When discussing race, I am white.
When discussing feminism, I am male.
When discussing sexuality, I am under the radar.
When discussing gender, I am cis.
When discussing poverty, I am rich.
When discussing discrimination, I am privileged.

But outside discussion, and outside the paradigm,
I am none of those things.

Ultimately, I am human.
Ultimately, I am loving.
And like all loving humans, I am very, very angry.

A knee length scream rebounds down the empty hall,
The walls as bear as her legs, which bear her away from the roar.
Not far behind, another set of legs, another set of pleats,
This time the floor reflects polished black and matt twill
And a slippery set of sneaky misogynies disguised as paternal concern.

But a good father does not stare at his daughter's legs.
He worries, as does his running child, about the man who's gaze is perpetually set a foot or two below eye level.
But when it wanders, as it "always must," our daughter rebukes his lust,
And her first and last words muster the might of all daughters and sons.
And she stands on her chair, so that this time his eyes are looking level,
And bellows from the fog of anger that had been slowly settling about her uncovered ankles.

You can imagine how that went down.

So sprinting, whooping, echoing across the school,
Her cries of exhileration tug spirits out of rooms.
The path of the pin-straight Man is blocked by the faces of his children,
He trips on their blue hair, their white shoelaces, and their black denim hems,
And as he falls she rises, out of her skirt and above the regime,
For neither define her as a separate being,
Nor as a string in the weave that catches that pastoral shin
And catapults the shepherd into the stampede of the sheep.

this is ours
by rights we reclaim it, a fight in writing that bites back again
when the nights are stretched to breaking by the hours we spend awake in them.
think of the power we have
fiber-optics and copper trotting through bedrocks,
beneath seas that seem to me to be as near to intervening as the breeze.
and we're afforded opportunities
unavailable to the hoards of previous peoples of every family, genus, species.
we seize these as only we are able, every lost little bean knows
you are as close to us as you are to the holes through which your cable goes.
with which we burrow
and from beneath we ****** comfort and warm fuzzy glows from those
who think they still know how the rock rolls and what it's like to be between the tender years of thirteen and nobody-knows.
it's not enough any more,
stuff galore but still the crumpled detritus of bad ideas augments the dust gathered on the floor.
this rising pain will crash,
like the glass roof we are preparing to smash,
and with the scratching fragments falls the now forgotten skin,
too small for the shining lives we strive to begin.

a drop in my vision, a field obscura
it's as clear as the shade of your mascara
seismic proximity and i'm growing limnic I
can't help but skim the shards I trimmed to
where I can't begin

she was with you in the tiles
my cheeks tore at your custom smiles
rascal rolling among the red and the black I
know there's a reason Lib pinned you down
what whisker sensed your gold

never to infinity or to zero
but if it tends
the tenderness will never grow

when I felt of you the thousandth time
and kept me guessing in my rime
grab my lapels and make me ruby I
would be Faust for a hypocaust
please just let me in

I'm sure I will be ruined for a while
but in the end
my friend for you it's worth the miles

I'm sitting on a wooden bench, atop a hill, facing acres of nature's finest. A hundred metres to my left is a paved road, and other signs of human interruption are scattered around in my field of view.

Despite this however, despite the destruction I know tarmac and paths and civilisation to cause, the scape was dominated by sky and trees and fields; the blue of air, the green of pine, and yellow of rapeseed.

Found litter in hand, and songs from the wood in my ear (both literally the Jethro Tull album and figuratively the birds through the creaking of trees), I realise that here at least there is balance. We as a species believe that we wield so much power over the rest of the earth, and count as evidence the cities we've built that flatten anything that lived their previously. But we are nothing new, when landslides and hurricanes, floods and earthquakes do just the same. We may be a natural disaster in many places but we are still natural.

And nature does not break, it only bends. Everything is assimilated; growing up around the fences are new walls of sweet-smelling gorse and pine. Ivy twists up towers and cement cracks to make way for persistent weeds that conquer through tenacity mankind's best attempts at order.

We have never sat on the throne of Earth, this is not our kingdom, but a niche into which we have been able to nestle ourselves, between the plants and animals which tolerate us as a nuisance but not one that is ultimately devastating.

A thousand years from now the tall turbines in the distance and the marking paint in the forest beside me will be gone, but the wind and the trees on which they rely will be unchanged. There lies the true power on Earth.

I am surrounded.
Sometimes it is comforting,
My joys compounded
By the presence of friends
And equipment and papers.
But it can be crippling
And I am made later
As my drive to drive becomes harder to find.

The sun is beginning to set
Earlier than I'd imagined.
I glance at the bottom corner to check
But it's coming right on time.
All the things I said I would do
Remain undone. The capsules,
scrawls, clearing, animals,
How have the hours become so few.

Early sun the birds' tongues sends a-wag;
Gorse pyres force fires in through open window dragged,
Like rogues blag a cabin below the deck of a wandering ship,
So smoke woke being stowed on the lip of a morning wind.

Taking my time,
Light I descry,
To wake in a while.
Warm bodies that lie

Beneath a banyan balcony, a muse of colour calls to me.
A sari much less touched than seen, but touched to see
My chest used to be used not as a pillow, but my trunk
For you, blown skin willow is drunk on your best.

Taking our time,
In the night slowly by,
But waking under a spun sky,
Miles now divide and I'm

Not spending night
Be still full of time

Strong is the beat beneath my shirt
Strong are the feet that beat down dirt
Wrong was the thought that stopped my flow
Strong is the oarsman's blow, blow

Soft is the moment in between
Soft is the noise that scrapes a scream
Course is the friction on my skin
Soft is the face of sin, sin

Heavy is the heart that drags it through
Heavy is the start of the mark I queue
Steady is the air that sears my lungs
Heavy is the course begun, gun

Light is the soul that bears me now
Light is the beam that blinds allow
Dark is the warmth that gives me sleep
Light is the life I reap.

night will chill, and so the moon
stems the flowers in full bloom.
cloudy cutting snow and sleet
gives limit to your cautious feet.

a crystal forms in my viscera,
I hurl it, swirling, in terra,
on hooded folks dodging one another,

visiting granite graves whose flowers don't stand a chance
where scuffs struggle to uncover through hermetic blanche
a single patch to scratch my last,
and finally retreat en masse.

you think inside your slated rows,
away from freezing steel and sodium glow,
my fingers will fall away.

I am in the fog that coats your spectacles,
I am in the smirking glance it conceals,
I am in the chariot that thaws you through,
and so
are you

Yours is clay
What is mine, a tome?
There's only one way
To the lair of the minotaur
Sat spinning centre
Shocked twine mentor shall I bind
and bend my mender

I'm trying too hard
To keeo my voice as gentle
Seeing spots in a state
With my hair in my hands in my eyes
I sat down at the plate
Were we spelt to stay?

A whispered word
Even water walks back sometimes
Won't you?
My hits hit sixteen
I felt fits begin to sit between
and I found that I think as founders think
My legacy unstuck to sink

In the end i think I wrote
I coughed up the lump
You built in my throat
Flung what we've undone, I don't
Want to be a footnote