catapult Tears, Rain-Cloud Hat,
Lip Zip, Brittle Coat, Taut Teeth
in guarded rows. Pluck this plate
of armor from my ear, drop
it in the Amnesty Bin,
watch my sadness land among
the dark shapes of memory.

Unarmed, now see me saunter
past Ticking Baggage, Loaded
Questions, Gangs of Doubt; my love
equips me. I swear, ever
since your cheeky face span round
I trust this whole bloody world.
...

She arrived at the country mansion in a silver limousine.
She'd sent out invitations and everything:
her name written twice with "&" in the middle,
the calligraphy of coupling.
She strode down the aisle to "At Last" by Etta James,
faced the celebrant like a keen soldier reporting for duty,
her voice shaky yet sure. I do. I do.
"You may now kiss the mirror." Applause. Confetti.
Every single one of the hundred and forty guests
deemed the service "unimprovable."
Especially the vows. So "from the heart."
Her wedding gown was ivory; pointedly off-white,
"After all, we've shared a bed for thirty-two years,"
she quipped in her first speech,
"I'm hardly virginal if you know what I mean."
(No one knew exactly what she meant.)
Not a soul questioned their devotion.
You only had to look at them. Hand cupped in hand.
Smiling out of the same eyes. You could sense
their secret language, bone-deep, blended blood.
Toasts were frequent, tearful. One guest
eyed his wife — hovering harmlessly at the bar — and
imagined what his life might've been if
he'd responded, years ago, to that offer in his head:
"I'm the only one who will ever truly understand you.
Marry me, Derek. I love you. Marry me."
At the time, he hadn't taken his proposal seriously.
He recharged his champagne flute, watched
the newlywed cut her five-tiered cake, both hands
on the knife. "Is it too late for us to try?" Derek whispered
to no one, as the bride glided herself onto the dance floor,
taking turns first to lead then follow.
...

In the dry light of morning, I return to the well.
You think you know the outcome of this story.

Sunshine is a naked, roaming thing like hurt.
A well is a chance embedded in the ground.

The well was dry yesterday and the day before.
You think you know the lot about sunshine -

an early bird knows sod all about perseverance.
Good people, you lay down your curling souls

on the dust and surrender. I swing my bucket.
If the well is dry today I will come back tomorrow.
...

A poem about hysteria

You could order them from China over the Internet.
The website showed a grainy picture of Vivienne Lee
in Streetcar Named Desire.
It was two vials for twenty euros
and they were packaged like AA batteries.

They first became popular on the young German art scene -
thin boys would tap a few drops into their eyes then
paint their girlfriends legs akimbo and faces cramped
with wisdom, in the style of the Weimar Republic. It was
sexy. They weren't like artificial Hollywood tears,
they had a sticky, salty texture
and a staggered release system. One minute,
you're sitting at the dinner table eating a perfectly nice steak
then you're crying until you're sick in a plant-pot.

My partner sadly became addicted to Mystery Tears.
A thousand pounds went in a week
and everything I did provoked despair.
She loved the trickling sensation.
‘It's so romantic,' she said, ‘and yet I feel nothing.'
She started labelling her stash with names like
For Another and Things I Dare Not Tell.
She alternated vials, sometimes
cried all night.

She had bottles sent by special delivery marked
Not Enough. A dealer sold her stuff cut with
Fairy Liquid, street-name: River of Sorrow.
Our flat shook and dampened. I never
touched it. Each day she woke up

calmer and calmer.
...

Long before we tie the knot, Divorce moves in.
He sits on the naughty step, patting his knees.

Crowned in towel, I step out the shower
and he's there, handing me a raffle ticket.

He plays kick-about with the neighbourhood kids,
chalks crosses on their doors and buys them Big Macs

Socking his fist into the bowl of his hat,
he'd kicked the gate wide, that sunny day in Leeds.

My mum was incredulous, "she's only ten,
she can't possibly have made contact with you."

He clocked my young face and handed me his card.
‘Call me when you fall in love, I'm here to help.'

Perhaps he smelt something in my pheromones,
a cynicism rising from my milk-teeth.

With gum, he stuck notes on Valentine's flowers:
tiny life-letters in factual grey ink.

The future cut two keys for a new couple.
On my twenty-first, Divorce took the spare room.

He loves to breathe down the spout of the kettle,
make our morning coffee taste mature and sad.

He waits by the car, slowly tapping Tic-Tacs
down his throat. We've thought about stabbing him,

but he's such a talented calligrapher:
our wedding invitations look posh as pearl.

He bought us this novelty fridge-magnet set,
a naked doll with stick-on wedding dresses.

Divorce and I sometimes sit in the kitchen,
chucking odd magnetic outfits at the fridge.

He does the cooking, guarding over the soup,
dipping his ladle like a spectral butler.

He picks me daisies, makes me mix-tapes, whispers
‘call me D,' next thing he'll be lifting the veil.

After the honeymoon, we'll do up the loft,
give Divorce his own studio apartment.

We must keep him sweet, my fiancé agrees,
look him in the eye, subtly hide matches,

remember we've an arsonist in the house.
The neighbours think we're crazy, pampering him

like a treasured child, warming his freezing feet,
but we sing Divorce to sleep with long love songs.
...

If I was a virgin I could streak across your garden,
drape myself across your armchair like a portrait of a lady
who is unabashed and simple as a cherry in a bowl
and only dreams of ponies and weekends by the seaside,
sipping unchartered water from a baby-blue decanter,
sighing with her slender throat and saving herself.

If I was a virgin I could wear white in winter,
read your dirty magazines with a shy and puzzled look,
like I didn't know a crotch from a coffee-table, darling
I could scream blue bloody murder
when you caught me in the shower,
snatch a towel around my outraged breast,
my eyes awash with droplet tears,
I wouldn't hold your hand in public, if I was a virgin,
I would never spill spaghetti on my jeans.
My voice would be as gentle as an angel blowing bubbles,
I would be terrified by frisbees and sports of any kind,
I would always ride my bicycle side-saddle.

If I was a virgin I'd look great in a bikini.
I'd feed you grapes and rye bread
and my hands would smell of soap.
You would hold me in your arms like a precious piece of crockery,
I would sob into your jacket, you would gasp inside your pants.

If I was a virgin, you wouldn't look at other girls,
you would spring-clean your apartment
before you asked me round for supper,
give me your bed, spend the night on the sofa,
dreaming of the gentle way I breathed inside my bra,
my nightgown would remind you of fragrant summer orchards,
and nobody would know my mouth tastes of peaches
and I thrash in my sleep like a baboon.
...