next

decisions decisions 

disrupting commodification is a cliff edge

always half a step behind

out of time

and in the wrong uniform

reborn with every betrayal

bouncing back

never pausing for breath

 

#80

a lean year for the poets

saving it up for the pouring out

later

when we have the room

when we reclaim clarity

later

for now we are watching

waiting for the emergence

 

pandemic (haiku)

shrouded for safety

mouths hidden and eyes on show

connecting again

new day/dreams

you don't have to pick up the pieces

you can sweep it all into the gutter

and walk away

en-dee

square peg black sheep oddball eccentric

resisting the fixing

the twisting

the turning into another

palatable smooth same same never different

rejecting the seduction

of acceptableness

 

witchhunt

what did we ever do to you?

you were too heavy to cling to our coattails

too loud to hide beneath our skirts

too scared for solitude

cut loose and treading water

what did you expect from us?

you sullied us with scarlet letters

wasted our witchery like wine

slipped a joker into the deck

darkened every dawn

demanding that we sink

 

out of step

held to the bitumen

by the flimsy gravity

of false sanity and still

avoiding cracks in the pavement

train tracks keening with her memory

too cold and too hot and forever sticky

with effluvia

she calls she calls she calls

earwig intonations burrowing patiently 

towards the sick heart at my core

inclinations

yes i did

call the cops on him

yes i did

get them to drive me from his place to the station

yes i did

follow through on my plan of action

yes i did

step away from the discourse and exhale

no i won't 

listen to your lies now 

no i won't

stick around and play pretend

no i won't 

carry your narrative around my neck

no i won't 

be reduced to hysteria

by you and your team of trouble

 

hear the rains

lights off

shirts on

playing twenty questions

like only thirty somethings can

casting off 

catching on

to the hints dropped 

between beers and darts

he won two out of three

and left me smiling

lights on

shirts off

queer kin

my people are salt and fire
they feed me joy 
and ask for nothing in return
my people are raspberry mornings
the breathe truth
and keep my head above water
my people are red dirt and black feathers

mister aquarius (haiku)

cut my lip on silk
promises he never kept
bled out on roses

cold bones

remember rage raked through ribcages

wrecked by wanting

wounded by your wanton ways

waste me 

taste me

only to spit me out 

and grind me back

into gutters

stuttering

shuddering and shaking off the

callow curse of your caress

this flesh

is 

fallow

first time (splenda-daddy)

morning after and the makeup is off and the heart is back on
my sleeve
i wanted to kiss you but i'm cautious and careful
around priceless souls
with liquorice eyes and perfect fingers
i wanted to kiss you
raise my chin and float up onto tiptoe
to reach you way up there
i wanted to kiss you
and adore the breadth of your limbs when stretched across
hotel linen
cook you breakfast with black coffee
lend you books and make you laugh
hold hands and listen to all of your favourite songs and
most of all i wanted to abandon this nervousness and shut up
so that you could answer these questions:
when's your birthday?
what's your favourite fruit?
do you like sananda maitreya?
would you like to go to the movies with me?
how can you call yourself saccharine when your sweetness is not artificial at all?

word association

if you love somebody let them go
let them go and love another
love another and forget you
forget you and your touch
your touch is a plague
a plague upon both your houses

quiet now

as if the pogroms
the camps
the ships
are forgotten
we carry on killing
casting blame back onto
the oppressed
never the oppressor
never the system built
on the bodies
of the loving and the wise
it's our turn to be silent
our turn to 
listen 

the right one

just haven't found the right one
as if all the ways I am wrong
are on the flip-side 
of a binary
love-coin
worthless

advice

just be yourself
they said
but if being myself means
being let down
then maybe masks
aren't so bad after all
maybe the gates can stay closed
and armed against
intruders

all odds

never been one to bet on evens
better the devil you know
risk it all for odds
and endings
leave them re(a)d and weeping

#985 (tanka)

rainfall mutes the ache

for just a moment longer

than false promises

made under the influence

of unintentional joy

doubt (haiku)

you have two options
find a new way to hurt me
or let go of me

get out

leave
before i break apart
and shatter your sunshine

siarad

worrying at this love like a chipped tooth
filing down the rough edges with honey-kisses
learning patience from your quiet touch

fridays don't matter anymore

compassion is easy 
but patience is well-worn and scuffed
around the edges

tides

oceanic grief
tidal patterns of processing
unpredictable wave intensity
floats me or forces me face first into sandbars

worth/less

liniment
toothpaste
and witchhazel
these are the morning scents
these are the unholy trinity signalling effort
every day another attempt at remembering how to breathe

but, you could be better

like this, he said
clutching my hand
using my words to coat his own tongue
pontificating from one corner of the flea-bound mattress
leaving me weeping, nicotine-stained and mute, on the other 

skin too tight

the things they have said
stick under the skin
like splinters

equations

a vaguely worded text here
a mis-sent picture there
and a general dialling down
of tenderness
all these factors
can be multiplied
or diminished
depending on mood
she comes to a conclusion
that doesn't add up

May 2020

In the champagne light of early afternoon

Surrounded by the eastern patterns of my dreaming

I trawl through personalities

Try them on for size

Shed skin after skin after skin

Hoping that if I can just relinquish enough layers

The most arresting breathtaking stunning sumptuous me will be revealed

Where is she/he/they?

IN there somewhere

Or OUT there somewhere

Maybe a new outfit

A different hair colour

More mascara

Fewer embellishments

Can I strip my shell down to a flimsy

Transparent frame

A dressmaker’s dummy

A bust

A forgotten mannequin torso making friends with a spare square of budget carpeting in the corner

Clothed in chipped paint and dust

My shoulders are uncontainable and genderless

They reject all efforts at tailoring

Fitting nowhere

I cut sleeves off

Roll hems

Pin seams

But still they resist

Stubbornness is inherent in the very make of me

The shape of me

The spread of my wings too big too big too big

I tuck them in

Fold them neck-wards

Diminish the un-suckled breasts in the same movement

A posture of shrinking

Down down down

Ever inwards

The better to think about what I’ve done

What have you done now?

Always wrong

Never inside the lines

Always leaking, bleeding, bursting, stretching

Messy messy messy

Dirty and filthy and out of bounds

Writing students make me cry

Neurodiversity mouth wants to shout as loud as they do

But instead I pour sugar into every word

So sweet it will hurt their teeth

Perhaps they will write from a fairy-flossed daze next time

And save me the trouble 

Face-painting

The sticky-cold-clammy sweep of black along the eyelid

Cuddling the top lashes

Just close enough

The sharp-smooth-paradox sketch of red against the lip

Marking territory

Here, here is where the power lives

And the damp-clinging-catching comb of sooty pigment on the lashes

Cementing intention

Yes, yes, yes we are playing along today

We are ready for the follow-spot and the applause and the sore arches

      

April 2020

It hurts

Living with a weight so substantial and relentless and shifting to different bits of the body every day

I’m in pieces trying to keep up

Scrambling

Always just catching up

Always a few too many steps behind

Never ever the winner

Or even second place

In any race

But not the loser

Because people remember a loser

And I’m just not

Memorable

I sit down on the mattress

The mattress is on the floor these days

And I just cry

Weep for a very very long time

And breathe

In through the nose

Out through the mouth

The same self-soothing for years upon years and I’m not sure it even works

But I do it anyway

The I read

So I don’t feel so utterly fucking shit about myself

So fucking shit at everything and useless

And I just want the pain to stop

Just for a fucking minute

And I try to sleep by my head won’t let me

Or my body gives me a new pain to worry at

And I just want it to stop

Just for a fucking minute

I could use the terminology

Maybe that will help

That word – ‘neurodiverse’ –

As if I were a failed experiment

Rather than a human being

As is I were a mutant

I guess I am a mutant

Mutation of the genes

The tangle of DNA that just can’t figure itself out

Can’t hide anymore

Now that the routines of childhood are gone

Not that they helped much anyway

I was always ‘bright, but difficult’

So very bright and so very difficult and so very confusing

Mutant-girl-tomboy-strange-strange-strange

The streets are off 
More dangerous than ever

Not because of violence

But because of a mutated virus

I want to subsume this virus

I want to out-weird it

Out-strange it with my superior unusual-ity

I want to reclaim my map to sanity

Those shining charcoal pavements

Those shimmering bitumen pathways

That never judge me

That never talk back

Or shout

Or scold

Or expect me to be anything other than

Mutant-girl-tomboy

Anything other than queer mutant fat flesh and brittle bones

Those streets are my safe space

Safety in risk

The neurodivergent normal

That nobody but the non-normative understands

I am inside now

Almost all the time

Breaking out once or twice a week

For specialists

For medication

For the sake of the screaming inside

(The Kick Inside)

This containment crushes nerves

Calls old hurts out of exile

To resume their haunting of the corpus

This containment

Breeds hybrid maladies

In my peripheral vision

(they come out to play at night)

Out of the corner of my eye

I can almost see them sneaking up on my joy

Brief joy

Brief joy

Brief joy

Not allowed a sustained happiness

Not worthy

Not worthy

Not worthy

It hurts to fight back against the dark voices

That tell me all of the ways I am wrong

It hurts

I let them pass through me instead

The price is bile

The price is tears

The price is the black sludge

Dried blood

Long held on the inside

Long waiting to make it outside

The bounds of organs, skeleton, and skin

Nobody can tell me where it lives on the inside

A medical mystery

But I know

I know where the sticking point is

(I’m with Lady Macbeth, better out than in when the spot is DAMNED)

Mutant bodies confound medicine

We don’t behave

We don’t conform

We present an alternative

(and alternatives are frightening)

We are accustomed to performing a constant adjustment of everything

Everything is unsuitable

Everything is survivable

We are maladaptive adaptors

Mutating mutants

Queering everything

All the time, all the time, all the time

I am almost all dry on the inside now

I wonder how much more black sludge remains

How will it escape next time?

Which orifice?

I wonder how long it will take to pass

I could be curled in upon myself for days

Or I could expel it in mere seconds

Quickly flushing

Speed cleaning

So nobody knows

And nobody has to confront the secret sullied

Dirty

Filthy

Mess

Of the mutant bodily administration duties

No wonder I’m uptight

If I let go

The streets would be flooded with tar

The streets would be steaming with rivers of black ink

Reeking of menstrual blood gone bad

Rancid

Dirty

Filthy

Mess

Of the mutant bodily administration duties