..dear reader..

Someone on a forum put up the email that Jimmy Jones put up on his site about Savile.  Someone read it and replied that it 'read like fiction'.  As a past and hopefully future student of English I found that quite interesting, as was the stuff I read on Digital Spy today. Like Fiction. Soz ma unkempt grammar, fidgetin voice an messy register don't satisfy your info lust. Soz the bastardised language, unlikely themes and scatty tense teases but never places in your lap the perfectly formed balance of immaculate grammar and convincing graphic imagery.  Ma fractured & crushed attempts at truth can't gratify all that starved, surging longing for an empirically structured but hard hitting first person narrative.  Coz any mes (you see) that went to school, they never got away and are all rotting still with him in his unmarked grave or wrapped round our friends at the bottom of the Irish sea. 

Looking through notes from 2004 trying to find the names of some of the people I talked to when in refuge.  I knew it was unlikely I would find any, I'm far too well trained to remember or write down peoples' names.  Did find one, written at the back followed by 'CPU' will mention it to the police when I speak to them.  There was a mention of a policeman who 'was good with ritual abuse victims' hmmm. Also found this poem, I guess it should be called 'All in my mind' There's a dead baby over there It might be me I sing to her and she sings back But it could all be in my head. There's a big heavy cross on my back Everyone's shouting things at me, In a while I will be lifting that cross above my head I'm in a lot of pain But it might be all in my mind. Their placing bets on who will win The murdered or the rapist Neither of us wants to be here But its probably all in my mind. I know you, You've comforted me, I've c...

  Haut de la Garenne on the telly again, not for Bergerac though this time.  On my knees in front of the BBC, new carpet but and a crawling drooly infant. I felt my hand still gripped rock hard until I opened it and saw those bloody broken roots in my small palm, dark dampness and a violent face. They didn’t dig up much, just words scrawled in cellar, a concrete bath, ashes in an improvised fireplace and lots of teeth. Your not a bad boy. But you left more in the damp earth, concrete pits, lakes and spreadsheets we screamed in. Something still burning when those that ate the evidence are getting promoted and buying bigger houses. Something permanent and recoverable in the meticulously crafted torture tools, tarpaulins and fallacies of ritual abuse: the dark energy of the human sciences. Definitions: exclude human foot soup or marinating foetuses minorities and neighbours crushed under crosses and put through the mincer.

Clothes on the hanger or hugged together in clean mountains. His room a room. A bright, beautiful room. We make a good effort in a slightly hobling race to hold hands and reach the summit together. I always glance across the city to point where you cant tell where the grey buildings end and the sky begins. She had put her arm around me without touching me once. I start drawing my hands, my wrists. Seeing the contours the creases and the scars in oils, pencils, charcoal, pastels. My forearms, one brown one pale on a background of black and red turning to sunshine white and daffodil yellow.

Tomorrow all this will be over twitter. The smoking in doors, the irregular sleeping hours and random eating patterns will cease, the Fairy Prince returns. I will have to clean and shop. A few conspiracy theories and antisocial memories seep out. I feel no more fear than I did before. As it laps around, shrinking and stretching both our horizons. Tomorrow the medicine taking, Tom and Jerry Show watching and dish washing begins again but without the noise that was there before. We will swash buckle across the park, over bridges and across the burn to Morrisons for chips, peas and cake. Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Until then I leave the radio on and let the others seep a little closer to my senses as their faces turn to remains.

There was a clatter, a curse then a stretched heavy silence. My clenched fist released and rested on the scratched black of the interview room table top. I leaned forward to repeat that same indifferent tone that none of us bought. For the tape, Detective Inspector Pinkerton has just fallen on his arse. Behind the walls the laughter rattled I’m sure I heard the dogs howling their tails battering cages. Despite the hell, the horror, etc. It almost, always makes me smile, his flat flailing feat and manicured hands grasping nothing broke my face into the smile I thought I’d lost. Fist published by WomenWords publishing

River The conception was a chore but there were fireworks the night his minuscule doubling numbers were captured by my uterine wall. Tired of painting over the old dirty terracotta curtains still days from their rails. I watched bursts of ancient science jewel the tight face of the black Tay, and heard the crackles like tide pulling through pebbles. I knew his names long before I found him watching me sleeping from his aching elongated head. First published by WomenWords Sunrise Over Manchu Picchu Sunrise Over Machu Picchu: A Collection of Women's Voices

I read myself back into the footsteps I refused to follow because it might do me good and that makes them right when they said ‘do as your told and everything will be fine’ but as long as its short I give it ago. The child is away so mother plays desperate for views desperate for trouble still flinching whenever anyone thinks my name. I am a survivor and I stand amongst the documents that prove that I was there and he was here but today they are confetti clogging the drains when it rains. I walk on the ground but it feels like wet paper.

take is easy It's not like I have a choice in the matter and don't call me 'easy'. Why did you look so scared when we hugged goodbye? Did you think I was asking you to stay. Or did you think I would kill when I looked up into those stormy eyes with my head on your chest. Did I remind you how vunrable I was when they turned you into a tool. For all that its the Arab Spring like we talked about its time to come home. I can say 'MK Ultra' without getting woozey and Alice in Wonderland is entertaining and enjoyable. Take the kids if you like I'd like another new one to. Thank the meds and the nervous system that brought us back to me still breathing depression soup with the ghost knives twisting in my uterus that give the old withdrawl pain when I recognise my needs and wants. I saw Andrew and he sends his love eyes still down but not like before his furrows soften in pixelation instead of sharpened.

The short walk home through a close September dusk picks me up I follow a gray path through green by the redish burn of other peoples homes. The orange stars in the mid distance glitter on the textures of streets,roundabouts and warehouses. Down the hill then I cross the road without looking twice or stuttering my stride. I look down the burn, it's froth and stretch finds a home in me.