precious to me

because

your fingertips send

signals southward

singing of silken,

sandpaper urgency

and

underneath your cynic's

tongue, there lies

compassion - cinnamon-warm,

sweet, and steadfast

you are a vibrant, lingering, joyous

yearning

and

you are treasured

unseen academics

lanyards and lapel pins

blazers and badges

but zero contracts

contacts in the cold

old way of working

out of sync

out of office

out of touch

base when the 

freshers 

reach capacity

crowded hopes

and until then

just

hold

on

evidence

every appointment requires another piece of paper

another piece of paper signed by a specialist

a specialist looking for solutions to my wrongness

my wrongness measured by how it annoys normal people

it annoys normal people that i seem to be coping well

i seem to be coping well and fuelling my own survival

fuelling my own survival and thriving at this point

thriving at this point and it may come as a surprise

it may come as a surprise that difference doesn’t always equal failure

difference doesn’t always equal failure if you are accustomed to cracking codes

if you are accustomed to cracking codes you are capable of extraordinary successes

you are capable of extraordinary successes and even the occasional happiness

and even the occasional happiness if you stop to notice a certain guy

if you stop to notice a certain guy and take a chance on magnetism

take a chance on magnetism because you have it in spades

you have it in spades and he has spotted your brilliance

he has spotted your brilliance because he is a specialist

a specialist looking not for solutions

but for companionship

with the current

resisting equals restlessness and suicidal tendencies so it’s wiser to go with the current even though it means sleeplessness and submission to the keyboard or the notebook and pen and a bleeding callous on the first knuckle of the middle finger of the right hand while the left hand is coasting clean of ink medication wears off around nineteen hundred hours and away we go again sliding into steep swells and sinking into stories subsumed by daytime routines and coffee machines and the effort to maintain the masking and oh, will you look at the time, time to go home get out of these layers of lies and lie down, down, down to the wire and the moment the synapses sense freedom they snap open the straight jacket and jump out onto the page or better yet the stage and they scream blue and green until they get taken hostage by a rip, rip, rip cord of sleep

find the seam

everybody talks about the bad bits and never the good stuff, like how we can compute all available sources of information and make a lightning-fast choice for the next, best, course of action and that this makes us invaluable in an emergency, and like how we can find the seam of gold in an otherwise endless wall of greyness in the middle of a project and come up with a brand new solution that evaporates the weight from everyone’s shoulders and that this makes us irreplaceable in the creative industries, and like how we might seem to be doing nothing but we are just quietly brewing brilliance and next minute we’re writing at the speed of sound and doing the work of twenty sub-editors in the space of one afternoon and that this makes us indispensable when a deadline is approaching and like how we are more than squirrel spotters, we are ebullient and sensitive and smart, and yet everybody talks about the bad bits

queer...as in gay?

as in different from that slippery notion of normality

as in out of bounds sensuality

as in hyper-aware

as in oscillating between too-muchness and not-enoughness

as in haircuts hurt but bondage doesn’t

as in can’t remember their name but can remember that little freckle they had on their toe

as in started writing and didn’t stop for nine hours

as in this room is too bright

as in the buzz of sleeping devices is too loud

as in some nights it’s one drink and vomit and other nights it’s twenty and no impact

as in a death-wish has always squatted upon my chest

as in brains are sexier than hips

as in a tickle hurts but a punch doesn’t

as in comprehension is possible only within poetics

as in music and mathematics look the same and are equally nourishing

as in phone calls are frightening but public speaking comes easily

as in structure is a double-edged sanity

as in hyper-aware

as in out of bounds sensuality

as in different from that slippery notion of normality

diagnostics

we interrupt our regular programming to invite you consider the possibility that your struggles cannot be explained away by the current diagnoses and that you may have something altogether different and more complex running around inside that queer head of yours something altogether different and more complex than garden-variety anxiety and depression see the issue may not be serotonin after all but rather dopamine and given your answers to this test this test this test yes another test lead us to believe that indeed you are even further away from what we call normal than we had initially thought now try this new concoction of medication there’s a good girl come on back in a fortnight and let us know whether you felt more subdued in which case we are correct or whether you felt like your heart was beating so fast it would break out of your chest at any second in which case we are incorrect and you will have experienced two weeks’ worth of speed-living and we apologise in advance but this is the only way we can know for sure and it’s for your own good that we interrupt our regular programming to invite you to consider the possibility that your struggles cannot be explained away by the current diagnoses

a fit and proper person

will the leaders of the world please stand up and apologise will the member for bowman please stand up and apologise for the sexual harassment for the claim that an ADHD diagnosis can explain away his callousness and his harmful behaviours and will the prime minister of this embarrassment of a country please stand up and apologise for the cheap band aid solution of empathy training and the underhanded creeping of church into state and the abandonment while we burned and the insistence that women meet him on his terms instead of theirs for hiding behind his gilded door while outside we leaked our pain upon the manicured lawns and will the not-all-men campaigners please stand up and apologise for the ignorance and the silencing and the overshadowing and distracting and the locker-room banter and the stealthing and the breaching of boundaries and the defending of their best-mate-the-rapist and will the religious leaders please stand up and apologise for the cover-ups and the children hurt and the women trapped and the billions lining their pockets while the world starves will the leaders of the world please stand up and apologise

Woman/Interrupted

This body writes away worries, expelling them like garbage, but they keep on coming back. Self-regenerating parasites feeding off the flesh, figuring out how to trick the system and survive. A lifelong war waged on wellbeing, surrender is never an option, even though oblivion is devilishly attractive, seductive, come-to-me-and-see-the-light-and-suffer-no-more. Little girl blue. Little girl used. Little girl bruised by too-big-fingers finding too-small-spaces. You’d never know just from looking. You’d never guess she’s tainted. You’d never ask, either.

modification/identification

they’ve tried to annihilate me and they might be back at any time, so I need a way to be found when they hide the pieces of me. dna testing is too slow, so, instead, i will ensure that my skin-suit is saturated with tattoos, so that even if they tear me apart, my name will be screaming at forensic investigators long before they get my broken parts back to a laboratory. i am only one limb away from a full set of inked-in puzzle pieces now. i am future proofed and pretty in my scars and scratches.

radical sensing

academic conference is plodding along, with all of the usual proceedings, housekeeping, pronouns, acknowledgement of country, rules for microphones and video screens, and delays in transmission, yada yada yada, when. all of a sudden. a slide show begins. creative writers are being encouraged to engage in a new way of practicing our craft. it’s being sold as an opportunity to feel nourished while writing. but. here’s the thing. the practice they’re describing is an imitation of how my brain operates. they’re calling it radical sensing. they tell us to tune into our senses. list all of the things you hear, smell, feel, taste. then use those things as a prompt. applause for the new way of thinking leaves me incredulous. what. the. actual. fuck. because this is not new to me. i am always already radically sensing all. of. the. things. all of the time, all of the time, all of the time. never stops. and it is far from nourishing. it is a hamster wheel and it won’t let me stop. now these neurotypicals are pumped. eager to experiment with my reality. trying it on for size like a daring new lipstick shade. a costume. while i imagine what it must be like to be able to get off the hamster wheel and become familiar with silence…absence of sensing. that would be radical for me. that would be new. that would be nourishing. and they never even asked us neurodivergent folks what being radical is like. they just borrowed our ways of being and presented them as research. significant and novel. as if we are nowhere to be found in the existing discourse…maybe we’re not…yet. but we’ve been here the whole time. all they had to do was ask. instead we are tokens. anomalies whose inherent radicalism is punched down into ever-smaller boxes…until, until, until…they need compelling, shiny, untouched ideas. then all of a sudden. we are counted. but without our involvement. without our permission. without our opinions. unless they want to satisfy the diversity quota…then, then, then…they pimp us out as a unique selling point and count their profits while we suffocate under the searing stage lights and sweat inside the grease-paint and the too-tight, scratchy academic uniform blazers. neurowashing us clean until there’s nothing. radical. left.

Whispering Wall

We don’t leave because we’d rather be alive than dead, and we know if we run, you’ll come after us. You’ll come after us and kill our babies, too. Violence ought not to be so mundane as to be labelled domestic. Domesticity ought not to breed needless deaths. We have the vote now, we have our own bank accounts, and the right to a divorce, but we still walk home the long way, where there’s more light, keys ever-ready between white-knuckled fingers, no headphones in so we can hear you coming, texting our girlfriends as soon as we get inside and lock the doors…home safe…home safe…home safe…then we double-triple-check all the locks, the doors, the windows, the garage, the garden gate, set the morning alarm and keep an ear out for intruders. Is this agency? Watching what we wear, what we say, how we walk, how we talk, too loud…too quiet…laughing too much or just enough…pandering to prevent being noticed for all the wrong reasons…if our head as much as peeks above the parapet it will be wrenched away as a warning to others…always on trial, everywhere we are. Work, home, public, private, outside, inside…no reprieve from the potential for violence. Watching each other’s backs. Waiting for the call. Waiting for the next one of us to be hurt. Never knowing whether to stay or to run. Escaping just invites a new kind of hell. Surveillance. Stalking. Somehow they always find us, so we don’t leave. We don’t leave because you kill us when we do. You kill us. And you kill our babies, too.

Forensic Medical

Forced to wait eight hours because my blood alcohol level was too high

Eight hours without a shower

Eight hours without being touched

Lest we disturb any evidence

Then the backless gown

And the cold table

And the cop with a smirk

Gathering pieces of me in plastic bags

Each abrasion

Each bruise

Each angle

Photographed and logged for

A profile of what they call bad luck

And the questions

Again with the questions

What were you wearing?

What were you thinking?

Did you consider how much you were drinking?

While the doctor swabbed and sighed, I retorted

Why does that matter?

Who do they think they are?

How come they shaved my pubic hair?

Three hours of examination of my flesh

And for what?

A collection of samples, shelved

Along with my case

Nothing more than a holding pen for dust and absent justice

Victim Blaming

Meant to be dead but I woke up instead

Raped, transformed, livid

Rage drove me to the nearest police station

No shoes, no phone, no wallet

Just the change I scrounged together at the scene of the crime

And all they could say to me was that

I must have thought it was a good idea at the time

Should I Report or Nah?

Look, it’s up to you babe

Hopefully the police have changed their tune in the last decade, because when I reported, they made

Me out to be the villain

Saying that I had just had a bad night on the piss

Now I don’t know about you, but for me, a bad night on the piss

Doesn’t include a trip to a backwater cop shop

It’s more like waking up and finding the scent of vomit and hash in your hair

Or a headache

A bad night on the piss doesn’t ordinarily mean a rash all over my arms

A busted spine

Or bruises

Or crapping like a crackhead on a comedown

And checking my veins for needle marks, but

Look, it’s up to you babe

Hopefully the police have changed their tune in the last decade, because when I reported, they made

Me out to be the villain

Saying that I must have just had a bad night on the piss

verbosity kindles

brain-based scintillation delivers sweet sensation 

strumming in my lumbar spine: this man's got a mind 

sees through the outer bitch, awakens the inner fever pitch 

'til i forget about libation

...

this is punk rock dissertation

my kind of dirty (haiku x3)

filthy compassion

articulated in tune

with the fork in my 

 

tongue, taking turns to

shuffle, we share weekday blues

and choose magnetic

 

proximity, his 

fingers un-bundle curls of

smouldering humour

burgundy five hundred

kissing you

is salty-sweet

anticipatory not-yet-ness

it's a fingernail breaching

the nexus between plastic and

heavy, glossy vinyl

it's the freeze-frame electric

stillness before the stacks buzz

with sonic ecstasy

it's the breath in the ribcage

neither inhalation nor

exhalation, but both

kissing you

is popping candy

chased with an old fashioned