Strong in my foetal memory,
Lies knowledge of distress.
Of wrinkled, horrid, prune like home,
Where others took the best.

From puny, feeble blood supply,
Umbilically, I starved.
In dried up shrivelled carapace,
My small new life was carved.

Within that worn and wrinkled home,
I'm sure my feet'll kick it through.
I muse upon fragility,
And wonder at my birth anew.

Siblings stole the freshness that,
I should have had for me.
Birth's feat'll be a burden such,
As none should have to see.

My dad would not have taken,
Second hand tattoos.
But then he chose to impregnate,
A womb that's four times used.

They conspired to create me,
In a place unfit for one.
Bound to befeat allegiance,
Between parents and their son.

Hi Malcolm,
I really like this poem, it is almost like a negative reversal from the babies point of view of Sylvia Plath's beautiful poem morning song.

I also like the use of second hand tattoos very poignant!

It has a good structure to it - the shortness of verses which seem to echo the cramped space furthermore.

Magi
xxx

Thanks Maggie

I don't know where I got second hand tattoos from, but I liked the idea for some reason. Pretty disgusting origins I think to do with nazis and lampshades.

I think the short verses may have more to do with my short attention span than genuine economy of style, but thanks for the positivie interpretation. I did have a sense of confinement about the womb image. (Pun intended). Talking about puns, the main reason that I wrote that piece was because I was playing on the word foetal.

Another startlingly-imagined urbane piece with sinister overtones! There's a saying in the Torah about the face we have before we're born being the face that God sees (although 4 D ultrascans and womb-photography may have kyboshed that conceit) but the idea is that pre-birth face is different (truer) than the one we're born with -- and maybe our understanding of what it means to be mortal is more honed. It's a poem that has the potential to unsettle. The idea of the womb becoming less valued/valuable with each successive birth, and the anger of the fifth born who feels he wears hand-me-down flesh, are very unsettling. And the controlled anger in the controlled quatrains -- very powerful.

Thanks very much Moxy. There is a controlled anger (and sometimes a bit uncontrolled) in most of what I write about myself and my family. Some of it I understand and a lot I don't. What I do know for sure is that I know more about what is going on in my head because of the poetry I write than I did before I wrote it.

Without getting too intense about things, I was a child of older parents born after my brother was killed in an accident. My surviving brother and sisters were much older than me. I don't think I was exactly a replacement and I was not an altogether welcome presence.

In adulthood I began to wonder whether I would have been aborted if that had been available and that led, in part, to musings about what it was to be a foetus. You have seen where it took me.

My head is now racing about true faces. Sometime ago I started a piece about cosmetic surgery and I have gone back to it a couple of times without a satisfactory result. I will try again. The working title is 'three times a virgin' so you see where I was heading.

Off to LA now to find a good surgeon.

Yes, I can empathise with the anger. I was adopted and my birth mother named me, it's on my first birth certificate. Two years later she had another daughter, called her by the same name, and kept her. My adoptive family never reconciled themselves to having a child who wasn't really theirs. I was even told by my adoptive mother that I had no right to the name she'd called me, and grandparents telling me they'd rather have the little girl down the road as their grand daughter 'because she walks better than you.' And so it went on, and on. So, I have a thing about names (as you've probably gathered, I am in search of one I can give to me) and, well, walking! I feel very self conscious out and about on the street just walking. Writing, for me, is probably the only way of keeping it all at bay. Good job I have a sense of the ridiculous.

Names sometimes have that power to upset one. My mother was very disturbed when she found out her parents had given her the same name as a sister who had died in early childhood.

It was once common to give a child the same name as a previous child who had died. Something that I think most of us would find unacceptable now. An indicator of changing social conditions.

Oh Moxy, your story is painful. I think think you have found an excellent name. One you must be proud to walk with.

We are glorious in our ridiculousness.

Hi Paul, Moxy and Malcolm.

Paul I had the same fantasy - I've given up on the king, but I'm still waiting for my prince to come, boohoo.

As for what you all said about family relations I had a very troubled life as a youngster which resulted in me isolating myself from my family, and I think that is why WOL is so wonderful as it gives us all the chance to be involved in this wonderfully diverse extended family and I am very proud to be a part of it and to have you guys as my brothers and sisters!

Lots of love and laughter to us all.

xxxx

Today we will having the naming of names! What a furore. Yes, I'd heard about naming a subsequent child the same name as the dead child. I guess I was 'dead' to my natural mother. Very strange to come to terms with. I did, subsequently, meet her and she left her husband shortly afterwards, yes, as a direct consequence. I must admit I felt like a ghost then -- something haunting from the past. Awful. The odd thing is that my adoptive dad used to say -- from when I was very young -- that my father was 'the village Lothario.' That's what got me into reading. I had no idea what a 'village Lothario' was so I tracked down the saying through reading! And opera! It's a strange journey into writing for each of us, no doubt about it. But I never thought I was a princess -- I used to believe I came from a family of gangsters -- and I adored the name Legs Diamond -- a real gangster with a humdinger of a name, so I was 'Legs Diamond' to myself for several years. It helped. Sometimes I am still 'Legs Diamond.'

I've heard of naming the child after a previously deceased child.
I wish mine was that simple! My first name was named after a Bruce Springsteen song and a cyclist from the cheq republic.
My middle name was named after a Labour Pollitician, you'll have to wait till hell frezzes over before I tell you that though!

Well there is worse you could have been named after a tory!lol

I imagined I didn't belong of course it helped that I was the only white child in the family, funnily enough I was called the black sheep = a very confused seven year old!

I come from a very tough family and the concept of me thinking I was a princess is bizarre now - but then again I think we are all princes and princessess.

xxxx

Dear Malcom,I read your poem with a with a heavy heart. If I had delivered you, I would have given you the biggest hug and the longest cuddle.
Your poem echoes some sad memories .
But that is what poetry does, it touches the heart.
Bless you

I should have said I was a midwife.

That's funny because I was a mid-husband i.e. not all there

I enjoyed reading this poem.
I admire your ability to keep it simple
I humbly take notes

the power in this poem is real


pete

Thanks for those kind comments Pete.

Oh Val. That's lovely. I think I might have wanted you to hang around for twenty five years or so after the delivery.

I am fascinated by the discussion that has developed about right and wrong names, being in the wrong family and a hankering to have some more exotic genes than the ones we appear to have been given.

I am sure that everybody would swoon at the beauty with which Legs Diamond walked. How else could it be?

I think that most of us who engage in something creative actually comprise of more than one person. I am certainly Hermione Pringle, Ermintrude Prune and several others as well as Malpoet. I suspect that there is some of Moxy in Agnew Bis and her other characters too. I have never met Moxy, but if I do I will be on the lookout for some quick foot and trigger work from Legs Diamond.

Apart from being incubated in accommodation which did not befit my self deluded high standards, I am left handed. In my opinion this means that my brain is wired back to front and, as a consequence produces outputs distinct from those tediously right ordered minds.

I am interested in genealogy and have identified that my lineage contains mostly of people who were skint, sometimes criminal and never regal. I am probably not a misplaced prince.

Having insulted the ninety percent of the population who are right handed and with no chance of an inheritance I will now go, but I will put up the left handy poem for comment.