Sestina For My Father (Black History Month Poem)

Sitting In The Sun & Writing About You (Poem Draft)

you smile from east to west,

I want to travel across your mouth

like I owe you the country.

We can be confused

            but still in love,

distant but still in touch.

        My feet know your soul,

my eyes know where you go

             even when we sleep apart,

my arms are covered

                   in your ground,

hold me until I'm buried.

        My heart knows what it has,

        My heart is all over my face,
        My heart is whatever I say... 
         
Should I stop 
       and ask questions

 when I know

I would love the sun no more or less

                 if it explained its radiance?

ok, let me stop,
                because its warm and I love you
and that should always be enough.

August Night (Poem, Draft One)

when I tell you I'm a poet,
you expect me      to have words
for you and this 3:16am
                               August night.
A good poet sees the night
                           and thinks love
as a singer thinks notes
                                they can't hold.
The poet knows
                when the sky gets lonely,
bad weather is never good company.

everyone lives
                     the way they know best,
even when it's killing them, but the poet
   feeling human says
                            we are breakable
     and that knowledge fixes the windows
                 we all look out of.

Maria Calls -Poem (First Draft)

Last night I got a call,

it was Maria, calling from the hospital,

she’s a nurse,

she told me a guy has had a car accident

fractured his spine, he’s 25,

he’ll never walk again.

            He already wants to die.

I said nothing, I had no thing

                                              to say.

Maria asked

would you want to die if this were you?

I couldn’t answer.

Maria said

when we last spoke

you said the best thing about your life

is the way you think?

Yes, I said.

Well the guy in the accident, he’s perfectly conscious,

what does that say about life

     if consciousness isn’t enough?

                 ............................

I said nothing,

            

                              I couldn’t think.

Cue The Poet 'Backstage In Ireland'

Write a love poem, step into a cupboard big enough for your friends and shout it out - everyone should do this before they die.

Raymond Antrobus In The Poetry Shed

I joined Adam Kammerling's Poetry Shed Series.... pretty self explanatory... Adam invites poets into his shed for poems.

I was pretty ill on the day of filming this but I sucked it up and got all aggressive.

Love In Other Places (Poem)

draft


My heart belongs in no cage -

God gave me a heart loud enough to speak to so many cities –

London, Cape Town, Berlin, New York - they all know my voice when

I am a happy volcano. My love is a current that keeps me running,

running onto bomb testing sites. Can I train love to not put me into

demolition? Can my heart work in another city?   

Can I leave this place without parts of me missing?

Will my heart still have legs? Will it poison other beds? 

Am I thinking or am I looking for something in my own head?

My friend Gabriel says never say you are in love, say you are love,

say love every time you find it, say, your heart belongs in no cage.

5am / March 25th (Poem)

I dreamt you were an owl,

you kept leaving me for the night.

You said night made you wise,

it’s the kind of darkness you came from

                               that’s why  you go back to it.

 You called me pigeon

                Because I knew how to hide

                                     in the night -

              I puffed up my chest

                           slept with all my hope

                  balled on the ledge of a broken window,

                    

              I had to get warm without you.

 I woke

           still thinking I could fly -

knowing the closest thing to me

                                                          was your shadow.

Grade 6 (Notebook Version)

Imagine, you're in an African country you've never been in before and you've just walked into your first classroom as a teacher. 
The Principal introduces you to the wild eyes of thirty five children as "a young man from England".

A boy, sitting at the back of the room, eyes like a lion cub throws his voice at you. 

He tells you he supports Man United. You try to find common ground by telling the class you are an Arsenal fan.

The whole class jeers and secretly, you congratulate yourself for turning them against you already.

When the class settles you are pulled aside by the Principal who has this to say...

See that girl sitting with her head on her desk?

Her mother died of Aids when she was born.

She has it too. Some of the children know.

Every day those children ask her why isn’t she bleeding.

They don’t understand how she has Aids and still looks like them.

Matthew, the boy who sits two rows from the back,

he broke two of the seventeen windows

that were smashed here last week.

His mother came to school with a bat that day.

This is a Primary School, Malik is fourteen years old,

repeated the sixth grade three times.

 his father had three wives at the same time before he had a stroke.

Now Malik's in a Home, the boy can’t sit still. 
He feels his whole life in his stomach,

we all have to pretend he isn’t ill.

You’ve got to talk to David. He’s the boy by the window,

he’s from the Congo. You’ll see him climbing trees in the playground.

His mother said he takes all the blankets at home and sleeps on the roof.

His world has its own sky.

The girl with the pink hair band, that’s Kim.

She never does her work, she just wants to draw.

See drew all the mountains on the wall,

She won’t get that far if it’s all she can do.

A cartoon is not a career path.

This week the children have been drawing diagrams of our solar system
Show them, show them how to colour in their planet.

Here is the Spoken Word Version of this piece.

Performance at Brizzlemania (On Loneliness)

This is a poem I wrote one night while on tour in Chicago. I was trying to figure out if I was feeling lonely or if I was feeling sorry for myself. After a conversation about this I realised how reluctant I was to allow myself to feel lonely so I just let it be and wrote this.

(Excuse the sound of the waitress walking around the room collecting empty glasses off the tables)

Do not ask me if I'm lonely,

I will not know how to answer.

Mum says I came out her womb,
screaming like I was wounded
until I was put in her arms.

Do not ask me if I'm lonely.

Writers talk about owning their own loneliness,
but I think its just something they say to the walls.

I get mad at time, at times
because it can't give me any more of my childhood.

At times,
all I can taste are the spaces
sore between my broken teeth,

at times,
I see old lovers under falling snow
in yellow summer dresses,
looking like a warm place to escape to.

Grandma says
its amazing what we keep in our brains,
some we want, some we don't want.

This is the darkest place inside me,
I walk in, turn on the night and watch what disappears,
do not ask me if I'm lonely.

I do not know if loneliness is an injury.

I was afraid to learn this poem by heart
because of what it might do to my heart.

I sit with my loneliness and we both agree,
we like each others company,
but only when we know what to do,
with each other.

Poem Upon Reflection Of Black History Minute

Black History Minute is upon us and I've agreed to (indirectly) acknowledge it via a poem about me'old man.

He arrived in England, 1950s;

tore knuckle on Teddy Boys that pelted him in streets

with bananas and rocks. Small town kids nudged him and ran off;

they called it luck to touch the black man.

Squared up in pubs with the Irish, drunk in arms afterwards.

A father five times to three women because man is meant to multiply

but my dad has expectations of me that look like sensible versions of him.

They wear suits, they’re sober, they have day jobs, 
they are novelists not poets.

I was born in England, 86, 

I live in this night and day London, 
the black and white boy who can blend into anything.

Conversation With Grandma

She tells me Mark is coming over. He’s my gardener. He’s deaf and dumb. 

I look at her as if she might be talking about me. 

Well, he lip reads and responds to everything with his thumbs up. He can laugh though, he laughs all the time. I’m quite fond of him. Anyway, he’s coming to dig a grave for Hollie in the garden. She was put down this morning; she had a good life. Have you ever dug a grave? Hard work that. Makes you really respect gravediggers. 

I never feel like a poet around Grandma, I rarely know what to say. 

I can’t lie, I’ve been crying all night. I’m going to miss Hollie. Hope I don’t get too many lonely moments without her. I ate chicken earlier and couldn’t help but feel strange to be mourning Hollie while eating a dead animal. You get to be old as me and life still surprises you. I hope when I get to heaven I get my young body back. See that picture of me on the mantelpiece? That’s me at 22. I was in love with a man called Keith. He was so handsome, taller than you. Always wore grey jackets and trimmed his moustache. I’d say kissing a man without a moustache is like eating a boiled egg without salt. He took that photo, I’m smiling because he asked me a naughty question, I shan’t repeat it. You don’t appreciate beauty when you’ve got it. You shouldn’t put so much pride into things that fade. Life is full of sad things and happy things. The sad things are important; they give you compassion, which in the end gives you more to be happy about. Everyone I went to school with is dead. I’m at the age where every day is a bonus. You get those phone calls, oh’ Mavis died, oh’ Elizabeth died and you just sit there with your life behind you. I believe in a spirit world though, a place for the good and a place for the bad. I can’t see Hitler’s spirit in the same place as my friends. Then again, if Germany wasn’t on the brink of starvation after the First World War it wouldn’t have bred such evil. That’s just my opinion though. How’s your poetry going? 

I tell her it’s ok. 

Don’t you find the more you talk to people the more you realise how important words are? I used to be part of an organisation called Talking Books. We’d read books to blind people. Each book took a while to read out loud but it did so much for them. One man I read to told me, when you live in the dark your only light is a good story. Are you hungry? 

I tell her I am. 

Do you want to finish the chicken? 

I say I’m ok, thanks.

NaPoWriMo. Day 14. Poem 14. Over-heard Conversation Between A Man And His Son

We like looking at the sea, don’t we?
It’s a peaceful activity... all that blue
and white. It’s great isn’t it? How the sea
provides a breathing exercise.
How quiet it gets in your head when you stand still
to watch it work. It’s the only thing I do
without thinking...

No son, I don’t know who put it there.

NaPoWriMo. Day 9. Poem 9. Sat In A Park And Wrote This Poem

Now we taste like
The warm light of stars
There is a new art
To our steps.

We walk under bridges
And pebbled yellow paths
As the warm engine
Of summer starts.

The sky has cracked
Its lips for us to smile
At a bright blue face
Like we are looking at the ocean.

NaPoWriMo. Day 8. Poem 8. The Women I Meet When I Walk Around Calling Myself A Poet Can Tell...

I’m full of shit.

often I walk into rooms as the loudest mouth
with the least to say.

I talk like I read self-help books.
I talk like I only mean what I whisper.
I talk like I’ve been lonely.

If I look good
I'm standing a good
distance away
from myself.

If I see myself
differently
it’s because other people see me
differently

I think I think too much but how much is enough when
we question everything?

The question here is what is everything?

I told you I'm full of shit.

NaPoWriMo. Day 7. Poem 7. yay it's Confessional Poet Thursday!

Why do you love poetry?

Because all you have to do is mean what you say.

Is poetry shit?

If poetry was shit it would be dead by now.

Are you shit at poetry?

No.

Are you shit at poetry?

Sometimes.

Why are you so sensitive?

I celebrate my weaknesses.

What are you most afraid of?

The approaching death of someone I love.

Why are you afraid?

I’m pussy

Why are you afraid?

I’m crying now.

Are you celebrating?

It’s too soon for these questions.

Can I ask you again why are you afraid?

Because I don’t know if I could close an open ending.

NaPoWriMo Day 5. Poem 5. On Being The Sober Guy At The Party

I find it awkward telling people at house parties
I don’t drink.

People never respond well.

They raise their eyebrows,
tilt their head and spill
their words.

oh’ ... erm...

Then they wait for the least awkward moment
to walk away.

No one wants to know the person who will remember them
the next day.

They will tell you about the shame of your night,
you won’t know whether to apologise or wish
you had died.

I’ve seen people at parties strip
deep into the naked night,
I know their names,
I saw them crawl on the floor and bark.

WOOF WOOF! I’M A DOG!

No one is supposed to be there at these times,
everyone should be drunk...
high... or tranquilised.

A boy was sobbing in the quiet corner
of the party.

I’m ugly, I’m ugly, I’m ugly, I’m ugly

He looked like a picture that didn't want to be taken.

I soberly walked over to him and gave him a hug.

No one wants to be hugged by the sober guy at the party,
But there he was, crying into my arms, asking
Why God gave him such big ears?

I cradled him, and waited for the least awkward moment to walk away.

NaPoWriMo. Poem 4. What You Are Thinking Is More Interesting Than What You Are Writing.

What you are thinking is more interesting than what you are writing.

Be like the ocean when the sky keeps falling on your shoulders.

My love is ice. It can’t stay solid because I tend to meet woman of fire.

I am an overflowing ocean of old love but I like swimming.

There is nothing wrong with people doing things the way you wouldn’t.

I think in a strange broken way but I like it.

Everywhere I’ve been is walking through me.

My walls know about you.

I lie all the time because I want people to think I know a lot about life.

Sometimes misery is the colour of my thinking.

I had a dream that my skin was pealing. My arms and chest were white crumbles of torn red flesh

There was a lot of blood but I was calm and at peace with my disfigurement.

My memory is like an electric friend I don’t trust.

I have flowers I would never have discovered if it weren’t for death.

Most lonely people kill themselves on Christmas Day.

I can’t tell if I’m lonely.

NaPoWriMo Poem 3. Usually Purple

I feel in colour, usually purple
where light meets
dark in a temperature of rooms
with radiators
off
during summer nights, where
walls are bruised plums, swollen
with juice. And rain
comes down cool but I
am inside
where I seek and hide
in bright gardens of
dying orchids.

NaPoWriMo. Poem 2. My vices are women and poetry

I want women to hold my writing
hand so I can write poems about the things
I can’t say to them.

I trust the women I sit alone with.
they brush their fingers along my grazed
tattoo'ed arms, and ask
if I have a condom.

they are smarter than me.

The smell of girls that gave service
with berry lips
has faded into something
that could have been.

This is the universe where
I would take my hand and marry my words
if I was sure they were right.

I always feel like something is missing
but I never know what it is.

I feel like love is a type of clean, and
I’m too dark for it, too cut up.

If there was a licence for love,
I’d have points for speeding, so
I caution women.

I say
I am not the ride to have
If you don’t want to crash

I’m a love child, so
everything about me is an accident
or a broken
poem
or a good idea that doesn’t work.

And I want to die at my desk
thinking about how much beauty is born
from women and poetry.