Penny Whistles

I saw the children lining up with penny whistles in their hands
And the email list of parents with pennies slipping through their hands
I saw the rows of children i was teaching how to stand
Would they play those pipes lowly as i was lowered in the sand

On monday I'm taking them to the war museum
And on Tuesday they'll be making guns in D+T
For the first time in my life I'd rather it was me
But the lesson planned for Wednesday is that history repeats

So I won't fight them on the beaches
But I'll fight them in the streets
And my bullets will be the hearts and minds of the children that I teach

And there's no space for this in my standard teaching plan
But I won't see this generation butchered
And damned

Bloodlines

When I was about ten, or eleven

Going back to school in September

All of my Maths lessons were forty five minutes long

Trigonometry became rocket trajectories

Duck duck goose became duck and cover

My auntie told me how

In the fish-less Scottish villages of her childhood

In was cold enough during a regular winter

And sunrise offered no solace only a reminder

So they dug deep into themselves and called it shelter

That history repeats is not ignorance

But doctrine

Threads coming together weaving the cloth that we’re wrapped in

Choked with

And buried in

Civilisation’s finish line is a burial shroud of satin

And I can see it happening

Again

Just like before

Counting the ways out by the hours on your contract

We never stood a chance

And they say I’m being paranoid

I should be smart

Like the bombs that miss ammo dumps

And hit a newlywed’s first dance

Because what would War be without martyrs?

And all of my mental maths tests had tanks drawn in the margins

And now that I’m older

I can see through the lies that they sold us but I am still afraid

The Latin root of my name means ‘To Conquer’

Tracing my bloodline back is literal

You just follow bodies

Left by boy soldiers committing war crimes

And I know that there is more

To being a man

Than this

But I was afraid of being conscripted

Now I’m afraid of being convinced

Mason

The first thing I saw was the Mason’s face

Lined with dust

As he cracked my eyes open with his chisel

The wind stung my skin as he stripped me naked

My hands still chained in a bed of my own making

He washed eons of dust out of my hair with a wire brush and file

All the while I watched the crags of his face for signs of home

Waited for my arms to be free to hold him

My hands to be free to hold him

My fingertips to be free to hold him

Why else would he have me reaching?

This is in keeping with my nature

This wrinkled lip is just a mirror of his features

He couldn’t give me life

But I’ll die for a lot longer than he did 

Crossroads

Standing at a crossroads

Trading souls for sub-prime mortgage deals

The corpse of Robert Johnson feeds

The worms beneath my heals

I flash my plundered pearly whites

My teeth are pretty perfect

But I’d dissolve them all in alcohol if I thought that you would like me

And without a second thought I would replace them all with Ivory

I sputter pesticides and genocide the honeybee

And then I turn them into moustache wax

With diabolic Chemistry

And I cannot go back

I have your culture in the duty free

A trophy fresh from Africa

My proudly butchered poetry

I grind the griot up

And turn him into instant coffee

Snort it off your woman’s body

And proclaim that she is free

So come up and make a deal

For I’ve got cultures far and near

I wouldn’t call myself a vulture

But I’m all about Veneer

Penny Kintsugi

I saw the lady of Penny Lane unpicking her scars daily
Cross-Stitching gold into her veins she'd had twenty years of training
And blazing trails across this tapestry
was more than simply kintsugi
She pulled the ink from magazines
And made them manifestos

She braved a tornado of 'Hey Babys' with a smile across her face
Because her mother she had taught her how fast love can turn to hate
And since the days she played with Play-Doh
They've been trying to remake her
Into innocence
Before her first acquaintance with a snake

And she wanted to make herself more than the sum of her parts
She wanted to fly far and study the arts

So when they barred the doors she shaved her head to be her own Rapunzel
And when they saw that she was shorn they were sure that she was fallen
And when she said please touch me there they were sure that she was wanton
But none of them could ever give her what she wanted

Because now she plays with Plato
Dismisses Socrates as so-so
She has no time for your narcissistic

Swag
Squad Goals
And Yolo

It's all I can do to follow
The beacons she is lighting
The lightning of her whip-crack footsteps
is absolutely blinding

And I suspect I'll never catch the lady of Penny Lane
But once she enters your life things will never be the same

Speak in your own voice

I was at a poetry slam in New York and the MC added a rule beyond the usual
No singing
No props
Only three minutes tops

He said, please
Under any circumstances,
Do not take off your clothes

And I thought how common is that here that they have to make a rule about it?

And then I thought about all the times I kept my shirt on during sex
How you asked me to turn the lights off so I wouldn't see the stretch marks on your legs

I saw poets wearing scarfs to hide the scars of nooses on their necks

And I didn't need to see the bullet wounds to know
That it means something different here when your dad never comes back from buying cigarettes

I saw a woman get up and spit a verse in Hebrew
About how she was stabbed at a pride rally in Israel
She got the lowest score of the evening
But the MC praised her choice to speak in her own voice

Instead of changing it for points

Which was why I didn't understand how the winner was an old white man
Doing a piece on police brutality

I couldn't tell if it was the truncheon round their necks
Or my hands down their throat
That made kids choke
I can't breathe

Running

I'm doing Couch to 5K she tells me
Her legs are limber and clad in lycra

I want to tell her that on ancient savannas
Humans would hunt their stronger, faster prey
By forcing it to run
Until it collapsed

I'm training for a Marathon she tells me
And I find my breath catching even though I'm just standing beside her

I want to tell her that Philipedes dropped dead
After his burning lungs burst
'The war is won'
On his blistered lips

Do you do any running?
Her teeth flash white as she asks me

I want to tell her that I ran the length of the country
trying to forget my childhood friends
That I walk the streets of this bottled city
On the balls of my feet
Poised
In case I meet them

I want to tell her that I wasn't too busy to go to the hospital
That I couldn't watch them turn the tap
And drain the fluid from your lungs

That I went to the pub
And left my pint foaming on the table

Do you do any running?
I want to tell her
That this morning, I ran to the lights
So I would be here
When you asked me