About

My Arthritic Heart is an autobiographical illness narrative which deals with my experience of living with the chronic, auto-immune disease Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA.), with which I was diagnosed at the age of 20.

The pain and disability RA causes has taken so much from me personally, affecting my lifestyle and the ability to be self-reliant. It is, as a fellow sufferer once ruefully said, ‘the disease that just keeps on taking’. I have written these poems, not only for myself, but as a gesture of support for all sufferers of chronic illnesses who so frequently feel alone, misunderstood and hopeless as they battle to fit into a society that defines individual worth in purely economic terms.

It is my hope that this collection might begin, just a little, to chip away at the community’s ignorance and intolerance of this, and so many other, chronic conditions by demonstrating their devastating effects on the livelihoods and lifestyles of so many young (and young-at-heart) people.

(From the Author's Introduction)

Proudly published by Post Pressed

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Extract

27 years

hard to believe it’s been 27 years since you
stared at my burgeoning 13-year-old breasts
from your hospital bed, marvelling and horrified
at the same time, at your child so quickly
becoming. then heralding a new world
with your ashes scattered over those roses,
a world that did not include your blue eyes,
filled with love and future. i have wandered,
fatherless, these years, and in times of hardship
- and there have been many — still recall you
with hot bitter tears: the throwing of balls to hands
like sieves, your laughter at how i threw ‘like a girl’,
the vision of your speckled skin against white sand,
your shy half-smile at a child’s bright prattling.
but, girl no longer, your leaving was childhood’s
death knell, and the world since has never be so kind,
so loving. father, if you had stayed, what poem
would i have been?

poverty

poverty
knows the bar-propping stranger’s
hand on my knee, only
an arm’s length from hunger

knows fifty-five brown rice
recipes, winning ways
with plain potatoes

knows how to scam that extra
tenner, how to fight for its rights
with rich doctors

poverty
knows the food store at st vinnies,
knows the well-meaning grin of home visitors
who promise prayers and novenas

smiles and says thanks
for their sympathy
their icons, their pictures of jesus

knows to not appear bitter
to not be a feisty fighter
to be grateful for handouts of warm winter clothes,
to be quiet, to be nice, to be nicer

poverty
knows there are no guarantees
that life sometimes throws you a curveball
and as hard as you stretch it sings past
and you fall

knows the cold of winter when the power
cuts out, choice of eating
or paying the bill

knows the paint-peeling dwelling
the room with no view
the carving knife under the mattress

poverty
knows generosity is not the province of the wealthy
but comes from strange quarters — drug dealers,
hookers, and toothless young men with stealthy grins
who shout you bread money, or coffee

knows about invisibility, how to be a nameless statistic
knows there’s no social status, no respect when you’re sick
— you’re a vagrant, a loser, no-hoper

if pride is a sin
call me sinner
- this, or open my legs
to the monster

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