Empty bottles fill your yard.



I sometimes sit at the kitchen table and just listen.

From here I am perfectly placed to hear the echos of

your childlike shrill as you protest in a drunken haze.

‘No, i ain’t ‘aving dat.’ I can hear your tears at the back

of your throat, you’re dragging them across your tongue

forcing them to fall, but your eyes remain dry. I have to

remind myself that you are my age and still living

like a child. A child lost somewhere in adult form among

the empty wine bottles and powder topped classic books.

I shiver at the very thought of such disrespect. But you have

been bred on disrespect and you shrug  it from

your sullen shoulders leaving behind that chip. I hear your

mothers stomach before I interpret her words, deep and

ragged she pushes them out with force from deep down

inside. Her profanities are laced in decades of hardened

fat, a vile stench clinging to each word as though it were

a dagger aimed at your back, to sit quietly alongside

the others she placed there. ‘He’ is a soft mumble of words

that match his smile. The gentle calm as he slowly sips on

red wine or vodka or gin or whatever it is you have dished out

into those overused glasses. One becomes two and his

eyes glaze, three becomes a line snorted in full view,

four becomes the anger in those piercing blue eyes.

Five becomes the thunder that rattles the walls as Mother

dearest sleeps. Six and he is heard. Seven and she sleeps.

Eight and a tornado rips through the room. The callous shriek

of who loves who more, ‘stupid, bitch, cow, slut.’ the lamp

is smashed, his voice gentle but his movements heavy.

Your eyes are no longer dry. You will scream as you always do

frustration spilling onto your bedroom walls. ‘Out.’ she’ll

scream her belly roaring. In the morning you’ll gather up

the remains of proof of who she loves more, as she sits

on the phone to her precious. Her sneers a nagging rumble

of the hunger she has to defeat you. I sometimes sit at the

kitchen table and listen as you repeat history, again and again.


Karen Hayward © 2016


Coke and wine.

I hear the wine flowing and the glasses chink

as you miss the table and hit the sink.

Mother and daughter addictions together

thrown in the garden whatever the weather.

You talk above the same old songs, and I wonder

if you know that your behavouir is wrong

or that there’s a rat in your kitchen running a mock

it’s a matter of time, tick fucking tock.

As predictable as the sun that moves the dial

smeared face and blood shot eyes is your style.

Mother dearest your spirit is broke

I saw this in your face the moment we spoke.

Fuck this and fuck that ‘cos the world is so screwed

but you never consider that the problem starts with you.

Ten green bottles sitting on the wall

every single night I hear them fall.

A knock at the door and the bed springs go

Daughter dearest, do you think we don’t know?

You sing as it moves to cover the sound

to hide the white powder,  another round?

Your a tight knit unit all full of love

broken souls that are fucked up and stuff.

Excited greetings and laughing galore

filling the glasses who wants more?

Voices go up voices go down

I can actually hear when you’re wearing your frown.

The music begins and everyone sings

till the spiteful tongue brings out its sting.

Tears are falling and the mask no longer fits

true colours shining none of you give a shit.

The lamp is broke, the glasses shattered

not that any that truly mattered.

You scream you push, so much pressure

you lose the very thing you pretend to treasure.

Flashing lights and a friendly face

an easy call for them to trace,

again today, again tomorrow

mother and daughter full of so much sorrow.


Karen Hayward ©2015





A wooden town lost in despair.


Fucked up and busted,

burnt out or rusted. Broken

glass and shattered dreams

of a fantasy held, but never seen.

Lost souls in a town of death

blood, sweat and the eternal meth.

wooden homes burnt and gone,

a hidden place so filled with wrong.

Drugs and hate with cider shots,

this is the place that love forgot.

Fucked up and broken

the devil himself has spoken,

he rules the town of deep despair,




The wooden town that time forgot,

there’s one road in, and it’s full of rot.

Broken souls and spirits high,

as someone, somewhere, begins to fly.

He takes from their soul

a bit at a time,

feeds them back life,

built upon crime.

A fantasy once, held by mans dream,

to recreate life an image he’d seen.

Memories of old in the wood that he sold,

to have and have be

the stories to keep…

a holiday for life, a home where you’d sleep,

but the devil did see the dream

that would be,

with its one road in that

led to the sea.

And the universe screamed,

and the universe saw,

the dream that was built right there at the shore.

She sprinkled down sand,

and skies of deep blue,

and added souls with hearts

that were true.

She shot out the stars

that covered the sky,

these were the light

that lit up the dark.

And the devil despaired

and the devil does fight,

he’ll do what he can to banish this light.

Shattered glass and splintered dreams,

lost souls fraying at the very seams.

There’s those that see, the dark and the lost,

the eternal damned, societies lost,

and those that know

of one mans dream,

never made but always seen.


Karen Hayward ©2016

A fucked up song of life.

Sometimes my mind thinks that it is just fine to take a song and mix it up. This is an assembly time special that school just loved to force us to sing. :-).

Little donkey,
little donkey,
on a coke head high,
gotta keep on
buzzing onwards
on a coke head high.