Image by Christine Renney
Analogy
Or a direct plain speaking piece
I’ll tax the brain
A profound question
I don’t have the answer
But it doesn’t matter
A few tidy phrases
Will suffice
Tag Archives: truth
Statues in the dark
Where do depressed people go
When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
Back to their room, where one voice says – take them up on their offer
make a phone call
but the other voice knows they will not because
when you feel that down the last thing you can do is talk.
Where do depressed people go
when the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
Outside to empty streets / not reminded of what they fail to achieve
the silence, a balm on fevered emotion
for everyone judges what they cannot see
as others watch Pandemic movies behind closed curtains
the sad roam in search of meaning.
Where do depressed people go
when the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
they’re told it’s a disease as much as a broken arm yet
judgement is always a cudgel just one step away
even lovers rebuke and ask; Why can’t you get out of your head?
Do something helpful for a change, instead of navel gazing?
or worse, say nothing, ignore, over it, worn out
few can handle a season with dysmorphia.
Where do depressed people go
when the entire world suddenly feels they do?
For a quarantined period, it can even feel like fun
nothing of the permanency, nothing of that locked in sensation
pervading senses, shutting down, until all the dreams you had
are dust and ash on floor, you can’t even get out of bed, to brush your hair
or walk the dog, this inertia isn’t laziness, it’s a switching off
of life’s impulse and so the bulb dims eternal.
Where do depressed people go
When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
This is how it feels every day, you struggle to find a reason, to steady yourself
into faking it, and surely, the falsehood runs its course and you’re back
with naught and nothing comes from nothing we’ve been all taught
self loathing reflects back in the unwashed mirror, a hateful creature
your worst enemy is between your ears, you hear only
the rebuke and chastising of that part of you wishing to be free
break out, break out, crawl, stagger, run get away
from yourself you cannot.
Where do depressed people go
When the entire world suddenly feels as they do?
trapped in a brain that doesn’t sit up and beg when ordered
motivation a distant memory, as much as you want there are
no magic pills or electric impulses powerful enough
to restart what has lain dormant and half alive
we are quarantined by our own demons they
made prisoners of us long before Covid 19
even those who love us, wish we were different
self hate is a woman without rocks in her pocket
yet
she walks to the edge many times each day
her reflection cries even as she no longer does
for tears are wasted after a certain time
fixed in place by broken ways forward
she seeks to drown the madness with one jump
and they sit on their sofas talking about how it will be called
the great epidemic, where we all stayed in place
not realizing for some of us this is
our hell already created and nothing new
we have been here before, we shall again
it is the wordless, grieving place of those
locked down by their minds in situ
watching the world build around them
statues in the dark
to a pandemic long pre-existing
where screams are never heard.
Life As We Know It (Now)
Fortnightly overdoses and falling asleep in the bath
Ridiculous wine descriptions and tattooed knuckles
Antiseptic and anticipation
Disappearing acts and swapping house keys
Superglue and frozen teeth
A stolen bottle of mustard and an Irish funeral
Forgetting and failing and faking and Fuck Forever-ing
Rusty kisses and missing the last bus
Betting slips and 56 missed calls
Vanilla vodka and the First Casualty of The War
Coffin shopping and cryptic crosswords
LSD and the ghost of Keats on Hampstead Heath
Tampon strings and sewing machines
Vaping and scaffolding
Tinned peaches and bascule bridges
Hugo Boss shirts and serial killers
A shelf-less bookshelf and ignoring aeroplane safety demos
Swimming to Mexico and believing in angels
3-day stubble, you’re bang in trouble, double up for £1
Pinching each other because we aren’t entirely convinced that we’re alive
Marriage proposals and morphine dreams
Rhetorical questions and infinite eggshells
Spying on the neighbours and eating jam doughnuts with a knife and fork
Lordship Lane and waking up with two black eyes
The United States of Shock and Dismay
Blonde on Blonde and accidental asphyxiation
A pint of daffodils and the view from the bell tower
Blood tests and a ouija board
Perjury and the 4-hour Happy Hour
Grey hairs and burnt toast and wondering what the hell it’s all about
Originally published 24th February 2017
The Wolf
Photo by Brenda Timmermans on Pexels.com
Again the telephone rings
Shrill and haunting
I would rip you from the wall
Hurl you where I could not retrieve
And break every electronic component
If it meant
I could not be found
Always I have desired to be found
Saved from emptiness
Saved from myself
And the loneliness that shouldn’t be inside
But remains despite this
And to spite me
And now when I am hunted
I turn inside like a wolf eating innards
The glove
Dropped in the pond on a cold day
The hand
Left to freeze without it
I want nothing of you
I want nothing of all of you
Except to be allowed to vanish
Except to be allowed to return
Another time
Not this time
Not now
But when I can finally see
That my loneliness is cured
That I am captured
That I am free.
Conversation with a bigot
She’s got red-tights on and she’s got her nose in a book. It’s pretty a-typical.
The Bigot watches her drink her hot chocolate (with Almond milk, hold the whip cream, nix the vanilla) until she picked up her copy of SMITTEN this is what love looks like / poetry by women for women.
The Bigot made clucking sounds as he reads from the table over, the front cover of the poetry anthology written by 120 lesbian and bi poets and artists and eventually, unable to restrain himself, the bigot came over to her table (uninvited, as bigots usually are).
“Young Lady. Do you realize homosexuality is a crime against humanity?” He proffers in the same calm tone he might have asked; “Do you really like Hot Chocolate on a 80 degree day?”
She might be a little vain and a little shy. She might not like putting her face in the limelight but she’s met enough people like The Bigot to know how to respond. “Says who?” (She wanted to say a great deal of other possible replies, but holds her relatively well mannered tongue).
“Says GOD” said The Bigot.
“Have you spoken to Him lately?”
“I speak to Him every day.” (a self-satisfied grin)
“He makes that much time for you?” (raised eyebrows)
“He does.”
“Well that’s good then. I’m glad you have someone to talk to.”
“He would talk to you too you know. If you weren’t hurting him.”
“I’m hurting God?”
“All Queers hurt God. You go against the natural order of the world. God wants us to procreate and have families, God wants us to be happy. No homosexual is happy.”
“I think 120 poets might disagree with you here.” (points to book, which looks pretty happy next to a half-finished hot chocolate).
“They’re lost souls.”
“Lost from whom?”
“Lost from God. Shut out from God because of their behavior. Their choices.”
God doesn’t talk to them because they’re gay?”
“He wants us to love one another but obey the natural laws. Homosexuality is not a natural law.”
(thinks of stories of gay penguins or cheap shots like ‘oh but it feels so good’ and then decides it’s Just. Not. Worth. It.)
“Well you are entitled to your opinion (thinks; although I’d rather not hear it) Sir”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” (I guess he’s not getting the reaction he wanted, wonders what reaction he expected?)
“I am not sure you can speak FOR God Sir.”
“That’s right you can’t.” – Young man, green waistcoat, brown eyes, standing to the right of The Bigot.
“This is between myself and the young lady” The Bigot is not pleased at the interloper’s presence.
“Not as long as it’s about hate it isn’t”
“You one of those fag men then? Standing up for bestiality and abomination then?”
“What if I were?”
“Then you Sir, would be a sinner.”
“Says you.”
“Says God.” (he sounds awfully sure)
“I don’t hear Him saying that.”
“He wouldn’t make himself known to you, if you were sinning Son.”
“I’d have thought that’s EXACTLY when he’d make himself known. After all why would He talk to YOU if you have all the answers? Wouldn’t He talk to the Sinner most of all?”
“Do you KNOW your Bible Son?”
“I know THE Bible Sir. I know the Koran too. And the Talmud. I try to stay up-to-date with things of importance. To avoid being a bigot.”
“You calling me a bigot son?”
“I’m saying the chances are it’s not God talking to you Sir, it’s your own fear and hate. I’m saying that if God exists He wouldn’t hate someone for being born unable to love someone of the opposite gender.”
“You’re just making excuses for criminal acts son. God would be disgusted at the lot of you.”
“Including the 120 poets in SMITTEN Sir?” I interrupt (pointing to the book, now next to a 3/4 empty cup of Hot Chocolate, I managed to get a few sips in).
“All of darnation if you intend on spreading that FILTH.”
I think of the words. FILTH. CRIME. HATE. CONDEMNATION. DISGUST. I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother who had unexpectedly converted to Mormonism a few years prior to her death.
“Grandma, I think I like girls.”
“Sure you do sweetheart.”
“No. I mean I really like girls.”
“We all like girls sweetheart.” (we DO?)
“I like girls in the way you like boys.”
A HIDEOUS SILENCE
A BOOK PLACED NEXT TO MY BED THAT EVENING, ENTITLED: Why Homosexuality is a Sin.
NOTHING ELSE EVER SAID.
I think of all the kids who had these and worse experiences. Of the kids who were kicked out of home. Of the kids like me who grew up to lose jobs, lose friends, struggle to fit in. I think of the hate that became okay to spout without any basis and without any defense. I think of the Supreme Court hearing the case right now about Discrimination in the Workplace and whether it should be legal for a person to be fired based upon their ‘sexual preference’. I think how it’s nearly 2020 and we’re STILL asking questions like that. I think of how I made the point to a friend of mine about how if it is wrong to stop people of different races from marrying, the same argument can be made against firing someone because of something they are born with. I remember my friend saying it’s not the same thing. it doesn’t say in the Bible that people of color marrying people of another race is wrong, but it does say homosexuality is wrong. I think of how that’s not exactly true and without being pedantic none of us really know the background of Sodom & Gomorrah but it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than ancient homophobia. I think of how women who menstruate aren’t forced to do so outside of city walls and how everyone eats shell fish but somehow that’s okay. How we pick and choose our hate. How we still as gays, have a long way to go and being only 2/3 percent of the world this will likely always be the case.
The Bigot has moved off. He was talking to the brown eyed man but I had tuned them out. Thinking instead of how maybe 20 years ago I wouldn’t have read a gay book in public I would have been too afraid. How there were still reasons to be afraid but I’d be dammed if I stopped now. Now I’d create the damn books myself if I had to!
The brown eyed man comes back to my table. He smiles a warm smile and says; “I’m sorry about that. I’m really sorry about that. I couldn’t keep quiet when I heard what he was saying to you.”
I smile and thank him quietly. What I really want to say is; Thank you for standing up for me. For all of us. Because so often people don’t. They don’t think it’s necessary. They don’t think it matters. They don’t think it affects us. Or that we feel any less safe than anyone else. Just like a black man walking down the road with a hoodie on. A gay may fear being raped or beaten for kissing someone they love in public. It still happens. IT STILL HAPPENS.
“I used to be a homophobe.” The brown eyed man explains. “I’m sorry but I did.” He sighs. “Until my daughter came out. And then I had to re-think everything. At first I was angry, disappointed, confused. Now I understand much better. I try to speak out for her. I want to be part of the change.”
I give him my copy of SMITTEN and I say; “This is a present for your daughter.”
“That’s terrific! But this is your only copy? You haven’t finished it yet?”
“I’m the editor of this book. I was re-reading it because it brings me so much joy. I’d be honored for your daughter to have a copy.”
I leave. It’s time to get back to work. The trees are beginning to look bare and the wind is picking up. My cup is still 3/4 empty and now it’s cold. But I feel really, really warm inside.
She, in September
In all of her dreams
you are in trouble.
•
There is something about being in hospitals that makes her feel disgusting. The dirty handprints on the wall. The bloody cannula on the floor. The sticky plastic mattress. The smell of piss. The torn up tissues. The stranger’s identification wristband. The words WHY and HELP scratched onto the unopenable opaque window. The cameras in the corners with their blinking red lights. The stupid electronic calendar above the heavy locked door that said THURSDAY EVENING 18:12 PM 26TH SEPTEMBER 2019 26/09/19. She watched it change from morning to evening, and believed it was 2020. Also, the soap dispenser in the toilet was broken, but she couldn’t pee anyway because they were there at the window, watching her.
•
Who the fuck wants to live forever???
•
“I’m seizing up over here, I need my meds.”
“Okay I’ll call the doctor now, he’ll be with you in a moment.”
The doctor never came, the medication went untaken,
the seizures seized in her until she seized no more.
She woke up on the dirty floor.
•
She was fighting the men for 7 hours.
Apparently, it only lasted 40 minutes.
•
“What a strangely designed chair…”
“Yeah, it’s called a Rhino chair,”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s filled with sand so it’s extremely heavy,” says Claire or Cat or Clara or Cathy as she struggles to drag the chair into the cell, “it’s supposed to make the chairs harder to throw.”
“Oh,”
“People still manage to throw these chairs around though. You’d be surprised,”
“No, I really wouldn’t.”
•
Her town: all snakes, no ladders.
•
He brought her paper and a pen, knowing she’d want to write.
It was the single nicest thing he had ever done for her.
These items were not allowed anywhere near her.
He tried. She cried.
•
“So it says here you took 16 tablets, is that right?”
“Sixty.”
“Sixteen…”
“No, sixty.”
“Sixty?”
“Yes, sixty.”
“Sixteen?”
“SIXTY.”
“Look, if you’re not going to cooperate with us…”
•
Lightning on the left strikes the garden shed thunder above her head rattles in her bones purple toenails in puddles perfect rage enveloped she is cold and afraid and this doesn’t feel like home this doesn’t feel right this doesn’t feel safe but where else can she go?
•
Please just tell her that she’s gonna be alright.
•
She has never been so relieved to stand at the bottom of Highgate Hill, a sobbing Sisyphus with holes in her socks and shakes in her veins. She feels fizzy. When she was 18 she burnt her fingertips off. Her body is fizzing under its skin. On her 21st birthday she set her hair on fire. She spilled everything and she’s still not empty. She wore black to your wedding and will wear red to your funeral. Psht <<< that’s the sound of a can opening. North London has never looked so ______________. She thinks of you often and she hopes you are okay because you are not okay in her dreams. She feels fizzy and she is outside. She is outside and she is free.
•
She opens her notebook. The last entry says, “I lied. Apparently.” Then it’s just empty pages, a crushed Mayfair cigarette and a police memo with a phone number on it.
•
She is out. She writes:
I no longer have any faith in anyone, in the human race.
I need to leave, to escape, to find goodness again,
somewhere, in someone, anywhere but here.
•
She keeps doing things that are “out of character.”
She is too many characters.
She is full of villains and disasters.
She’s forgotten how to play the role of her self.
She’s lost the script.
She can’t be bothered to look for it.
(She is not even sure that such a script exists, because apparently, she lied).
•
They were there. They were real. She saw them with her own eyes.
•
She lied, apparently.
•
She didn’t lie. She saw them she saw them she saw them with her eyes.
•
She’s finally doing it, finally doing something for herself. She’s going to Mexico. Somebody said that she is “running away” to Mexico. She knows that her problems will wait for her in London, but she hopes the trip will make her soul feel better, stronger, less broken. She doesn’t recognise her self these days—she didn’t recognise any of them.
•
Death is a disappearing act. She thinks she will come back but she also thinks that nothing is ever certain until it is. And even when you are so fucking certain about something, like you’ve never been more certain about something in all your life, somebody will call you a liar and tell you that you’re mad.
Strippers
1 / This whole “life” thing would’ve been a lot easier, for me and everyone else, if only my parents had kept a bottle of turpentine under the kitchen sink instead of premium Polish vodka. At least that’s what I tell myself I was looking for all those years ago.
1.5 / Rooting around in the cupboards, my hands covered in oil paint, a brush between my teeth, searching for paint stripper I discovered vodka instead. Art was long and difficult, and my desire to achieve perfection led to much frustration (ripping canvases to shreds, setting drawings on fire, etc). Alcohol was fun and easy and made me feel better: a revelation! Very quickly, drinking replaced painting. The painting went unfinished and the easel was dismantled (and then eventually exchanged for a £10 bag of weed).
2 / Vodka is a stripper in it’s own right. Here are some things that vodka strips me of: inhibitions / morals (some, or all) / worries / layers of my liver / senses (one, or all) / this fucking albatross (very temporarily) / memories / appetite / clothes (some, or all) / shoes (one, or both) / insecurity / fear.
3 / Drinking is affecting my work. Negatively. I feel that I’ve lost too many brain cells lately. I don’t know. But luckily for me, writer’s are “supposed to” have a drink problem so “it’s fine.” With every truth I write, every line I assemble, every poem I publish, I feel a little more naked. It’s like every story is a piece of clothing that I’ve been wearing for years and I’m boiling to death under all this fabric so I tell I story, I shed a layer, I get closer to the pure core of myself, to what’s underneath, to what’s inside. It’s frightening but liberating.
4 / Instead of stripping down, people today seem to be adding more and more layers to themselves, living further and further outside of themselves, silencing their naked truths, suffocating their reality with the strength of other people’s expectations. Perhaps the world would be a better place if we shed all the shit, stripped everything down, went back to basics, straight to the core.
5 / Your truth is all you have. Let it breathe.
Holding Water
What I wouldn’t say out loud;
At a dinner party, when the conversation turns to
matters of personal identity and the such.
That I live in a country where
self-confidence is in the very water alongside Chlorine
And possibly many pissed out Pharmacuticals
I don’t know how they import it or how they bottled it
in the first place
but everyone takes a long swig
and grows up self-important and rarely doubting
their worth
A la the internalized cheerleader
I must therefore hail
from an island of thorns
because I didn’t get inoculated against
the sumptuous barbs
my skin punctures at the slightest retort
I bled easily even after I cauterized the wound.
Necessarily, this has caused some
discomfort
people don’t get how
someone can hate themselves
be a painted sin eater
for all insult
until that gobstopper of internalized anguish
turns on them and it feels like
it’s always been about hating the self
Such a natural elegant process of self harm
looking back in the mirror
wishing she could erase
the very DNA, the very face of her.
Now I have a second sight
for bullshit and fakes
and often I’m told; Give me a chance you never know!
But O I do
and I stay away from the saturating crowd
as they live their camera-ready lives
to the fizz and hiss of the insta-bulb
wondering if I will ever
feel differently or if this
deep phlegmy cough
will inhabit my very soul and become
a new lingua of self loathing.
Sometimes I see girls who
could have been me, but grew up
in a different world where
presumably they were inoculated against
self-hate at an early age and given a healthy dose
of worth and manifest ego
they seem like an identical twin who
was raised on grass instead of hay
in the sun instead of snow
and even though they still possess
the abhorant figure of myself
with her squinting mash of ancestral sabotage
I find I like aspects of them
as they flourish weed-like
unawares
there is a shadow
watching them
wondering
if I had grown up just like them
and taken my Happy Pills along with my self deception
what would I have gained?
What would I have lost?
I might resemble them but
I suspect, I would be nothing like them
except in the cracked glass of us
broken and repaired many times
until they can stand no more
to hold
water
Night becomes us
I push people away
as they pushed away from me when I first learned
that’s what people do
so run ahead and do it first
you might tell them your real age, or show them the scars in your skin, that usually does it
with online trolls who really only want a
mirror little narcissist
you might show them your face and all the welts that
lay invisible and divisible like trails of tears
finding only drought
you might reveal your defeats and play join the dots
with stories for each one and then you may
know me just a little
except I don’t want to be known and even as I write
I remain anonymous to myself
the perpetuation of a dream instead
where we dance sweaty and disordered with our hair
collapsed like flamenco skirts in rivers of ruffles
two people with thick manes and thin skin
I taste blood on your lower lip and the depth of it
makes a vampire of me
your pulsing neck is salty from your keening
we interlace our hands like church mice and bad girls and best friends and artful dodgers
I feel your fingers pulsing within me as together we cleave
so much comes from a body who wants and so little from one who does not
when I see you, I want to close my eyes and hold onto the image
how you stand, the light caressing your flawless skin as
oil might run her rivets down your elongation
If choice were a bird, I’d choose you again
And once more, with the release of my lips from yours
A song passed between mouths like a key
Open my heart, keep yourself there
If choice were a thought, I’d choose you again
And once more, with the capture of your ebony and ivory
You, who is seamstress to my soul, play your flute
I hear it behind my eyes in the vault of my trust
If you were a dream I should better wish to wake
Our drowsy love may keep us drugged by its tempest
Sleeping in the passion of your touch
As sun sets and night becomes us
Untitled #39
I forget
What I lived for back then
Maybe just hope
That indefinable future stretching unknown
It always baffled me how the young
Could give up and try to die
When there was always hope
And some sympathy for their tender years
I want to say to them
Wait until you get here
Then the going gets quiet
People don’t check on you
There is no sympathy for your failing
We’re supposed to be stronger
What doesn’t kill us, right?
Not true
Everything that’s destroyed me did not
Make me more resilient
That’s a lie we tell ourselves and our friends
Or maybe for some it’s a truth
Not for me
I feel with every battering less and less
Less willing to stand and fight
For why?
The illusion things will change?
The care that rarely solidifies
I am so good at lifting others up
So poor at building my house
Because I gave my faith to them
And made nothing for myself
Instead I hear, the voices of the past
Telling me why I’m worthless
And it isn’t just the past
It’s recent and the scar
Never heals
I am
Broken
I survived only to
Fall
I am hurt beyond description
I ache and feel pain every hour
Nothing I do seems to change
The sorrow of every day
It’s too easy to dismiss it away as
Clinical depression
It is not
I simply wish I could safely die
I wouldn’t even feel guilty anymore
I’m too tired to care
Maybe when you’re not cared about that’s what happens
I find it hard to understand why more don’t share my sentiment
I don’t enjoy life
I have no purpose
I have been left by those I loved
I stand alone
Not blaming anyone
Just seeing through
The bullshit
I wish right now
Life were a dream and death reality
An external sleep
No trespass no hope
It has long been gone
And I have tried for ages to hide my belief
There is no point
For whom?
There is a crack in my heart that runs so deep
Maybe it was all a mistake
I wish I could rewind until
I ceased and never had been
It is hard to want to undo yourself
As you continue to flourish
I am tired of trying
I feel that’s all I’ve ever done
It’s a bit of a delusion
Trying and being in pain
Why try? For whom?
If there is no one
I hear the bus
Letting off children
I remember
Being a child
I wasn’t happy then
It’s not who I am
My mother was right though she was wrong
Maybe I’m a lesson from which others learn
There isn’t as much meaning in everything
As we are told
Sometimes we just exist without meaning
And it’s ugly and long
Too long
I wish I didn’t know
How most books
End
hijacked amygdala 