Message To My Teenage Self - exclusive video poem
and One Lockdown Afternoon, a poem on making the video-poem
We are here to avoid the march
Rinse our eyes
Stained from the Scroll
Herded Thameside south, the city compass speeds in the midsummer sun
One lockdown afternoon
Far from low-res, jackpot-ego, high rent livestream hagiographies, stonemason chinking, chipping, carving digital epitaphs,
Battered avocados in a boxing match with a Nutribullet
I throw peachstones into the Tate and Lyle tide
When pushed
Forced from golden sandbank to the gloop of the riverbed,
From the landslide of fresh pheromone 2m 2pm hook-up chat
That’s fine - there’s enough space
Beneath Modern Wharf
We are Easy Riders in a Hyperloop running on UBI
The juice drips
On the print-out of my nouvelle manuscript
Canary Wharf glimmers as unworld class as the health minister’s iridescent street-art
Of money
The kettling of peaceful protesters
Flutters my pages to the shore of hand-sanitiser
Crying vulpes
Suck in the virus
Drowning in Their horsepower,
Bloodied carcrash fur
Roadkill pesto
squished seeds under the Epstein Woodworm Windrush Me Too mortar.
Littering My solar system.
I shout through my mask
And pull it off to film
Message To My Teenage Self.
The poem commissioned for the wonderful contemporary collection
Smear, edited by Greta Bellamacina* - a beautiful soul, actress, writer, director who also manages to have two children
First collated via New River Press, now published by Andrews McMeel, this new edition also features my Response to Gil De Ray's Perfume.
(I wish it had been available when I was growing up)
Poems for Girls
Aside other women armed with words
Striking against the hegemony’s hammer
Punching through my beloved walls, leaving me tumbling under the truth of the strip of sky
I have bought.
Never stood still for so long
Tomatoes and spinach and good garlic are essentials
The sage smokes
Swivelling under the axis
Of Orion’s shopping cart
Undiluted by Outside, until I pick up Their tools.
Waves furl IRL
Earth breathed for the first time in many springs
The Quiet
The fantasy of leaving Their freedom
My phone a portal
Memory full, overloaded
The peace I wanted is here
Sprayed rainbows in every window,
Black Lives Matter signs now in every hundredth
It is not enough.
Steroids. The best They, the scavengers of “low-hanging fruit”, can do.
In Their chaos matrix
Illiterate, illogical, unethical as planes costing less than trains
If you would like to read Smear, please support your local independent bookshop.
In the UK - there’s a postcode checker here, many are doing deliveries still. It also helps small presses to buy direct from them.
FYI: I am posting all contents of Cold Lips 05 for free on www.coldlips.co.uk currently.
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