Let's play pretend
You imagine I’m not me
and I’ll become a golden boy
wielding strength through body, not mind
Fight me and I’ll break apart
I'll break
anything to prove you don’t see me
now make something tough and it will shatter
You thought me fragile but a shard of glass is deadly
dad, let’s fight but leave words were they are
if they’re never spoken I won’t choke you with them
Instead let us be men
Silent
dad, isn't it lonely to fight only with flesh
We lash out to connect but a strike is fleeting
I used to wield my voice like a whip and it struck
an echo in a head for days
Hard to be lonely when your head rattles
dad, a singular body feels weak when I had six figures
there are only so many ways to break a body with your own
but a mind
Shatters
and reforms
And that is why women are stronger.
I’ve given up strength to be weak.

I think of the water
offered to me
when thirsty.

Scalding water during a drought.
I want to drown myself(.)
out but

there is no flood to submerge in.
Not feminine.
Not successful.
Not enough.

When I cannot
afford my mother kindness
I give her honesty.

This house is loveless.

I told myself
                the white walls of her
castle illuminated my class,

That the poverty in
                my footsteps traipsed dirt
into pristine halls.

That my broken home
                would leave shards
of splinters in her own.

That I should never
                play the role of prince
with the conviction I felt in my soul.

That she was a fairytale I wasn’t allowed.

I didn’t voice
                I’d heard the term lesbian
and come to understand things about myself.

That the syllables of
                her name on my tongue
carried the tang of hymns.

That her name made my empty soul soar.
And then fall.

That her name made God jealous.

To learn that you are human is to break apart.
I am a scatter

             f
                   r                 i
       a                                n                         w
                 g                                                      i
   m                                               t                      n
                         e                       h                             d
              n                                        e
  t
                             s

You storm through me
                                                               the dust does not settle
I will never know myself again.

From her lessons in independence we learnt that everyone leaves,
Abandonment as sure a fact of life
                                                                ­                                            as death.

We learnt that love was transactional,
A currency,
A receipted ***-for-tat tete-a-tete.

At the altar we were shown lies,
In the white dress a million yes’s but the question was never till death.

I could walk through darkness without worry,
I’d never been shown the danger,
Been encouraged to see an enemy in calories but not strangers.

We learnt to lie to avoid bruises,
Wooden spoons used for more than stirring soup,
The salt burning streaks down our faces when the *** boiled over the stove top.

Truths ignored and lies inelegant
We learnt to wield fists with tongues  
Sparring for our lives.
Cautiously awaiting the
whistle pop
truth drop
wished unsaid
upon
impact.

in his limbs i find penance

when he pins me down
                                                     its my mothers hands around my throat
begging
                 for sounds i won’t make
                                                                 praying
                                                                ­                     to be allowed silence  
when we join i know
                                         i hate him  
after we part
                                                              i hate myself

                            solace in the steamed bathroom mirror
                                    hiding the sin from the sinner  
the
        salt
                   of
                          his
                                   pleasure
the
        salt
                   of
                          my
                                   pain
                                                                      washed off together as though
equal

                                                        but

her limbs are absolution  
                                                    ­                                 seek and ye shall find
i am forgiven between her thighs
                                                                               on earth as it is in heaven
the prayer on my tongue meets god
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                                                                her gasp Amen

I want to run until my knees hit the concrete
towards the grass
towards the earth
away
gravel grazes grit splinters ****** shins
yet still leaping
body tilted
in battle with the wind.

I said once this place was where dreams came to die,
So why am I happy here?

I can see the years etched into these peoples faces,
On line for every life they should have lived but didn’t.
Creased skin coating arthritic bone;
Comatosed souls in caracasses.

Defiant if not alive.

Because there’s not an eye that doesn’t glisten with mischief in this prison.
Solidarity and laughter while we peel back the skin on our knuckles and chip away bone.

As though the blue plasters can patch up the damage from years where it didn’t trickle down.

If I were to bottle this it would be

Fleeting moments of such deep joy it’s hard to recollect the moments of utter misery,
Of which there were more.

It would be bitter loneliness without the sweet tang of friends,
The ache of realising alienation isn’t about being alone.

It would be waves
Crashing into rocks after washing over us
Curling our ankles on pebbles
Tripping but running headfirst anyway
Toes in the sea.
It would smell like sun cream  
With the coarseness of sand
Salt and sun and summer.

It would sound like jazz time on a friday afternoon
Blues, show tunes and improv.
Empty balconies,
Wind
Leaves
LMTs
Conversions I listen into but don’t join.
Thunderous silence.

It’s white walls awash with laughter,
Paint fumes and flying
Fresh puddles
Stifled tears
The longing for something more.

I wonder why it took another mans tears for your ears to open to the truth.
Years I’ve spent crying over you,
Getting drunk off the whiskey residue on your skin,
Spinning in and out of your life
Alarmed and dizzy.
A meteorite that never quite hit the mark.

How were you to know you used to be the sun,
That you’d cast us into an ice age?
We will orbit you until there is nothing,
Spinning ourselves into oblivion.

I wrote once that your hands cradled dust,
But that doesn’t do justice the worlds your hands crafted
Or the lives you lived.
A father, first and foremost.
It saddens me I will never know all your children.
I doubt you feel despair that you never knew them either.

My father used to be a stranger
occupying the same four walls I sheltered in
Occasionally offering me a tea
But forgetting I don’t drink milk.

He introduced me to the feeling of rage.
A mechanical voice box goading chemical reactions,
My catalyst, if you will.

Now we drink oat lattes together
And swear to fill the silence,
But it’s comfortable.

And when he messing up acronyms,
I correct him.

I don't pretend to know why Eve ate the apple
but I know she's not the one who ****** us.

He created Her for Him.
A Marionett made on a whim, discarded.
The predesecor to the ****** Mother.
Mary, I'm so sorry.

I wonder who realised first their limbs had strings?  
A lamb and a shepard
Born for slaughter.

We were all daughters once.

I sat through sermons week in, week out,
never a doubt about where I was meant to fit.
Meek
Mild
Submissive
Mother

I wonder what my daughters opinion is on having never been born.

I stopped reading the bible before I could discover the word for a Childless Mother but I'm pretty sure it's Women.
What does that make me.

When I eat an apple,
I like to cut it into slices and eat each segment individually.  
I'll throw away the seeds, nibble at the core, discard the skin.
We were told she took a bite
but I often wonder just how Eve committed her sin
and what is taste like.

I do not begrudge Eve the apple.
I begrudge Adam the audactiy to ask for a partner in suffering.

I believe my brother will grow to hurt,
to hit,
to lash out when he can't reach the words he needs.
I believe he will grow to silence as he has been silenced
And to intimidate as he was intimidated.
Loved, yes.
But loathed more.
When the money runs out love is stunted.
It can't buy happiness
but it sure helps feed the hunger,
And no one can argue being deprived of affection isn't a sort of gut wrenching starvation.

There's an ache in his eyes,
an emptiness,
and a promise that whatever fills it will hurt as he has.
He, who doesnt understand the difference between freedom and power,
Who longs for both having tasted neither
but like the starved will blindly accept either.
He is like my mother - lost.
All the lost are fearful,
and most of the fearful are violent.

I wish to keep the wishbone within the body,
Not snap apart a life under the guise of luck.
Collect lost pennies, not lives,
You evil murdering *****.

I sit in silence with my mother because how am I meant to say the roots of everything I despise about myself lie at her feet?
That I've learnt to refuse to let her make me feel shame and guilt for eating?
That to this day I look at my body and hear the echos of insults she hurled at eight year old me about the
fat on my hips,
their dips and dimples?
That my partners hands caress that same flesh
and she kisses away my hatred?

I sit in silence with my mother because she doesn't talk, she shouts
out of anger at the cage she's in.
And in her volume I hear the echos of everything she's been unable to achieve,
all her hopes and dreams cruches by pre-conceived ideas of femininity and society's prying eye?
Can never ask why she allowed herself to be chained, and silenced.
Why her present is only half the shadow of her past.

I sit in silence with my mother because how can I say everything I take pride in is what she hates most about me?
That my sexuality is not a choice, but I've chosen that label and I treasure it?
That femininity to me is hair where I can see it,
swearing when people can hear,
and unapoligetically taking up space others would rather I vacate?
That my rejection of faith isn't a reflection of her,
but rather proof she raised someone who learnt to challenge before they accept?
That I'm strong and resiliant

but still soft around the edge?

A repeated feat, just as dusk lusts for dawn:
Nights blend seemlessly with the days they seek.
Infatuation to the greatest degree
because if it was love, they'd have found a way to suceed.
Sun would share the sky with stars,
a liminal space split in half.
The ultimate comprimise for exisiting.  
When will the missing them dull to an ache I can bare?
or is this the price?
Would the abscene of pain simply mean the abscene of them?
because if so,
I'd rather dispare in the knowledge that just like the dawn,
I'm cursed to an eternity one step before them,
forever casting shadows.

“Because when you come out to me there’ll be one of three reactions.
I’ll either laugh, I’ll cry, or I’ll give you a big hug.
Or maybe a fourth - I’ll look you in the eye and ask who’s surprised.”
And I said
“Nice to know.
I’ll bare that in mind for two years down the line when I finally have the courage to tell you”

- coming out to my Godmother

(12/09/19)

We need to find a new space of revolution,
Beyond this place of pollution.
Democracy’s dying - the chambers of brick and bone can no longer hone the power effectively,
And besides, the mortars crumbling.
Grumbles echo between screens until the rumbles bubble then burst and tumble onto the streets,
but cries are few and weak.
The masses are meek.
‘To question the system is extreme’ media teams scream while they profit from the chaos and hide behind headlines.
The bourgeoisie sit comfortably as their bunkers are fortified,
Happy to capitalise on destruction and dramatise death.
Their crimes are discreet,
And steeped in deceit,
Yet they remain unburdened by the bodies that pile at their feet.
Why bother searching for answers when science is censored and senses are dulled?
They want us senseless,
Immune and desensitised to the countless lies and ecocide.
“Not our species, not our problem”
But it’s both and more.
Our streets,
Our future,
Our planet.
When will the lesson sink in?
When pollution is skin deep and soil bares only the spoils of war?
The climate crisis takes no prisoners, favours neither rich nor poor.
Your wealth can’t save you.

O how the Rose wilts as blood seeps from sly lips
And rouge petals turn crimson.
A fresh stain on old domain -
Surprise! They’ll never change.
Roses grow best in horse ****.

Roots
deep and twisted
twists those who should know better.
The weathers changing,
We’ve past the point of blaming,
But know this earth is it.

Beware the warnings she leaves in rising, warming seas.
Listen to her expertise.
We all breathe the same air but only few care - those two degrees are deadly.

A guest who steals will never walk through the same door twice.
Take her advice and harvest only want can be replaced - don’t lace food with chemicals distilled from fuel you were never meant to use.

Nature won’t always be there to go to back to.

Bitten blooded flesh;
Proof of the demon in her head
that gnawed away,
Stealing days like takeaway cups
filled to the brim with saucy sin,
seven layers of deceit.

‘Incorporate music’
But how when there’s no structure to the cacophony you’ve conceived?
No cadence,
imperfect or otherwise,
to resolve the constant clashing,
the bashing,
of keys in your head that won’t silence.

Is this violent dissonance tuneful to those who aren’t the instrument?

I'm ready for the rain,
ready for the pain it brings,
ready for the cleansing,
the healing,
the arrival of feelings I've been inviting for months...
I've been avoiding for months...
I've been fighting for months.
Because I believed that numb was better but now I crave the harsher weather.
Now I need the hurricanes,
need them so desperately I can hardly separate me from the want.
The savage desire to light a fire I'm unwilling to put out engulfs me.
I want to set myself aflame, but blazes lead to blame and body counts.
So instead, I'll await the rain.
Best to just let it wash away.

She was not forewarned that with fresh starts come broken hearts
and rebirth is never pretty nor pain free.
To escape the misery it was necessary to first feel the burn,
only it was never meant to hurt quite like this.

Hoping to kiss an old friend goodbye to the tune of a lullaby you've long out grown,
but instead having them trace your skin with knives and ice as you stand blindly believing,
facing their shadow and mistaking lies for eyes as yours water.

It's okay you didn't see the weapon.
It's okay your hands shook as you ripped it from between ribs then stitched your chest shut.
It's not okay they walked away without harsh words, deserved, hurtled at their heels.

But know your freedom is battle born,
and strength comes to those who know their own worth and do not waver.

A man I am meant to love told me the amount of skin I show represents my right to consent.
Flesh = Yes
Clothes = No
"Deserving" is a word he used.
A grandfather told his grandchild she deserved to be abused based off the length of her skirt, but this is old news; same story.
Only, I've heard it one time too many and now I'm sick of it.
"Devastated" over my hypothetical ****, he'd said,
as though his feelings mattered more than my right to my body.
Well, **** him.
I'm tired of prioritising people whose opinions are so archaic they can't see the crime in their words.
And his words hurt.
He defended the 'nature of men', claiming its an inbreed instinct,
tried to explain the appeal of women as though I don't already know.  
Jokes on him.
I'm gay.
But I've never been under the illusion it's okay to objectify or intimidate your way into a person's life.
I've never felt entitled to a person I've liked
And there lies the generational divide
Because neither has my brother.
Being "unable to control certain urges" is just another lie they feed you to perpetuate a culture of ****.
I'm seventeen, and yet I know the fear a predatory gaze can cause,
I've been leered at to the extent I honestly thought this is it.
This is the moment I've been warned about.
And then I thought "It's my own fault.
It's dark, it's after nine, I went out running in only a sports bra,
of cause I'm going to find trouble"
because I forgot that I'm not an object.
I'd been fed the same message so frequently it was ingrained into my fight or flight response.
Doesn't that speak for itself?
I'd been conditioned to accept the blame before the finger was even pointed.
So when my grandfather looked me in eye and said he thought girls where asking for it by the way they dressed,
I didn't have the energy to suppress my response.
I asked him if I'd been out drinking with friends wearing a sheer dress and matching bralette, and I was *****, would he consider it my fault.
His answer was met with stunned laughter.
Yes, he'd consider me to blame, and indicated his disappointment should weigh on my conscious.
I am shamed I have the same genetics as such a man.
At least I've learned to drown out his words so they can no longer effect me.

We perpetuate heartbreak culture,
teaching girls the man who holds her loves her despite the bruises,
or it was her fault; she looked older.
We fetishes shoulders,
prize youth from the young in return for pre-chewed gum,
swallowing down the same tired ideals from those who still wield them like flags,
waving their patriotism on poles of bone before a throne of medieval *******.
They chant mantras with beer stained breath about how 'our' country 'bested' the rest,
but what about the brutality?
The blood split on foreign soil in return for prehistoric oil?
Our land is deemed pure so long as the violence on our hands never reaches our shores,
but the ocean is red and staining our sands.

How can you have pride in a country who's sole identity is based off having the worlds largest navy?
Congratulations. You bombed your way through countless continents, collecting cultures to gather dust on pedestals and alters
We sin on Sundays, drink till we're ****** then wave at the seven deadly's (they don't apply to us here).
We teach preschoolers nationalism before they can walk,
indoctrinate our children before they can talk.
George killed the dragon.
Hood gave to the poor.
we all jumped on the bandwagon before we realised the princess had no choice and the rich still ruled.
There was no voice in the tale for those whose wail could be ignored.

What about those without lines in the script?
Those kicked to the curb, then kicked from it?
Our pavements have no room for nonconformists,
they're tailored to for same mind, same mindless wanderer,
squandering on the lasted polyesters even though that mouth on the street hasn't eaten in over a week.
'God save the Queen' from the vermin;
the homeless have been tossed out of the trash.
Why help them when you could save your cash by turning a blind?
After all, out of sight, out of mind.
Welcome to England, we hope you like what you find
Because we’re not changing it.

There's a gap in my window that lets the world in,
a crack that leads to the rest of me that I haven't quite worked out how to widen enough to jump through.
This little gap lets in a breeze that whispers of fancy's I'll never see but can envisage,
tangible to my mind but not my fingers.
I believe that sometimes my soul has shrunk so small it can slip through the crevices that bar my body.
It slithers away and leaves me cold,
too numb to notice its absence,
but I can feel the blood gush from the abscess over my heart.
My soul climbs back in from time to time,
just enough to feel the agony of being reunited with me but snatched from the world.
I think I should wait until it's gone again,
and then seal the crack with the blue tack I use to stick pictures on my wall so the faces won't haunt me.

04.04.18

She wrote words on her skin with the hope they would seep into her blood stream,
and flow, freely, through her until they came to rest in her brain;
safe, protected, nestled, tucked away and waiting for the day they might slip,
tumbling onto her tongue.

Sometimes, she would trip over the words
clumsily crushed under teeth as they were flung around,
desperately seeking the chance to be expelled,
To yell “listen to me.”
But the words were confined to the bounds of her mind,
and she swallowed down the scrambled mush.

Perhaps, one day, she’d be able to push the words through her lips.
Perhaps, when they fell, she’d allow then to nurture, to nourish, to thrive and flourish.
They’d survived her endless grinding, her nervousness.
They’d blossom, bloom into sentenced to fragrant the scents would speak for themselves,
her words merely complementing the intent.

She wrote words on her skin,
tattooing her thoughts in plain sight
because despite the fact she’s never have the confidence to voice them, she longed to be heard,
so, when sound failed her,
she worried not but wrote the words.

(17/18.10.17)