vs the haters

Political and media rhetoric bleed into society, creating at atmosphere where it's OK to openly hate, first on the basis of race and religion, but it spreads as the haters feel increasingly confident... This happened yesterday.

Transphobia

I hear shouts out in the street –
not the boisterous hollering
of schoolkids just released or hormoned teens,
but an altogether uglier “oi, come ‘ere”,
“leave me alone, go away”,
“wot the fuck did you say?”
So my ears prick, I look and see four against one –
the one, a middle-aged man,
a transvestite (yes, in broad daylight!),
skirt and leggings, not a dress –
it’s winter, what do you expect?
The four look like a walking stereotype –
trackies, trainers, crap tatts
and though I try hard not to judge beyond behaviour,
it’s not easy – they’re twenty-something,
way beyond the playground
and still hunting for someone to bully,
their victim’s difference used to excuse
the urge to deliver a kicking.
For a moment I thought about not getting involved,
it was the first time I’d witnessed transphobia first hand,
but I’d heard the stories, none with happy endings
and so I chose to intervene.
By now the four have chased the one
into a local shop where the owners,
a quiet, friendly couple, hide behind the counter,
shocked by the black-hot bile.
I push through to where he’s cornered
and stand doorman-style between parasites and prey,
tell the hate-quartet they’ll have to leave
and won’t be hitting anyone today.
They try to have a go, yell about what he called them,
like that’s the way round it happened,
rant about what he wears,
some rabid shite like ‘it shames real women’,
though through the shower of spit-thick vowels,
I cannot work out how,
nor what makes him dirty, pervy,
worthy of their spite.
I give them my best ‘whatever’ face,
reiterate I will not let them translate hate to hurt,
though I can’t retract their words, and we all know
the sticks-and-stones rhyme doesn’t really work.
The alpha-bigot thinks about bunching a fist
and taking a swing,
meets my gaze, thinks again –
they monkey-walk away,
leaving insults and finger-flips as litter in their wake,
and once across the road, they run.
The one tells the police ‘no need to come’,
nothing to report, to him it’s just an ordinary day.

Origins are not the only fruit

Here's the first-ish version of a poem that came out of Apples & Snakes/Adam Kammerling's fine Origins poetry workshop as part of Fareham Arts Festival. It'll probably get edited n times before I'm happy with it, or maybe not - who knows - and may even end up as part of the long 'Stingboy' piece I'm (still) writing - but it came from an exercise looking at listing places we've lived, things we've said, music that was formative and so on, with the aim of incorporating them into a poem. Hope you like it.

Untitled

I was born into a house of golliwogs,
spike-eyed toys,
soaps and sitcoms,
of throwaway laughs at 'Pakis', 'Micks' and 'nig-nogs',
of being dangled by one bony wrist,
a skinny meat piñata
hearing the repeated line
“if you won’t respect me,
at least you’ll fear me”,
a self-fulfilling prophecy,
all an inadequate man could offer me
bar processed pap
and welder’s-callus slaps,
driving home the message that
I wouldn’t like that foreign crap,
those raucous songs,
and anything beyond the grey-and-beige
is wrong, looks like trouble,
but doubled-up one school night,
snuck out to taste the flavour
of Iron Maiden,
so much sweeter than copper on the tongue,
a lonely lad’s first gig
well worth the late-back round of Dodgefist.

Fast-forwarding from ruddy rage,
riffling halfway through biro movies,
corner-paged,
I’m in Nai’posha, the Maasai’s cattle waterhole,
named for rough waters, ‘that which ebbs and flows’,
sun-drained then quenched
with rains and silty seasoning,
and it’s my inauguration by means
of shield and spear and knobkerrie,
story-telling,

quaffing nailang'a,

blood-and-milk straight from the gourd,

now I am a tribal brother,
clansman,
witness to the intimate cutting of others.

In the latest scene,
I say “I do”.

A fatal illness

I was recently interviewed for ASLI (Art Saves Lives International) which is an organisation aiming to tackle mental health issues and stigma through creative expression. The interview about depression and childhood physical abuse is published here and includes my poem 'Stingboy'.

The positivity of migration

UKIP and others who whine about migrants are tiresome - here's the first draft of a piece about my own, more positive, observations about Polish people ('Polacy') in Southampton

Polacy w Southampton

I

Big man, crew-cut blonde,
baby in a biceps cradle,
gentle gorilla-father;
a second child plants conkers
in a newly tilled municipal flower-bed.

II

Zesty girl on the school bus,
alpha of her Year 8 peers,
climbing rails like they are monkey-bars,
open-mouthed surprise when I ask
‘excuse me please’ –
proszę, przepraszam
in English-accent Polish.

III

One of so many languages
spoken here and mingling in mid-air –
by workmen crowded onto lunchtime public benches,
discussing football, cars, sandwich fillings,
by gaggles of much-preened teens
gossiping between texts,
by students, shop-assistants,
phone-box users sharing news,
by friends and poets,
by people of the city –
multicultural and working,
the opportunity for something new.

Of feathers beneath the moon

When I'm not a poet, I'm an ecologist, and can be found surveying and/or writing about wildlife - usually insects, but sometimes larger creatures. This poem is about working on the Arne Penninsula in Dorset.

Mapping nightjars

Daytime apes
out of time and place,
we walk the dark heather
beyond terse ‘No public access’ signs
on every gate and fifty feet of fence,
skirting regimented blocks of pines,
shuffling through sand and lichen
to listen for the chirr of males,
triangulating with ears and eyes and GPS.
Between calls, we pencil
rough boundaries by torchlight,
scrambling colonialists
interpreting territorial extent
from snapshots and soundbites
of reproductive intent.
A few make flapping silhouettes
against the last glimmer
or perch to survey us in turn
while silent females drop to the ground,
invisible, rising strident when we pass
too near a hidden nest,
wing-flashes circling low overhead
drawing us away from precious eggs.
Our allocated square kilometre complete,
we depart and night reclaims the space.

And so my first poetry book is born

As pregnancies go, I don't think this one was too bad. A few false alarms but eventually I got it down to the themes I really wanted to put together. So, rather than the political material I'm probably best known for performing, I've chosen some more personal (occasionally very) autobiographical pieces; little vignettes of life if you like, plus some humour and a bit of experimental word-play. The process of selection has been a valuable one in itself. It felt like making a 1980s mix-tape but on paper.

I've re-evaluated the quality of many of my poems and then rewritten a few, discarded a few others, and in some pleasing cases, decided 'actually I'm pretty happy with that' and left those well alone. Some were written as page poems, others are performance pieces edited for the page. I hope you feel the urge to buy a copy (it's only £5, from here) and that you give in to that urge freely. I also hope you think it was worthwhile when Subduction Zone arrives on your doormat - after all, this is my first poetry collection, but it won't be my last...

....it's, sob... so.... beautiful...

Inside edge

A short piece about something I occasionally do for a living.

Prison tutor

I sign in,
pass through a security-minded airlock
and am rendered phoneless,
keyless,
cashless,
watchless,
as barred gates clang shut.

I have no need to judge my charges –
others already have,
but I know what some have done,
and from the papers,
how often and who to.

When tiny dinosaurs attack!

Flippancy reigns supreme today on the topic of some friends' maybe-friendly-maybe-evil-depending-on-mood African Grey birdy...

Ornithoraptor

Pinprick-pupilled beady eye
tempts fingers closer with a tweet
and a look that’s reptile-sly
come friendly digits, you shall meet
a living pair of peanut-pliers
as beak and brain plot and conspire

to peck and pry at the unwary
whether foe or tickling friend,
wings to fly but no fey fairy,
mandibles to tear and rend
flesh, this herbivore’s vampiric
but her parrot-victory’s Pyrrhic

for now she’s on the naughty perch
with fewer chums for strokes and kisses,
gruel for tea and name besmirched,
known as wicked, biting Missy,
yellow card, last-chance saloon,
play nicely or play on your own!

I knew that First Aid course was worth it

A little bit of autobiography. It was a strange moment as I thought cars only slipped their handbrakes and rolled out-of-control downhill in vintage comedies...

The St. David’s kerbside incident

I turn at the sound of a crash –
a hatchback has slipped the leash
of its handbrake,
allowed gravity carte blanche
and mounted the pavement,
tumbling somebody’s granny
into a shop doorway
sprawled among a scattering of holiday tat
and ‘Welcome to Wales’ postcards.

Passers-by have gathered round
and begin helping her to her feet –
hurriedly I intervene
to check for concussion,
imagining hip fractures
worsened by well-meaning help.
Though bleeding from superficial wounds,
she is more worried about her lost shoe,
torn tights,
undignified re-arrangement.

As I hold up the requisite number of fingers
and ask quiet questions,
a voice from the small crowd
blocked off from proceedings
by my turned back
proclaims tersely –
‘we know her’.

Although I’m sure that later,
they will provide more comfort
than I,
as a stranger,
could ever hope to achieve,
I’m equally certain that familiarity
does not breed
medical expertise.

As the ambulance arrives,
disgorging paramedics and a stretcher,
I slope off
to rejoin my holiday.

Shifting Dizraeli gears

I saw MC Dizraeli live on Saturday - I was inspired to put out a bit of autobiography. Audio version here.

The right to annoy

After the gig I’m still buzzing,
sitting on the last bus home,
writing words inspired by tales of
Iranian parties
 curtained off from an unforgiving world,
backpacking angst
 felt by the middle-classes
  finding themselves too subcontinental,
and the nastier acts
 perpetrated by Ayatollahs’ bully-boys.

Here, as there,
gagging is ordered
by the homogenisers
to stifle noise and reduce choice –
though on our little island,
it’s not so much theocracy as
the incestuous edicts
of a dysfunctional Wal-Mart fa-mi-ly,
[insert theme tune here]
the Big Brother of Asda
where I’d been courting ASBOs
by stickering produce seditiously,
 highlighting the ocean plunder
  of industrial overfishing
and loggers’ jungle devastation
 adding orang utans to the
  lengthening homeless list.

In-store security drones
dressed in wannabe-FBI black puffa-jackets
and second-tier Magnum-boots
ask me to
“come to the manager’s office please” –
I decline
and politely remind them that
in fact
they have no legal right
to enforce that particular request,
though I’ll happily leave the store
at their behest.

Finding this inexplicably annoying,
they scowl impotently
as they follow me out,
stroking groinal Maglite bulges –
oh, compensating much?

A week later I find myself
sweet-talking a legal secretary into
telling me who owns a particular
piece of not-quite London
real estate,
and through which
hidden offshore trust its money flows.
As a result,
the small field behind a pub
becomes a plot
to block the builders
and the small local town
is not being bulldozed
to line cronies’ pockets with something
folding and crinkly.

The carbon budget breathes a sigh of relief.

But vested interests are predatory
and do try to bite back –
two spooks from maybe-Special Branch
(it’s hard to say when they’ve got no ID)
turn up on the doorstep at 3am,
rat-a-tatting the brass
and bellowing their ‘open up’
with unveiled threats including
“we know where your Mum lives”
while whukka-whukka-whukka low overhead,
a helicopter spotlights and videos.

I laugh hard in their faces,
photograph them back
and tell them to fuck off –
they’ve not met my Mum.

Rooms from my oeuvre

Something I wrote based on one of my mixed media pieces.

Hotel

Taking the penthouse, a three-room suite,
homage to that pickled shark,
once YBA enfant influent,
now can’t-paint-for-shit shock-conceptuality,
all dead butterflies and money.

Over in one wing,
crumpled biro sketch for a green man
wrought in silver fretwork,
now etched and hammered, chained
and put up for sale.

Brushed to one side,
an empty blister-pack of brain-pills,
each 20 milligrams
a bitter bite of sweet chemistry,
I'm such a neuromantic.

Tiger balm and beaded lizard
whisper nothings through wood-thin walls,
varnished with intent –
grinning, a brass-balled imp
sits sly on his stack of timber.

Paper-cut bamboo forest,
trees hold onto chainsaw blades,
while triplet queens lie supine
under a celestial arch,
contemplating their paradox.

Faded letters speak of old contests
and hints of science,
print-block songbird
calls the ink down from her serinette.

Fragments of ammonites,
pebbles once shiny and gleaming-wet,
but still interesting in the dry,
unlike childhood holiday gleanings.

Bar-room in miniature
touts ‘beer’ above its rug of ribbons –
next door, ransom-note wallpaper
proclaims the anguish and ego
of the artist.

Of course,
there is a lacuna,
always one empty
among a hundred others,
ghosts of occupants unknown.

This hotel will stay my own.

Hanging about in coffee shops

I have neither black beret or goatee, nor a dingy garret in the Rive Gauche, but I have been known to slack off in the Art House...

Two hours in an art café

Meet a friend to campaign
for the release of
friends in Russian jails,
plotting over a pot of builder’s tea
(with cow not soy),
a coffee
(organic, natch – once again with cow)
and a ‘voluptuous vegan’,
most suggestive of menu items,

admire a white-on-blue
painting of a koi carp
like inverted porcelain,
before a quick-and-foamy beer
lubricates some more pen-and-ink work
and a chat about housing
and mental health,

high-five today’s successes,
grumble about cheap tat
polluting craft fairs,
hope to sell more jewellery,
feel good about getting a picture framed
and wonder how high to price it –

the bus comes to take me away.

Biotic and Modernist

A few months ago, I went to a workshop on Modernist poetry, during which we looked at Wallace Stevens' '13 ways of looking at a blackbird'. It was new to me at the time, but I was immediately grabbed by it - the range of metaphors, the use of imagery and so on. Expanding beyond blackbirds to include other plants and animals, here's a semi-autobiographical response...

13 of life’s moments shared with Wallace Stevens

I

During a squall,
jackdaws shelter
on the leeside of policemen.

II

Nothing is certain,
just as seaweeds are not plants.

III

We sit silently,
us good mates –
the landlord doesn’t mind lodgers having guests,
but what is there to say
when he’s watching TV
and idly cupping
his mastiff’s testicles?

IV

I am an old Jack Russell,
my balls drag in the snow.

V

There won’t be bluebirds over
the White Cliffs of Dover,
not because I don’t dream of peace,
but because the bluebird is not
native to Europe.

VI

Disappointed to find out that
the mummified foetus
of a Tasmanian Devil
has already been sold,
I have to ask myself ‘why?’

VII

Norbert Dentressangle,
Nippon Yusen Kaisha
and Dong Fang,
Triton and Mol the crocodile
bring what from where?

VIII

Pale grey ballast
recently laid and rolled
is soon obscured again
by shoots
of grass and Buddleia.

IX

Flossy the dental nurse
is a nine-grand rhino,
fibreglass,
green and white
with apple-a-day shoes.

X

One big man
admits on stage
how his life was saved.
The saviour,
on duty and
not knowing this until now,
sheds a tear –
gentle gorillas in our midst.

XI

The joy of
discovering a new
sexually-transmitted disease
of ladybirds.

XII

Crows gather,
fly down
and coalesce –
now a back-bent
black-shawled hag.

XIII

We are all stardust,
only some are golden.

Words, words everywhere

Yesterday was National Poetry Day and the theme was 'Water' - events here, events there, poetical events were everywhere. Here's my offering - a bit of autobiography about an incident that definitely involved water in the form of tears...

Iridodialysis

I

Mis-timed arrow,
sharp pain worse than grating bone-ends,
eyeball white splits and bleeds
between clutching fingers, fills with red,
a blue-spotted pool ball –
get back in, vile jelly –
the archer cries, throws away her bow,

I fall to my knees and keen,
Others pace and mutter,
(“Hospital please”)
they mutter on – where's the Eye Unit? Um, dunno,
(“HOSPITAL NOW PLEASE”);
I’m sure it shouldn’t be me that has to give directions...

II

Nurse looks through a lens,
her eyes open wider than mine can,
calls the sister,
calls the doctor,
calls the head consultant from his bed –
rungs of gravitas, a ladder of distress;
he provides painkilling drops –
I love him –

I’ve begun to vaguely buzz and giggle,
it’s shocking –
he explains the impracticality of micro-surgery;
my other eye glazes over,
tests are performed,
stereograms – “what can you see?”
pyramid or boat,
follow the flashing dot,
follow my finger,
follow the white coat,
put your chin
on the optico-neuro-cerebro-whatsit;

steriods are prescribed,
machine goes ‘bleep’
and images tiny torn strings of muscle and grue,
milk ripped from lapis,
the word ‘blow-out’ is used –
I enquire –
an explanation is given
in terms of a thumb-squashed ping-pong ball,
inner front hit inner back,
now popped back out –
I feel vaguely sick
and sit –
I’d like to go to sleep,
machine goes ‘beep’.

III

I now have two pupils on that side,
but all the care and wondrous NHS
means I also have two eyes.

First time into the breach

Last night was interesting - the first time I've read at a poetry competition, and in a huge, splendid mediaeval barn. Though short-listed, I didn't win (the band liked it!), but it was an interesting experience, especially as the audience were very different from what I'm used to i.e. much more 'trad' Shakespeare fans (unsurprising as it was part of the Titchield Shakespeare Festival) - not like the audiences for the more contemporary fare I tend to go for. Saying that, I am partial to a bit o' Bard once in a while and I still like As You Like It, despite being taught it for O-level (not GCSE) English Lit, *ahem* years ago. So, with the competition themes in mind, and inspired by the 'All the world's a stage...' soliloquy, this is what I came up with and it seemed to go down well...

’69 – ‘13

Last year, prime-numbered age held sway,
since then some extra throat-beard grey,
shirt buttons slightly more tum-splayed,
maybe it’s time I was re-weighed.
Oh God, I’m 44.

On average I am past halfway,
it takes less beer ‘til bladdered spray,
and if hungover lose a day,
my liver yells at me ‘no way’.
Oh God, I’m 44.

These days, more trespass than affray,
older than pre-prison Krays,
once Dangermouse, now Colonel K,
or tatty-eared old tom-cat stray,
will my hair fall out with mange?
Oh God, I’m 44.

Docked my first iPod yesterday,
with Paypal not quite so au fait,
watched vinyl’s decline with dismay,
hookers my age carry change,
I fancy Bellatrix Lestrange,
Oh God, I’m 44.

Just twitched a rare Siberian Jay,
rewatched the Darling Buds of May,
but please no cocoa on a tray,
against the dying light I’ll rage,
find my As You Like It stage,
at least men don’t go through ‘The Change’,
Oh God, I’m 44.

‘Cos I still wield a wicked blade,
so far no urge to dress more staid
in crimplene slacks of dun-tan-beige,
I’d fear that mournful colour-change,
rather weekends spent in adult play
than tussling with cheap underlay –
I’ve never felt quite so alive,
I’ll soon be 45.

Here I am performing at the Festival.

On the polar parade

A giant mechanical polar bear - part of the Greenpeace #savethearctic campaign, as was the #iceclimb.

Arctic uproar

Aurora londonensis,
bigger than a double-decker,
solid-state roar
rumbles tarmac underpaw,
windblown,
rainswept,
driven by siege puppeteers
hauling like fjordsmen
overland to Byzantium,
she fears no melting floe
nor seal-blubber famine –
ice to the core,
her will is steel.
First Nations sing of lands lost
to oil-thirst,
crude greed,
pipelines drawn in the snow
to spill black bile,
bringing melancholy to the North,
fragmenting the white
for nothing more than
fatter spreadsheet totals
and dividends-in-suits.

A little more bro-etry

I was recently introduced to the concept of 'bro-etry' - poetry that speaks to blokes (they being a subset of 'men'). Here's something on this theme:

More Goldwing than Commando?

Old bikers maybe,
whose black t-shirts,
though sporting only the holes they were born with,
and not oil-soaked (or worse)
announce a liking
for Alien and Heath Ledger’s Joker
mostly unobscured by pony-tails
and heavy-metal beards.

Between sips and pots,
they reminisce about pool leagues past,
tut-tut dismay
at ale-stains on relaid baize
despite signs saying ‘no drinks here please’.

The louder one asks me what I’m writing;
it turns out he likes poetry
(even if he pretends it’s only
‘the-boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck’ variety)
and talks of folk-rock,
obscure bands and great nights out
in punky local venues –
it makes sense Blondie was his jukebox choice,
but INXS doesn’t fit
and as for Nickelback,
less said the better.

Recording them in biro scribbles,
I watch another frame fly by –
I thought they must be good
as, denims crisply laundered,
they brought their own brass-threaded
ash-grained cues in cases,
and at a quid a game,
it must be expensive
once you’re good at pool.

Digital wampum

Inspired by some of the works in Offending Frequencies (Poetry Review 102:4 Winter 2012), especially the photographic responses by Yemisi Blake to new poems by Elmi Ali and Jo Brandon, I produced the following:

The hanging piece is entitled 'Digital wampum' and uses plastic components from VHS cassettes (a defining technology for someone who was a teenager in the 1980s) to depict key dates in my life, the black and white arrangement encoding them in binary. The words indicate the events these dates relate to.

Trying to avoid excessive use of superlatives

Inspired by yesterday's amazing ascent of the Shard by Greenpeace volunteers.

#iceclimb

One giant shard of city crystal,
six ants,
all queens,
skip security,
slowly swarm up
a thousand sheer-slab feet of protest,
an urban berg,
to fly the Arctic flag in clear skies where
actions
provoke a Twitter-storm,
hashtag, retweet, share
and feelings of vicarious adrenaline.

Outflanked,
Shell fume silently at the Trendmap,
suits, tie-tongued, mutter nothings about safety,
shuffle off to sign
more soulless polar drilling deals,
words
ringing in their shell-likes, change waiting on lines one, two, three…
after fifteen hours of hard-won history,
damn,
but it was beautiful to see.

I tri to univocalise

ibid.

Bring crisps, chips, drinks in tins,
fight-night is nigh,
fit fists hitting chins, TV-bright –
Biff!
Spit split lip-bits, pink, thick.

I sit with misgivings,
sipping citric gin,
wishing it’d finish – tick tick tick,
minim-clicks.
I’m missing BBC’s rib-tickling skits,
sci-fi films, British fright-flicks.

Living with dimwits is shit,
six chimps igniting spliffs,
yipping, big-dicking,
swilling Pils (bits spill),
pissing Klimt-lit drips
(in mind: shivs, picks, flinging bricks).

‘Ring-ring, ring-ring.’
‘Hi’ – it’s Irish Jim with skins, trips,
limping,
flicking blim,
iThing whistling Limp Bizkit.
Inviting him in, civil-ish,
I skip-zip lightning-quick,
quitting this tip right-swift, midnight flit.

Kip in Tim’s Civic? Fritz’s Mini?
Siri’s ringing – it’s Jim, livid,
Tirpitz sinking in villi.
Dicing with risk, inciting plight - think,
climb in big bin,
flip lid,
piri-piri whiff,
filing piling high –
shitting it, chill-pills kick in,
silent, I rigid-digit Jim.

First thing, switch limits:
Hiding in hills?
Ritz?
Mississippi tipi?
Flight it is.
Sigh.