A couple of weeks ago, I performed at the rather magnificent "JibbaJabba" up in Newcastle, as their headline poet, which was a tad daunting, considering the sheer quality of the open mic, let alone the featured performers...!
As it was their fourth birthday, and I kept being struck by lines people were blessing the ether with, I wrote them a poem knitted together of all my impressions of the evening up until I stepped onto the stage (if we added in the mayhem of the aftermath as a coda, it would be an even longer poem! :D), and read it to them. This is it (possible differences from the original performance and this version are due to the fact that I had to extemporise gaps at the time, and this is my best guess for fillers):
Oration praises anything but silence
Generous heart parting hands
To embrace the waiting minds
The ouroboros snake hisses
kisses clasped fists,
Gasps up stolen
Golden handshakes
A soul's been psychedelised
Prizing nature's bounty,
Mounting the sweet, green foothills.
Dreams recall a tale
Slippery images glitter
Strangely.
Seagulls snigger,
Urban hipster birds
Skirl and shift,
Plot mayhem.
Ken's immortalised
In pithy verse,
Herding letters into figures.
Ugly night gripes every vessel,
Disgorges mortality.
Howls.
Verity beckons
Piscine kisses
Marine caresses better.
Sensitive skin tingles
Bristling into smoothnesss
Skating into napalm clarity
Ornithological torture,
Item by item,
Externalises challenge.
We are sheltered
Warm in the fire
Of a love burned to ashes,
Braced against the future.
We cup the ordinary,
Resisting the insistence
Of moneyed phalluses,
Grasp that it's all about true friendship.
Feathered fortress stands
Grand as the everyday,
Blows hard against venal incomprehension
Of corruption's nettlebed.
Understatements
Beckon us to rise
As speed is of the essence.
Street lines take us
To a flurry of shallows,
Dreaming of the deeps.
Pop goes the parrot
In glorious chorus
And we are all licensed,
Bright as buttons.
Check Twitter,
Refresh obsession.
Check Twitter.
Refresh.
Check.
Repeat. Fade.
Jewelled beauty glitters in
Underwater crevices
In place of seaweed,
Visited by fucked fishes.
Hearts hammer in the dark,
Bruised lips chain themselves
To nature.
Old wives tell of
The dark poison in the
Shadows, drawn in darkness.
Timpani talks
Takes a bow.
Protracted words
Pace on the stage,
Intricately link herbal mathematics.
We jibber and jabber
Clatter together
Words and hearts joined.
Beautiful.
