Suspended in ambience
We applaud wet pages,
Reclaiming acquaintanceship,
Bombing barriers.
Managing mania, we
Fragment stagnation.
Redraw our faces,
Plumbing the depths of desperation,
Reconfiguring the perfect cup of tea.
We see the fleeting,
Invisible in mirrors,
Casting a net of happiness,
Searching for silence –
Twisting in darkened, teasing streets.
We greet the weather – it’s easier –
Eschewing intimacy with coldness,
Picking bigger battles.
Flickering destinations beckon,
Swimming in fantasies of honey-sweet strangeness;
Convoluted, tantalisingly inconclusive,
Listening for friction, infiltrating freedom.
We stage childhood heists,
Pirating reflections of identity,
Shining a dark light on dreams
Of vulnerability,
Spelling out connections,
Budding confidence coming with the dusk.
We open the only locked doors,
Walk in circles, talking truths,
Rebooting veracity with clean slates,
Flushing out scepticism with the
Perfection delineated in differences,
Breaking the bad binds tied by
Cowards digging graves, making
Weakness bleed from unjust wounds.
The long and the short of this is
That obsession is for life;
A deformation devoutly to be wished.
Metaphor melds into the elegance
Of skin, and letters are fetters
Of limbs, and the glitter of
Afterglow owns us,
Marking us with stars as we
Sleep - feral, beautiful, and doomed.
And all this night words
Chain us – willing servants,
Shouldering the burden of
Lucid truths, and we are…
Gorgeous
This was another of those tribute poems where I take inspiration from all the artists who perform ahead of me and give them a stanza or so each. I really like doing this – it’s a nice way to say thank you, and also means that I focus on the poetry rather than fretting over my own set.
The gig was “That’s What She Said”, run by For Book’s Sake, and the artists were, in order: Carys Hanna, Kia (?), Elysse Adjemon, Marcelle Mateki Akita, Emma McGordon, Alice Short, and FBS founder Jane Bradley. And it was fucking lush.
