Teeny weeny me on the head of a pin!

Oh the things they did and didn’t teach.

No, prose and poetry are done and dusted.

So I will write to you in a spool

Neither script

nor screed,

a spool I imagine as

long

and ongoing

and unbroken.

More like a cotton reel than a scroll.

An endless unwinding of something

very

very

easy to break

I can unravel in a spool, the process is endless.

(So much thread in one standard reel!)

I will unspool my self, it feels a very

cathartic process.

I will hang my anger out to dry,

another white among the whites

(or grey among the greys

as the case may be).

The house is quiet, Tilde.

Tick-ticking. Plock-plocking of a tap somewhere.

A smell comes over, goes, returns,

something cooked and forgotten.

Soiled washing.

A child will bang a door soon,

A husband will tiptoe through the flotsam jetsam.

I am at sea on a large

beached

lounge suite

in the centre of nothing

† † †

31 JULY 1970

Tilde

I have been feeling mildly fascist all day.

I wanted to kill the postman.

I wanted to eliminate the unignitable gas jets in the kitchen,

the slippery green shoes that don’t properly connect with the floor,

the hot and cold heater that doesn’t obey.

There are wheels of dust in the house.

Actual tumbleweeds. Matted loops of dust and dog hair.

You just leave a house to stew and it creates hours of labour.

Years.

Sleep on a bed and the sheets go grey.

Cease movement and voila! A carapace of dust.

Everything makes me want to scream.

Had a dream in which Owen is making soup. I pour in the boiling water only to discover it is coffee. I find Owen has put tea leaves in it too. We try and salvage several floating olives.

So hard

To pin down

With a fork.

† † †

11 AUGUST 1970

Tilde

Sat in the living room and looked at the light fixture until Owen came and asked me for calamine lotion.

I pasted it on chalkily where the itches itched.

Oh a mother doesn’t have to do much.

Just open a jar, and dip in a finger.

I imagine there must be things that bite that have not yet bitten me.

Should I feel his bites as my own?

The dog makes a weeping sound when I leave the room.

I shall sit here in the corner with my wooden crate of booze.

I shall drink a glass or two or three then have a little snooze.

I’d write for the Tivoli you know, a sketch show: modern woman goes up

in flames!

Forgive me Tilde: because you don’t answer, I just write whatever comes into my head.

† † †

30 AUGUST 1970

To get inside my house you must open a big dead door on a silly little hinge,

progress through a garden with shadows and dead things underfoot,