The Moors Murders – an ITV Dramatization

Landscape once inspired the poets and artists
Swept them to whip us up with paint and words and patriotism
And to calm with definitive answers – yes, that is us, contained therein and framed,
No troublesome disparity between perspective, or self-image, and reality.

Nothing inspires Joe Public like kiddies swaddled in moors
Little secrets peeping out from cold kohl eyes and brittle highlights.
Those black empty eyes enshrined in pixels and newsprint –
They hook you in, get under your skin, and fill you
With wonder and comfortable unedited hate.

I know a fair few Ians, but no Myras –
I wonder about little Myra,
Even as my mind’s eye captures Keith’s little frame,
Cold and mingled with mealy peat, without his glasses,
Accompanied inappropriately by strains of Ilkley Moor,
The soiling pawprint of the poet whore.

I don’t have babies. I have always suspected
That, under my skin, I’m not a woman, nor a man, just a bare-faced thing,
Who somehow missed being swallowed whole at birth,
To stuff some gender husk.
We forgive artists little blasphemies, the re-shaping
And re-raping: how elegant, how illuminating.
Who’s worse than the bogey man? The artist? The hollow woman?


02/06/06