AND TODAY'S RANDOM WORD IS....

...Worthy

Nice! Already have a few ideas about this one.

(In case you haven't noticed, I'm just using the Random Word Generator as featured on my 'links' bar)

Teen Angst, part 1

So I've been resurrecting some of my old writing from when I was a teenager. Despite a lot of it being awful, and some of it being unreadable - literally, as my handwriting is terrible - some of it's touching and brings back a few memories, good and bad.

This is something I wrote when I was 14 or 15:

Atlas (The World is Mine)

My friends tell me
I stoop when I walk
As if I have always
Carried the world on my shoulders

No wonder I have become obsessed
With my weight
Scaling back for weeks
And then feasting on dumbells
When I feel weak

I am preparing
For my biggest feat:
I want to make the Earth move
For you

For you move me
To walk head up
Through streets
And not bow down
Under the pressures on my neck

I still sweat
I still quake
But now I am learning
To forget the weight
And walk proudly on

And I know it will stay
But I will be strong
And I won't let it sway me
From standing tall
From standing up

From spinning things around
On their axis
And learning
To see them differently

You move me
To be me
But though our planets may collide
And our thoughts may coincide
You are not my world

And I am not yours

CHILL PILL TONIGHT!!

7.30 @ Soho Theatre

The Week

Poetry

\producing quite a lot of new poems at the moment. I've also found myself occasionally posting direct onto this blog or typing into my phone while I'm on the go.

\been to a few gigs recently and getting a good energy from hearing other poets. Particularly enjoyed being at Keats House last weekend.

\performing at Chill Pill Weds! Looking forward to the relaunch. Am also looking forward to two Farrago dates - one at RADA on Thurs, and the other as part of Poetry Rivals in Peterborough on Saturday

Prose

\writing has stalled a little in the past week. I haven't learnt to do fiction on the go in the same way as I can poetry, so it means I need to set aside the time... So looking forward to my two days off this week, and seeing what I can produce.

\reading, on the other hand, is good. After worming through several books this month, I've now started reading Submarine by Joe Dunthorne and The Fifth Figure by Jean 'Binta' Breeze.

\research - I need a few recommends on Black British History and Caribbean Folklore, and particularly Anansi stories.

Midsomer Murdered

Turn your contrast right down
Because the brown in your hue
Means you are not fit
For clubbing tonight

The manicured lawns
And village greens
Are too genteel
For chocolate skins
They will not be muddied
With your type

There will be no axes ground
Above your head
No pillows to smother you goodnight
No abductees
No poisoned teas
Because this is not your territory

They say this is the last bastion
Of English eccentricity
So shut up and live
Those of other ethnicities
You are too dark
To stain these stable doors
With your blood

You must suffer
Long life in your urban terrain
You must stay this side of our stile
And not come within range
Of our strange and unpleasant land
Where neighbours nurse nefarious plans

You may never claim
The dubious acclaim
(Or privilege?)
Of being one of our Midsomer murdered
So please leave our village
And go back to your cities
And watch, and learn
And live



Just having a bit of fun! Something that caught my attention last week... The executive producer of the "quintessentially" English detective programme was caught out saying he would never hire black or Asian actors as it would ruin the "eccentric" "Englishness" of the show. And of course, he later "retired", and of course, a few comments in the papers show support for him, and of course the ratings have since gone up, and of course, the show is a lot of nonsense anyway, BUT of course, it also shows that ignorant minds are still out there.


End of.

Reason(ing)s (Unfinished)

30

Because my Yr 11 English teacher told us
He'd stopped teaching new pupils 2 decades ago
There are no more than 30 original people in the world

The rest are repeats and deviations
The rest are repeats and
Deviations

Hybrids
Mergers and hostile takeovers
Interlinking patterns, new tessellations
But no creation just reproduction

I ask him who I am
He answers that I am Tom, Dick and Harry all in one.

I say No, I don't think so
He says that's exactly what Tom would have said.


26

Because you are beautiful
No matter what they say

The betrayal of the qualifier
Not unnoticed

You are beautiful, I repeat
Circling lines on your face with my fingers
Retracing patterns made by kisses on the glass

I practice lies
By watching my eyes
Distracted, I focus on the tide coming in
Over my widening head

This is how long it has taken, in years
And now I am my father



29

Because I'm bending my way by bus
To Warren Street
From Town
Annoying kid sings that repetitive song
The words are wrong
And I am sick of repetition
Sick of doing and saying the same things over
Repeating the same mistakes
Laughing at the same jokes
Tripping over the same slabs of pavement
Same same same
Nothing new



54/46

That's my number
The song I shuffle my heaphones to play
So now the sounds of the surrounding people are waves
And I am standing away from the seashell
Far from the shore
And fingers firmly fixed on the replay button

Can't listen to nothing new now
All sounds the same
Remixed and packaged
And repackaged



45

And my teacher used to say there are just 30 people in the world
Or was it 20 or so?
Anyway
The rest
Just offspring and variation
A tweak here and there, a slight modification

Me = my father, part 2
You = probably
Your grandparents part 3
And me?
I am just a part of recyclable history

Part of the repetition
Love, war, religion, politician
With only 45 minutes before the weapons of mass destruction
Blow


26

Of March
We march
Through the same streets
Malet Street to Parliament Square
Where protests fizzle into the past

We were here for Iraq
I tread the same track
With a pre-written placard I've plucked from the side
I trip over the chant
And the same piece of kerb
I just missed
The last time

The last time
They said there were WMD
They gave solid numbers
45 minutes
Sounds more sure
Than a rough 3/4 of an hour
Or a vague quest for power
Or oil
Or the need for foreign soil


2011/1990

And he sings into the megaphone
A witty ditty of a comparison:
"Mr David Cameron
Margaret Thatcher's evil son!"

Draws laughs from crowds
Who then intone
The same chants against cuts
They sang before

And no one talks of history being made
Just of repeating
Eating into its own self-referential archives
And making a few devious
Deviations

1
Just so we can tag a number to it