Bridging Words

(Was asked to perform as a feature at Speakeasy, a Cambridge University slam series. I haven't done a crowdsourced live-write poem in ages. Behold. This was particularly easy, in some ways, as the quality of the slammers was ridiculously good.)

We are a collusion of
Percussive ooze,
Encouraged to fashion
Gratitude and mad grats
Into clicks and pigeonholes

Friendship is cross-stitched,
A work of alchemy and memories,
Creased with intricacies,
Meaning littered into the gaps
We hop across and peer at,
Peripheral visions.

We fill the dark spaces between
With glittering sticky tape,
Better living through chemistry,
Embracing our right to be happy,
Glorious monsters, intertwined
Through all those hungry nights.

We reflect on ourselves, spun sugar arguments,
Consuming ourselves through
Nervous resistance, cold numbers
Drowning in abstract blood,
Summoning the guts to

Stand up against such a summary.

Today is an improvised battle with technology,
Struggling to care through
Solipsistic prisms manifesting in
Silence, the places between words,
Churning familial duties and the need to
Hold hands through the smoke.

We are mapped in fragments,
Coiled in a double-helix of hiraeth,
Bellows of frozen breath,
Optimistic billows of red, sunset litanies
Written into our flesh, rusty and fragile,
Irresistibly strong.

Love is cupped into twelve minute
Segments of looks, words, warm,
Distressing vertigo, tiny death
After tiny death, teetering forever on
Concrete edges, crumbling, rumpled,
Shored up by broken bits of unsaid words.

Guilt is a stained-glass exposė
Of the deconstruction of self,
More-or-less deftly stitched with ripped-up time,
Vacationing in costumes,
Hidden in plain sight,
Skirting the abyss in all of us.

3am chimes a tightrope of teetering meanings,
Gasping for layers,
More than simply okay.
And we drown in the toxin of adrenalin,
Tintinabullation along glittering nerve endings,
Sending us back to speak truth,
Dark words dancing in the spotlight.

Thanks - A Poem (#EdFringe2017)

Walking back home down Leith Street*, I Got Involved and tried to direct an American couple to an eaterie that wasn't closed (as opposed to the one they were trying to get into). They looked confused, told me they didn't understand, and I had to modulate to a slow RP before they got me. As I walked away, the first couple of lines of the poem occurred to me. By the time I got home, I had most of the first two stanzas down and was starting on a third which I promptly forgot (something about renegotiating sunsets, I think) and a fourth which became the beginning of what's now the third. And then, when I got home and started writing it down, it went somewhere completely different... Doubtless it'll evolve again over performances. If I perform it. Hmm... :)

And after I'd had a wee cry, I recorded a version of it here - maybe it'll help someone else as well:



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've been speaking French again
Lending shrugs and stumbling syllables
To the ether,
Tangling the back of my throat into
Friendly growls
Adding an hourglass pinch to familiar vowels.
Retrouver:
"Tu me reconnais?"
"Mais, bien sûr, mon ami: voila, c'est Aout,
"Je retour une autre année!"

I've been speaking Scots again,
All glottal stops,
Dialectually exacting,
My mother, God rest her,
Would be ecstatic that so much remains,
Rooted in Liz Lochhead poems
From an early age, Rabbie Burns
Emerging with my England-buried Rs.
My hair reflects my rediscovered roots,
Blooming soft and wide
With birling curls,
Lighter. Enlightened...
Slightly frightening.

I've been swallowing my tongue again,
Humming needs into submission,
A prism of listening,
Delays, fears,
Anxiety like a weight,
The freight of Maybe dragging
Like a gag.
Travel woes and first-time fears,
The year gone, ambitions bitter,
Bitten back, tucked down,
Gullet clutched,
A hobble of mediocrity
While brainweasels gambol, their words
Given free rein:
"Too old"
"Not a commodity"
"Odd"
"Not proper"
"No longer hot property,
"If you ever were…"
"And worse - you're permitted
"Merely for the sake of all the things you do
"That no-one else wants to
"And you, too desperate to belong,
"Too keen to help,
"You people-pleaser
"Trudge, grinning awkwardly, on."

I have been killing weasels again.
Turns out they're blighted by kindness
And company,
And people who hail you in the street,
Smiles lighting their eyes,
And people who want to hold you,
Touch your heart,
Ask after your day's hardness,
And those who wait to walk the long way with you.
They're killed by soft water
And salt water
And tap water
And bottled water,
Drowning in a flail
Because they'll always fail
To seek the higher ground.

Today I have been learning to speak again,
Hear my poor, sore voice as sweet,
Hear it as they hear it,
He hears it,
She hears it.
When it sings,
No longer strangled by
Dangling weights,
Cast free for friendship's sake.
Thank you.

_______________________
* I get it wrong in the video and say "Leith Walk", which I even knew wasn't right at the time! :)

Addenda

(Originally written for the Rebel Arts Women’s Radio programme on sexuality, this also featured in the inaugural In Other Words anthology, and it’s all the things I sometimes wish someone had told seventeen-year-old me.)

Addenda

It’s one small step for mankind,
And a giant leap for you.
You thought:
The journey starts with just one footfall,
And all you need to do is
Fall forward, defying gravity,
Perfectly balanced in
Brand new boots,
And fly.

They would have better said:
Never mind perfection,
Just take the plunge,
Because that standing jump
Is just the first of many.
For even when
Those boots are moulded,
Close as loving skin,
Every step is you expounding pronouns,
Saying:
These shoes that fit are ten percent
Of all you see,
But reason to love or hate
The one you think is me.
So mind your step,
Because the journey still goes on.

They never said:
You will be striding boldly forth,
More naked than that nameless day
When you were born,
Exposed, and oh-so
Instantly invisible.
Erased from history,
You’ll be looking for the roots
Of how you came to be,
Reaching through secret glass
To an unrecorded past,
Gasping for lack of shared air.

You will become detective,
Historian. Hysterical or bored;
Pawing through clues,
Stuck back in the place of sieving hints
That others ever felt like you.

They never told you
That the first time might be awful
More tawdry,
More disappointing than any
Heterosexual liaison,
A long plummet from a tall plinth,
Instinct serving you less well
Than Judy Blume and textbooks
Ever did.

Turns out same sex does not mean
Same body, same history,
Same ticklish bits and glitches,
Just a similar list of hits and misses.

And they never told you
How slow wisdom gifts your bed
The pleasure of discovery,
The countless ways two near-same
Bodies twist and fit together,
Seamless and daring,
Multiplying variety;
Writhing, humming and deriding
The rigidity of procreative instincts.

You’ll dance and quiver,
Shiver in the warmth of
Mirrored flesh, the deft delight
Of their eyes lighting;
Soft and hard and all you dreamed
And more.

This was never written:
Temptation will disgrace the days
When you smile at queer jokes,
Poke fun at “those” celebrities,
Brittle giggles dogging homeward steps
Because acceptance seems less work than truth.

Those days when you
Take off your badge,
Kiss the double standard
Of invisibility,
Shiver in the musty dark
For the safe sake of
Job promotions,
Nosy neighbours…
Fitting In.

No-one told you how
Straight folk will tell you
That homophobia’s over now
And everything is great
Because you’re state-sanctioned,
Wrapped in legal comforts,
And soap characters,
And charity.

And you will sigh,
And add another number
To the queer appendix,
Tick your bingo list,
And patiently not bristle.
Maybe this one will listen
When you tell them...

They never mentioned all the days
You’ll crave the conventional.
Not to let go of her hand, no –
For the day when it isn’t defiance,
Stares, or gasps,
Just a safe clasp,
The everyday press of flesh on flesh,
The reminder of her beginning
And your end.

When you kiss her in the street
And no-one even notices.
When it’s only farewell
Hammering in your chest,
Nothing more.
Nothing less.

When boring blesses
With the miracle of normal.