PlaybackPoetry
Todmorden
I am a spoken word artist who hails from West Yorkshire. I perform regularly in York and around West Yorkshire, and I won Say Owt Slam in York last year. I am currently resident poet at Six Lips theatre company, and perform regularly at their Improvisation Night, taking audience experience and feedback and weaving it into a piece of spoken word under a strict time limit of 15 minutes.
Land bewitched by the breathy ash,
Which falls, unreal, around me,
Subdues my inner ticking
With a single, ringing note
Or the dulled sepia mufflings
Of distorted joy and feeling;
An amber pool of flickering light
and blind entertainment.
The bright, unfocused conversation
Drifting in lazy circles,
Gold silk stretches between us
And smiles become light
My limbs slow, and my mind speeds up.
The fading world echoes these
Surreal rythms, softened life.
Yet panic blinds and cripples me,
As the grey fogs take hold
And the
Snow is gone.
Dec 7, 2016
Dec 7, 2016 at 4:52 PM UTC
Here we lie, tangled in
Each other, yet apart
My eyes focus, I track across
Your face, this room, these clothes
So known and yet as blurred
As the graphics on your shirt
I count your eyelashes
As though they are rosary beads,
And try to find you hidden
In their shells
I see you, but don't know you.
Bittersweet memories
Crash and break around me;
I lose you in their depths
Two pairs of lips in a blind dance
I barely follow.
Disgust and want fight over me,
Love lost in waves of apathy
Hormonal needs are met by hands
Ill-conceived kisses greet them-
Breath is caught too quickly
And my desperate searching fails.
Your mask grimaces. You smile,
I’m blank, and pale and still.
My mind and soul are smothered
By dark polluted thoughts
And when it's over, it's not finished;
You study my face for clues
While I trace the etchings of my skin
And yearn for clean release
It's not you, it's me.
It's not you, and it's not me either,
This room is not your room.
I drift, unanchored, unresponsive
Too tired to understand
So I silently indulge
You in complicity
And although our bodies join
We both miss our connection
My mind has turned the one I love
Into a stranger.
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 3:28 PM UTC