The first cut is teh deepest.....

ISN

I'm not serious, maudlin, earnest or sad
I spent my youth figuring the world out
and all I got was Alice's version
of conversion, perversion, and diversion

I found ghosts walking in London
with pasty faces and shy smiles
who sat on buses with me
talking about the blank city
and anonymity....with desperate irony
and loneliness, singing along in their heads
to hopeless tunes

I found literature to have meaning like runes
like the I Ching
where do I begin
I was Dorothea....I was Maggie Tulliver
and Anna Karenin

I went to the Tate to sate my William Blake craving
but especially my Pre-Raphaelite predilection
and when the Modern opened
I didn't have to go to the Serpentine anymore
I saw Litchenstein and Rothko there
ice-cream cones tucked into my sphere
of self-conscious, disabling shyness
outside

where do I begin
I was Gaugin
when I was fifteen
holding pythons like pearls
and jamming 15 deaths into one month
as I died and died again

I lived in Thailand where colour
was dripping from the canvas of my life
and my father's wife was stripping me of
hope
and how did I cope....with brilliant vitality
and the richness of the air
buddha-breathed
to go to bleak London
where I crawled and scraped
and only just escaped

to beautiful Madrid
where do I begin

I embraced Madness like a cousin
and counted God my first
living in darkness
hoping, dreaming
to have hope bloom and burst
into bloody happiness
stress dissipating with motherhood
and all the good whole natural feelings
which are normal
but which passed me by

I'm not serious anymmore
I'm not maudlin
I've come a long way
to begin again

V V

ummmmm......reminds me of me! and though sadness, a comforting sadness.

Thank you.