What Is Impossible

Sleepless In Brussels (Poem)

There is a red rubber vein

bulging

in the industrial neck of this city.

can’t speak history

without blood

curling my fist

around this night in Brussels -

where a statue of King Leopold II

is pedestalled

the deep red that flames

my passport,

fires my feet through the lines of E.U Citizens

at the Eurostar Check in.

with an i-phone connected

to the modern day

life expectancy

of a Congolese miner

These are Leopold’s words cut

into his stone statue -

“I have undertaken the work in Congo in the interest

of civilisation and for the good of Belgium”

These words have severed limbs

And if don’t charge my i-phone

history will have no reception.

Have you ever thanked the ground just for being there for your next steps?

If I write an ode to bicycle thieves,

the ones that stole my wheels in Shoreditch,

I will thank them for my slow walk home

and the ode I wrote to my feet.

When I Saw The Pictures Of Cairo

When I saw the pictures of Cairo
I wanted to talk to someone with words
that can make sense of what is responsible.

I thought of my friend Sabrina, she speaks Arabic,
maybe she'll say the translation of revolution is death
in any language. Maybe resolution
sounds impossible in the Egyptian ear.

Is there a language where war sounds like stop?
where military sounds like peace conference?

Can western privilege ever come at no expense?
If that happens will I be safe?

I should have better words
as someone who lives in a country
where the government doesn't jail poets
(unless they're poor or immigrants)

Are my words too privileged
to make sense of what is responsible?

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/08/deadly-crackdown-in-egypt/100574/

On Sounding Intelligent - A Response To Classist Katie Hopkins

My name is Katie Hopkins, sounds intelligent right?

I know how to assess intelligence, no I don’t know what eugenics is!

I have never needed to empathise with marginalized people, I’m white and upper class, and ok, I’m a woman but I work extremely hard.

You assess intelligence by names.

If your son is called Wayne or Rio your families idea of "quality time"

is a sofa, a TV football game and a whole in season of drug, alcohol and domestic abuse.

That is not the kind of time you can collect and weave an honest £300,000 a year, that is hard polishing! what would someone named after a city know about that?

This doesn’t apply to the fact the father of my children is called Damien.

I’m Katie-pearl-wearing-Hopkins, 

I am held together by privilege, 

I am afraid of people that don’t have what I have 

because I assume that they want what I have, 

who wouldn’t want what I have? 

I am shining on my wrists and earlobes.

I am not interested in an all inclusive society because complicated social issues make me feel inadequate, they remind me that we do not live in a society that properly rewards its teachers, its nurses, its youth and social workers – you know, people who will never live up to my definition of success. 

Yes, I can imagine a girl called Cheyanne becoming a worthless nurse, or a Bricklaying boy called bobby, I mean who the hell wants to care for other people, build things for other people?

Not me, not my family, not anyone I choose to associate with – I don’t want to help people that can’t help themselves.

I want to be around people who understand my way of life, who understand that, I do not have time to educate myself about three dimensional human beings when I’m busy being a free-born capitalist.

Yes, everyone in the world ought to be assessed by the name that came to the mind of parents when they were pulled from their mothers, covered in blood and faeces. Being poor, uneducated, unemployed and living in a council estate, claiming benefits is a choice!

You see, our names are the labels that stick our noses above the poverty line.

YOU'RE FIRED! (by a man named Allen too)

Ode To My Fathers Dementia

Conversation With Grandma (For International Women's Day)

Huffington Post launched this poem about a conversation I had with an important woman in my life.

"It's a simply told lesson in the value of paying attention to those who are older than us, and a great poem to celebrate International Women's Day"

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/08/international-womens-day-poem-raymond-antrobus-conversations-with-grandma_n_2836002.html?1362746418&utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

It's Saturday & It's Not Too Late

I got home last night

drinking and missing you

and thinking how

if you walked me home

you’d have seen a taxi

kill a cyclist and we could sit listening

to bedroom music and light

candles by the window

and I would say

we may die soon so I might as well

let myself love you.

You Lost Two Years

You tell me you lost two years

to the last man you loved.

You say if you write a poem

                   don’t mention me,

mention the night and what

you see in the street.

The parked cars

    and how tires rest with the dirt

   they’ve rolled over, how houses

have locked doors

 and one glowing window.

Mention how sad the sky is

because the person it loves

won’t look at it. Mention a storm

             but don’t give it my name,

say it’s what love does to people,

say there is a man inside the house

next door, he is half naked

with a tattoo across his chest

that says “what doesn’t kill you

makes you stranger”,

say she can't forget the way he kissed her

               in the restaurant smoking areas.

mention a woman 
that was saved by the rain

but don’t give her my name,

say she is a smoker

that survived her own fire

and has not since stood

       under an umbrella.

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.

Pools Of Fish (Poem)

for Deanna Rodger.

No one is lonelier than the fisherman and his boat.

The fisherman was mending his boat when he heard about the smiling fish.

“They swim in shoals near the caves,” said a bearded man to his friend, “most of them are silvery blue but the special ones are half green, half gold, you catch em’, they grant wishes”.

The fisherman had never heard of smiling fish so he took his boat to the caves to investigate. He sat for hours and caught fish that weren’t smiling; they all had that familiar droopy fish expression.

Night came when the fisherman spotted a white circle on the black water. “Just moonlight” he thought and made a joke with his boat about fishing for it. He threw his line out and felt a bite.

He reeled in a silver-blue sliver of moonlight and only saw it was a fish when it slopped on the floor of his boat. The fisherman looked and saw it smiling.

“Wow”, said the fisherman, “they exist”

He leaned over the side of his boat, his eyes filling with the moonlight fish.

The fisherman fished, reeling in fish after fish, as his hope grew brighter to find the one that grants a wish.

He threw his last line into sleepy water, ” I just want one” said the fisherman to his boat.

His line tugged and he pulled up a fish, green-gold iridescent glow over the darkness of the sea. It’s smile stretched across both sides of its head. “This is it!” thought the fisherman “this fish grants wishes!”

He kept the fish in a fishbowl and sailed home wondering what to wish for.

The fisherman tied up his boat, put the fishbowl under his arm and walked home from the harbour. It was a three-mile walk through town.  As he walked he saw a man sat down in an ally between the closed shops. The fisherman saw his streetlamp lit face, his blue eyes looked like sad swimming pools.

“That’s it!” said the fisherman holding up the fishbowl. “I wish no one was lonely”

The next day the fisherman woke to a gold sun that swam in the skies blue waves. 

As he strolled back into town he saw him, the man from last night, sat in the same spot, alone in the alleyway, now next to open doors, his eyes brimming swimming pools full of smiling fish.

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.

A Secret Poem For You

Write your secrets.

When they want eyes,
ask mine.

Trust my love to know
how to move
                   around you
          with the ease of waking,
something I do every day.

I will take on the colour
of all your shade,
           you will never leave me
without your ghost.

I have not forgotten
any song I heard around you,
my entire body
               carries these sounds,
my heart always wants
                    to give you noise.

This is how you are with me
when you are  not.    

Life cannot go on for too long
if we are both inside it,

Our mornings are opening scenes
of a film
          about two people
          who happen to be beautiful,
no matter how many shadows they make.

Glass Full Of Questions (Animated Poetry Video by Christian Watson)

Conversation With A Man In Weatherspoons (Audio Poem)

NaPoWriMo Day 3 Poem 2 Women & Broken Poems

This is a new draft of the second poem I wrote for last years NaPoWriMo.


Women & Broken Poems

Women. Hold my writing hand

Help me write the things

I can’t say to you. I trust you.

Women. I sit alone with you.

You brush your fingers

along my tattooed arms, 

and ask if I have a condom.

You are smarter than me.

This is the universe where
I would take my hand and marry my words

if I was sure they were right.

  Like, I always feel something missing

but never know what it is. Women,

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

 If there was a licence for love,
I’d have points for speeding,

so I caution you.

I am not the ride

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.

But if I write about you, women

I always try to do it well.

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.

Pictures Vs Words Q&A w/ Birmingham Based Poet Jodi Ann Bickley

Jodi Ann Bickley is from Birmingham. Yes, her poems are as cute as she is.

What does your writing desk look like?

I don't have a desk, my room is the tiniest of places. I usually end up writing on the bus, on my bed or on the coach/train up and down to shows. I never know when I'm going to write because with my two jobs covering day and night there isn't usually a spare hour or two to dedicate to it. I just carry a notebook on me all the time, plus I'm moving into a room like.. 10x the size of my one right now on Saturday so maybe I'll make a little writing corner or something.

What is on your to do list?

Music, I'm involved in a couple of projects at the moment I'm pretty excited about. My biggest, most massive goal is to write for Adele. I'd like to headline a stage at somepoint. I want to learn how to sew, cook and face paint. The face paint ambition started at Bestival this year - having a face full of colour genuinally makes your day a little bit better. I'd like to do a one man show, get a little book published. I want to go back to Tokyo, see New York, Barcelona, Boston - I want to go and see the Northern Lights. I really want to go to Iceland too. I want to write better, just be better generally. I want to worry less, see my best friends more. Get to the point where I can work a little less. Drink more water, go down a dress size or two. Or get to the point where silly things like that are just irrelevant.

 What's more important, talking or listening?

Ah.. I'd say.. Listening. I think, it may change tomorrow.

What makes a better story - pictures or words?

Words. Some of the most lovely pictures I've seen have been strung together by sentences. Maybe that is because I can't draw though.. 

Respond to this photo.

I remember in primary school when one pupil in my class called another pupil a "bastard" and suddenly every kid in class became potty mouthed. Our whole class would have to do lines in the hall during playtime, even though me and my friends hadn't said anything but were way too scared to defend our cause to our year six teacher who threated to kill himself and us all way more than a year 6 teacher should. Anyway, the first thing that came into my head when I saw this picture was what the girls in school would say when someone would call them a "bitch" - "A bitch is a dog, a dog barks, bark is a tree, tree is nature and nature is beautiful - thanks for the compliment". 

Conversation With An Anarchist During The London Riots

fuckin’ police look at em’ all lined up. No wonder people fucking hate them. You feel the gravity here? That’s what fear feels when its injected by pigs... fuckin’ hell, the air here could burst into flames. Burn the city and pork chop these cunts with their sticks! Ere’, I dreamt I wrote a play last night and it was called ‘God The Orchestra’ and it was about a bunch of puppets that go rioting! De’ja’fucking vu, eh? How’d it end? Fuck knows, the puppets burnt their strings and scattered. I woke up in my bed feeling like something is trying to tell me something and this is fuckin’ it! These people call their belief a system and if that’s the case everyone needs another mechanic! One with the earth on their hands instead of blood and oil, that’s the only dirt you can roll in and be the cleanest soul alive. We want peace but this is our war for it. Yeah, we all want fuckin' peace except the pigs who want power. I'd happily sit around and smell the shit out of flowers when things are right! When things are right I'll grow a fucking garden and everyone can bring pig meat to the barbecue! That’ll be the day to welcome a neighborhood that’s right for real fuckin’ people!

 

Here's another voice on the street -

In My Own Time

I sent out tweets for people to send me images to write poems to. Today's picture was sent by the superb Sean Mahoney.

when I forget how it feels to remember you
I don’t know where you will go, but I think
I will remember you again when I’m old,
I’ll be staring at my feet in a hospital waiting room
and I will somehow, for no apparent reason
remember the picture I am holding now,
the one I’m about to throw out,
taken one night, sitting on the pavement
under a street light,
its a picture of your right foot and my left,
it means that at our best,
our feet carried the same body.

Until we scraped our shoes
with different roads.

this picture spent summer next to my window
as if competing with the landscape, and now
that summer of mine still belongs to you.

Anything that makes you happy is worth keeping,
But I don’t need this photo.

I know you will come back
in your own way
in my own time.