A man of many mothers

People don't ask me 'Who's the man' anymore
But they always want to know who carried me
Which one's your Real Mam?

As if every stepmother isn't a Real Mam
As if every sister who raised up a younger brother isn't a Real Mam
As if everyone who's adopted or fostered isn't a Real Mam

I could reel off a list of Real Mams longer than a giant's handspan

It's that one, by the way, it's not a secret
I just don't see why it matters

Oh, you've never met anyone with two before?
Two is just a number I choose to share with you who speaks in binary

But when you asked who carried me
I ask why my language has not the words to describe

I'm the child of  a lesbian tribe
I'm a man of many mothers

Mother

They say that we look alike

That our eyes share fire if not colour

That our feet are made for marches

Our hearts have weathered darkness

That our wrinkles come from smiling

And our calluses from jiving

But I’ve never felt more like you

Until I ran through a sea of indifference

And feigned ignorance

After a woman fleeing her husband

Statistics slipping from his clenched fists

Tapping

You always knock when you come into my dreams

Appear when life is fraying at the seams

And I can hear you tapping

As you batten down the hatches

And hollow out my bones

Cos you believe that I can fly

And this tapping is a code

Which isn’t Morse of Five by Five

It is the scrape of chisel  

Carving sigils down my sides

And you don’t even try to hide

No, your handiwork is labelled

You stamped Runes along my spinal cord

Proclaiming I am able

You give form to thought which was before

A figment

Or a fable

And for all of this I’m yours and I remain immensely grateful 

Stationary

They told me that stationery would become my life

But for the first time in years I am moving forward

I will buy rubbers and rulers

But not to keep myself straight and ordered

My highlighters will not gloss over my past

I no longer need a compass to find my way home

I discovered a scar on my face

But couldn’t tell if it was from Chickenpox

Or if I’d cut myself shaving this morning

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

Terrorist Sympathiser

You have my sympathies if you load bullets into a Kalashnikov

Instead of your children into photo albums

You have my sympathies if you down bottles every night

Because they are needed for a more volatile kind of cocktail

You have my sympathies if you can no longer passively resist bullets

When they snatched your crying baby and held it down under the water

Until both your screams were silenced

And you were asked

What kind of mother would stand by and do nothing

And you replied

The soldiers were coming, and I had other children

You have my sympathies

When the boat capsized and you cursed the merciful and compassionate

For blessing you with three children but only two hands

You have my sympathies

When the bomb exploded under the truck in front of you

And you stumbled bleeding back into the barracks

Only to find the faces of your dead friends staring back at you

In the bathroom mirror

And with a fine toothed comb you scrape them out of your hair

And package them in matchboxes for their mothers

And when what’s left of you sits cold outside the high tower and you hear the clink of ivory cups as they swill blood and repeat the old lie,

It is good and noble to send someone else to die for your money

You have my sympathies

The most Dangerous Man

I am the most dangerous man in this room

I tick all of the boxes

I am young

Straight

White

And happily assigned by my doctors

If I get old I will be even worse

Because old white men are destroying the earth

I am the soldier pinned down in the plaza

And I build the tanks they throw stones at in Gaza

I am the racist that fears immigration

And I cut the legs out from his education

Make no mistake I am a vehicle of imperial hate

And it’s not beautiful or natural if I use a toy to masturbate

My sex is base

I’m an animal salivating

Dominating you is an expression of power

If I marry you

I become more likely to kill you than any stranger

I might walk you home

But I am the danger

If this disgusts you

And makes you cry out

#wellnotme

If enough of us say that then one day it won’t be

But right now

I am more likely to be killed by a man like me

Be it murder or suicide

When men don’t care

And boys don’t cry

It’s not just our victims who die

Space

When I do press-ups I feel as if I am clinging on for dear life as the planet spins through the void

Fingernails dragging canyons through granite

And when I stand at the shoreline and breathe deeply it’s not the moon that moves the tides

 When I do squats I feel as if I am Atlas holding a bowl of water full to the brim

As I shift my weight ripples spread out and islands shake

But it was a lot worse when I dropped it

I couldn’t do anything for Pangea, it was fucked

I collected the broken shards and cut my hands open forging them into new lands

When I read at night, my fingers trace the pages and these whispers spill out into the wind

I’m known to get carried away by a good book

You were a difficult baby

You kicked and screamed and cried at night

But when I hung a starlight mobile above your cradle and told you stories of the things that lived there

You slept

I never dreamed you’d use it to light your way across the seas

You’re pulling away from me now

As all teenagers do

It’s natural

You’re less interested in my old stories

And it’s amazing watching you make your own

I’m giving you

Space

But you can always find me if you like

At the edge of the world and the depths of the wild

Mountaintops and waterfalls are always a safe bet

We don’t have to talk

It’s enough to know you’re there

Magnets

We are not Romeo and Juliet; we know how that story ends

We are not Orpheus and Eurydice, but if you back you will see me

We are not Harry and Hermione; she’s so much cooler than Ginny

We are not Prince Charming and Snow White

Or Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty

Or Prince Charming and Sleeping anybody

Or Prince Charming and Cinderella

Not Edward and Bella or

Jacob and Bella’s unborn Baby

Not Carly Rae Jepson

And the man who never called her maybe

We are not Kanye and Kanye

I sing no River Songs for you

Fiction can’t contain our love so Science will have to do

We are magnets and gravity

The fuel of burning stars

We are quantumly entangled

And you’re always in my heart

Butterflies

I want to hold your hand and see

Is it cracked and dry like mine from

Steam

Does it smell of coffee and cream

Sour milk stained cotton

Chocolate worn like a second skin

I want to strip back each layer of sweet mess and

Lunch time stress

I want more than a five minute overlapping shift

I want to wash your hair

And soak your skin

Then drain away the day’s detritus

Dance and spin and laugh and sing

With Aretha there to guide us

I want to break open the cold glass cases

And swallow the butterflies that rest there

Instead of gazing at their sleeping forms

And donating some new ones

I want to know your every nuance

I want you to want me to.

A girl who writes

Ellie Goulding had the right idea but you should be the artist

Even Wonder Woman was made of clay

You shot my heart like Artemis

While you rode away you are a modern Parthian

Aphrodite is your protégé in the Classic Pantheon

Grist got the gist with a girl who reads

But really that’s like saying a girl who breathes

When you can’t be Hermione but you can be J.K

Making hearts go manic with your magic’s the best way

When you open your mouth and your soul goes press play

My heart goes Bill and Ted no to yes way

So whether it’s books, plays, poems, songs, prose or an essay

I will praise you for laying down letters

Cos you’re making me better

At this

And when I tell my kids how I met their mother

I’ll say we were on the same page

As each other 

Shall I compare thee to SDSS J0907?

Shall I compare thee to SDSS J0907?

Since we don’t have summer days

How about an intergalactic hypervelocity star blazing through the heavens

Making gravitational waves

See this star and its mate were doing laps

While Sagittarius was earning A* grades

But its mate got a bit lax, went space Icarus

In this case the event horizon of a black hole stands in place of wax

And the binary system that filled farmer’s heads with Tatooine dreams

Went from spinning around a cosmic cistern

To slingshotting a single star out on a galactic escape mission

The bonds that had begun to chafe were smashed

Safe to say the star was free at last

And with space being so vast

I pray this brush with fate will be the last

The other was not so lucky

As black holes they tend to suck so

In scientific terms: it was completely fucked

But as this is a metaphor don’t feel sorry for that star

Just twinkle on my darling girl

And know which one you are

Train to Page

I flip the page on another half-digested poem

And wish I could join the drunks further down the carriage

Or sleep, twisted and contorted, face pressed against the glass

And make time fly as the blurry world goes past

I do not know if it is yours

In an age of typing I do not recognise your handwriting

A text would explain away the mystery

Take the myth and turn it into history

Sprawling, cramped and crawling sideways up the page

Notes with torn off paper to mark their place

My heavy eyes open and the poem is forgotten

I watch your words race each other

To the bottom

Strikethrough

The NSA spies on the UK

On the whole we haven’t got much to say

The CIA goes surfing

Then bombs a shrinking Earth

MI6 is full of pricks

Intelligence analysis

The mayor’s got foot in mouth disease

God save us mad cows

The KGB has a glowing record

And a Ninja President Cyborg

Or Prime Minister, everything’s Premier

In Glorious Mother Russia

The Chinese [REDACTED]

[REDACTED WESTERN LIES]

The poet, with no history of drug abuse or mental health [WELL NOW]

Was found decapitated with multiple gunshot wounds

The police are ruling

Suicide