Below are two poems. The first I wrote after watching my mother gaze at her beautiful face in the mirror and bewail her wrinkles. The idea that she felt shame at signs of ageing angered me, inspiring the poem: ‘Love Your Lines’.
The second poem: ‘Halfway to my Telegram from the Queen’ is more fun. I wrote it to celebrate my fiftieth birthday a few years ago.
Love your lines
Wrinkles crinkle from a miserable face
The smile of a smoothie who’s had her face defaced.
Nip and Tuck? Please click to pay.
Creams, peels and lotions just a purchase away.
Look at those lines, you’ve never looked worse,
let us tighten then up, let us lighten your purse.
You’re worth it!
Worth having your life erased from your face,
those years an embarrassment, your age, a disgrace!
Photoshop, photoshop erase all the signs.
Remove all the wrinkles, lose all the lines.
Sweet souvenirs of all your years,
tears and fears, passion and fun,
worry lines from a difficult son.
Lines of laughter, lines from frowns.
lines from living, ups and downs
That we view these lines with shame.
I hold these commercials entirely to blame.
Ads embody the essence of objectification,
of which social anxiety is one manifestation
of the crimes committed by corporate culture,
that breeds and then feeds on our needs like a vulture.
Our sense of self reduced to an image,
falsified to be what they envisage
to be the perfect person in this cosmetic world,
so our unique selves cannot unfurl
without fear of judgement or misunderstanding,
of categorisation, labelling and branding.
So let’s boycott the adverts and reclaim your life.
No Botox, no face cream, no under the knife.
Take pride in our wrinkles our crow’s feet, our scars.
Love the lines on our faces and be who we are.
Halfway to my telegram from the Queen
I’m halfway to my telegram from the Queen, or most likely King Will
I’m Roman numeral L, the half century, the wrong side of the hill
50 shades of grey dyed brown, but there’s other signs too
Friends who call after ten, now say sorry did I wake you?
Fast rides on funfairs now fill me with fear
I wonder into the kitchen and then think ‘why did I come here?’
I feel like the morning after and I haven’t been anywhere.
When I bend over, I look for something else to do while I’m down there.
I have a party and the neighbours don’t even realize
I get asked for advice because I look wise
I used to find builder’s whistling at me distasteful
Frankly now if I’m whistled at I find I’m quite grateful
I first realised I was getting a wee bit old maidy
When I went to the butcher just cos he calls me ‘young lady’.
I thank god my man’s too vain to wear glasses,
Now he can’t see how saggy my arse is
My lined face looks soft focused and blurry,
He puts it down to his poor vision that my chin now looks furry
So the question is what to do now, resist or embrace?
Fighting and screaming or aging with grace?
The best thing about it is we’re all in the same spot
All maturing nicely whether we like it or not
I can see me and my mates in the future all greying and stout
We’ll form a gang and call ourselves ‘the old trouts’
We’ll have ear trumpets and pretend to be deaf and shout ‘eh what’s that you say?’
We’ll don tweed skirts and sensible shoes and get in the way
We’ll walk across busy roads purposely slow
And hog the aisles cackling and moaning in Tesco
And count our change in pennies when paying for our shopping
And hang out for hours drinking tea and gossiping
We’ll gad about town with our bass passes
Brag about our toy boys and pinch waiters arses.
This vision of middle aged mayhem excited my man
He pleaded and begged to join this menacing gang
When he found he was excluded on account of his gender
Got mad, said ‘one day this snub you’ll remember
I’ll form my own rival gang of death dodgers
We’ll have gang fights in Tescos – Trouts versus codgers
We’ll nick your trolleys, spill your tea, rough you up something frightful,
Run off with you bags’, I thought it sounded delightful
Oh what a fabulous future I see, but there’s still some time to go
Still too young for such antics, maybe after the next zero…
