Here is the text of my poem, which I performed last night during an exhilarating collaboration with Hannah Peel, Sketchybeast, Sam Meech and TIm Brunsden. It was brilliant to have it all come together after only one real runthrough, and it's a testiment to everyone's skills that the piece worked as a whole.
One audience member said that it gave them an urge to have a shag, which is nice... it's also strangely fitting, as the whole thing was a bit like a quick fuck, with all the associated anxiety over small quirks and idiocincracies in the performance... and then the strange hanging around after with everyone telling each other they were great. I'm sure this analogy has been made before.
It felt a little like my poem came across too obscure, and the surreal images in it didn't have the punch because people were taking the whole thing as a kind of mishmash... and I meant to say Submarine when I said TV Screen, really not sure why. but I came, and so did the others... from what I can tell.
My favourite play was Lizzies. I loved the way her characters denied the expected rules of behaviour, and the whole thing took on an almost sci-fi nature, with the singing holding it all together. It was all great, but that was my highlight (except our bit).
The Knife
1.
We are familiar with the image of the embattled one
grizzly, entrenched, a strange penchant
for arranging the items on his desk in enfilade:
the enemy so numerous in his own front yard.
The computer hums
and blips like a submarine, as death after danger
of death fill the screen and grey his tallow skin.
At dawn he stirs from nightmares of the state,
headlines smeared across his face in backwards print,
while outside the city wakes
and goes noisily to shit.
(What will the victim make with the knife?)
We know the language of these things, alright – we
use it to tell stories in the pub, and darker truths
we understand but do not understand
are told to us on the daily news.
(What will Love do with Life now Love has Life in it’s grip?)
Windows disappear, and crows sentinel
The ledges with steel in their beaks,
The will to ignore grows weak,
and the boulevards snivel
and rustle with grey squirrel where separated parents
walk slowly with the pram.
In this, the worst evening, She walks home
alone, clutching files to her chest, ranging from Abuse, Arrest
through Search, Suspect, Sympathise to ‘Wear vests’…
Somewhere the jails full, somewhere the hospitals,
Somewhere the victim coming on the captor
in an alley in her mind. The image of the doctor
pulling out his smile and slashing them with it. Then press
a million images long behind her, while in front float
and snicker disembodied eyes.
(What will the victim make with the knife?)
So much is wicked, unfair, the old game’s jiggered.
The hero’s hands are slow with ink as he looks into them, fingers cupped
As if a keeper, long forgotten at the wicket.
He snatches at a favourite paperweight: a snow dome
of ‘The Houses’: his flare with the rhetoric of the dove
lost in the grey snow… and his mother calls him on the telephone
to speak to him of Love.
“We Loved you. We tried our best. I had mastitis twice in each breast.
Your father taught you how to giggle by prodding your chest.
And we both laughed long while you struggled on the swings in the park
Then took you home and kept you in the livingroom to rolypoly after dark
So you would never learn the habits of the street.
We weaned you on haggis and muddy neeps, dear.
We loved you, and fed you fresh. That’s all they need.
Take this lesson from your mama, and make it clear.”
So he slammed the phone down on the hook,
and set out to type
the finest internal memo of his life.
2.
But is he in time? Will Love
reach the suburbs just as the swirl of eyes
gather themselves in front of Her. The camera bulb wines
then fades away. Oblivious, she steps inside her house,
and drops her paperwork on the kitchen counter. Sighs
when she takes off her shoes, as all women that have
escaped certain danger unknowingly do; returning after dark.
Our hero holds the monitor
Before him as the figures loose their grip and slide.
The memo has gone viral.
But what will Love do with life,
Now it has it in its grip. What can the victim make with the knife?
Well,
What can Love do with life, now it has life in its grip?
A dog barks roughly at the moon. The moon fawns and slips.
She puts the kettle on to boil and takes the milk from the fridge.
I am in uncertain territory,
Here: a postcode lottery. She makes coffee, or perhaps
her hand slides to the rack that holds the wine
and hovers before selecting, at random,
a Bourgogne
She gets pissed, then,
Slowly, and with purpose. Her head down over a selected
photograph, as a mare over the trough where the moon vanishes.
She necks one bottle, anyway, and starts to quaff
The next.
Why hasn’t he come home yet?
“What use is love to us?” She thinks.
What use is love for them?
Well, what
use is Love?
3.
The odd skirmish in an otherwise deserted lobby.
A frantic silence in the centre of town.
A scream that you blame on the cats in the alley.
A woman runs at midnight in her dressing gown.
I am involved in a postcode lottery from the moment
I wake up from these considerations:
but the odds are good. At around 8.45 I will
go to buy milk, bread or The Independent
From Mohamed’s, and on the way back
I will look at the chalk drawings on the pavement
Outside number 51, feel promise, and notice the crackhead
Staring down
I will spend half of the day in a chair by the window
Writing emails to Doug about the magazine, to Sue about conventions
and perhaps I will send a draft of this poem to Nick, and with
The remaining time I will split myself between the bathtub,
The kitchen sink and the stove, humming a snatch of nineties pop
I picked up in Mohamed’s, variously cleaning and filthying things.
During the afternoon I walk through the park.
Kids play grime tunes on their phones
and jab each other in the ribs. They’re good kids.
Young, cocky sons of bitches, one with a black eye
the others laughing easily as I pass through
emasculated by their conspiracy of smiles.
On the bench, an old man drops crumbs of marcaroon at his feet.
I will get flowers and meat from Tesco, and
A boy got stabbed here last week.
You know, they recently found an older geezer hanging
from a tree just by here, too. His head was all
caked in bird crap. Like an absurd plaster
interpretation of a hanged man. Doddering alkis
Talk about it, without using his name.
Gemma is thinking about moving away
with her children, but where is the escape
from mortality? Allerton? West Kirby
But seriously, people whisper things everywhere, and it feels
Like you are being tampered with even when you are out on a yacht
Enjoying dinner in your favourite Chinese restaurant
Or walking alone.
In the evening, they come over our garden
wall and pick the small sour apples from the tree
and walk off down the road sharing them out.
We watch them from the doorway, and it makes us
feel good. We are in love, we have time to play
with. Society has its ways, Love its own, and life itself still others.
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