All change!

The Ellipsiad was set up when I became willing to wave my words about in public. Since then, I've worked at developing my performance skills (something I very much enjoy) alongside other creative endeavours, all of which has become somewhat admni-heavy and hard to follow. Therefore, I've decided to put all my creative endeavours in one place and have produced a new website covering my art, craft and words. So, please do head over there to have a look. There will be no new posts on the Ellipsiad, but it will remain as an archive of what I've posted up to this point. Thanks and see you over on Wordpress!

vs the haters

Political and media rhetoric bleed into society, creating at atmosphere where it's OK to openly hate, first on the basis of race and religion, but it spreads as the haters feel increasingly confident... This happened yesterday.

Transphobia

I hear shouts out in the street –
not the boisterous hollering
of schoolkids just released or hormoned teens,
but an altogether uglier “oi, come ‘ere”,
“leave me alone, go away”,
“wot the fuck did you say?”
So my ears prick, I look and see four against one –
the one, a middle-aged man,
a transvestite (yes, in broad daylight!),
skirt and leggings, not a dress –
it’s winter, what do you expect?
The four look like a walking stereotype –
trackies, trainers, crap tatts
and though I try hard not to judge beyond behaviour,
it’s not easy – they’re twenty-something,
way beyond the playground
and still hunting for someone to bully,
their victim’s difference used to excuse
the urge to deliver a kicking.
For a moment I thought about not getting involved,
it was the first time I’d witnessed transphobia first hand,
but I’d heard the stories, none with happy endings
and so I chose to intervene.
By now the four have chased the one
into a local shop where the owners,
a quiet, friendly couple, hide behind the counter,
shocked by the black-hot bile.
I push through to where he’s cornered
and stand doorman-style between parasites and prey,
tell the hate-quartet they’ll have to leave
and won’t be hitting anyone today.
They try to have a go, yell about what he called them,
like that’s the way round it happened,
rant about what he wears,
some rabid shite like ‘it shames real women’,
though through the shower of spit-thick vowels,
I cannot work out how,
nor what makes him dirty, pervy,
worthy of their spite.
I give them my best ‘whatever’ face,
reiterate I will not let them translate hate to hurt,
though I can’t retract their words, and we all know
the sticks-and-stones rhyme doesn’t really work.
The alpha-bigot thinks about bunching a fist
and taking a swing,
meets my gaze, thinks again –
they monkey-walk away,
leaving insults and finger-flips as litter in their wake,
and once across the road, they run.
The one tells the police ‘no need to come’,
nothing to report, to him it’s just an ordinary day.

A tour of the exhibition

I spent the last week as one of the artists at a community-based arts festival organised by this fine new local organisation, the Southampton Chamber of Arts - here's a tour of the work on display...

Deep in the heart of heritage

Chain-heavy, iron cobra’s caught mid-strike,
Halloween-themed stove spits sparks
from once-discarded engine-parts
and the shepherds’ skull and trident flies
above a split black cat, LED-red-eyed,
cyborg skeleton inside,
guards a charred-black infant, never cried,
dustbin perch, peeled-back hide,
while sharks chit-chat with flamingos
gold-chain style, watercoloured curves
beckon me and sigh, lick fingertips,
turn their faces coyly to one side
to bat their lids at stained-glass poppies,
portraits, skies and symbols back-lit
as the rare cog-headed butterfly
alights upon the pulpit and the chop-shop motorbikes.
Across the aisle, oblongs shine out at me –
images of Tuscan countryside
boardwalk shadows, misted seas,
sunsets, sunrises, winter trees,
way-back-when St. Denys scenes,
and happiness is boxed
by a smirking purple dame,
turquoise feathered hat on top,
looks knowing at a Merlin motor in a frame
and the seasons’ turning burns like flame,
a lyrebird sings angelic strains,
strings strummed and humming on church columns,
piano hammers hung on silent springs
awaken tigers, lilypads and poison frogs,
happy ‘see my bits’ blue dog,
layered skull and octopus,
half-a-Dalek, Ganesh dances,
Hanuman makes mischief on a plinth
and a plus-size waxwork hand
with giant whorls and arches
reaches out to teach us –
what might come of this?
Nothing’s ever lost by asking.

Origins are not the only fruit

Here's the first-ish version of a poem that came out of Apples & Snakes/Adam Kammerling's fine Origins poetry workshop as part of Fareham Arts Festival. It'll probably get edited n times before I'm happy with it, or maybe not - who knows - and may even end up as part of the long 'Stingboy' piece I'm (still) writing - but it came from an exercise looking at listing places we've lived, things we've said, music that was formative and so on, with the aim of incorporating them into a poem. Hope you like it.

Untitled

I was born into a house of golliwogs,
spike-eyed toys,
soaps and sitcoms,
of throwaway laughs at 'Pakis', 'Micks' and 'nig-nogs',
of being dangled by one bony wrist,
a skinny meat piñata
hearing the repeated line
“if you won’t respect me,
at least you’ll fear me”,
a self-fulfilling prophecy,
all an inadequate man could offer me
bar processed pap
and welder’s-callus slaps,
driving home the message that
I wouldn’t like that foreign crap,
those raucous songs,
and anything beyond the grey-and-beige
is wrong, looks like trouble,
but doubled-up one school night,
snuck out to taste the flavour
of Iron Maiden,
so much sweeter than copper on the tongue,
a lonely lad’s first gig
well worth the late-back round of Dodgefist.

Fast-forwarding from ruddy rage,
riffling halfway through biro movies,
corner-paged,
I’m in Nai’posha, the Maasai’s cattle waterhole,
named for rough waters, ‘that which ebbs and flows’,
sun-drained then quenched
with rains and silty seasoning,
and it’s my inauguration by means
of shield and spear and knobkerrie,
story-telling,

quaffing nailang'a,

blood-and-milk straight from the gourd,

now I am a tribal brother,
clansman,
witness to the intimate cutting of others.

In the latest scene,
I say “I do”.

A fatal illness

I was recently interviewed for ASLI (Art Saves Lives International) which is an organisation aiming to tackle mental health issues and stigma through creative expression. The interview about depression and childhood physical abuse is published here and includes my poem 'Stingboy'.

Polyamory - of a sort

From a seed sown on facebook...


The Prince

“How often do you fall in love?”
“Very”, I reply.
“How much is ‘very’? Tell the truth.”
“Every day”, I sigh,
with a book, a scene, a character,
a passing patch of sky,
a pleasing string of numbers
or artistic use of line,
with accidental patterns
that grab and hold my eye,
in marble-veins or water,
or window-frosting rime,
with songs of depth and solitude
whose singers make me cry,
a glance from someone beautiful,
and more so if they smile,
with the sway of wind-blown trees,
moments out of time,
and sometimes just with strangers
who might otherwise pass by.
“So, should you fall in love less?”
“I suppose that I could try”.
“But would you really want to?”
“No, my love is fine”.

The tarnishing of our jewel-in-space

I recently heard the phrase 'blue shit' meaning the foul activity of the Tories. Here I explore what 'blue' should be and what they have done to it.

Blue Shit

Blue should be the colour of clear skies,
of water-scattered light,
but you pollute it,
plunder and abuse it,
floating factories stripping the seas
of life, dirtying the aquamarine
with greed and the last gasps
of those tossed aside,
world overboard,
ignore the cries,
focus on your dividend size.

Blue should be the colour
of a tropical lagoon,
a pure mountain tarn,
or ancient ice,
but you put a price on it,
asset-strip-mine it
for a fragment of hedge-fund,
an extra week of winter sun,
or to treat your aspirations
to a reupholstered urban-tractor 4X4
where you primly sit when you drive off
to get your arsehole bleached,
singing "me-me-me"
from your perfect peach.

Blue should be the colour of depth,
profundity and wonder,
but your arbeit macht frei,
consume-or-die
vision of the world
pulls it under, turns everything into
plastic landfill's methane hiss
and the fake nappy-ad piss
drunk en masse
by WKD lads' shagging-shirt hordes,
tears condensing on the chilled steel
of empty wards
where the poor ones kneel,
no hope, so beg for the rope,
for you refuse to feel
the ripped-away smiles
and cold dead lips
of your ideology's vampire kiss.

Trying, and failing, not to say 'shit'

He's an unpleasant, self-interested, mean-spirited person who should be nowhere near the reins of power and influence. Being unable to vote him out, I decided to attack him swearily, doggerel-style instead...

I.D.S.

I’ve got Irritable Duncan Syndrome,

that nasty little shit

takes pleasure from the harm he does

while getting paid for it.

He’s like Chucky’s dirty uncle,

with tiny nipping teeth,

biting monetary morsels

from those who have the least,

and every time the corporates

pass laws of gain and greed,

he laughs and pumps his evil fist,

sowing devil-sprouting seeds.

His claws, they grasp at benefits,

the Welfare State’s his wallet,

he steals from old and young alike

to line his greasy pockets,

he failed at everything he did,

got everything for free,

now paints the poor as lazy oiks,

spits on their hopes with glee,

so if the touch of I.D.S.

gives you anguish of the bowels,

flush him with the other turds,

and feed him to your flowers.

I care not for your bejewelled headgear

A subject I rarely tackle as I'm no monarchist (inherited privilege and position = grrr), but equally have no love for the idea of a President i.e. another layer of self-serving politicking. However, the hypocrisy and mismatch between 'austerity' and ridiculous wealth couldn't go by without comment...

The Queen’s Speech

A billionaire in a fifty-million quid hat
sits on a gold throne
and tells us about austerity, tells us
“Serfs, kneel down,
kiss my fucking crown,
my velvet-pampered bum,
bow and scrape,
and if you tug your forelocks hard enough,
you might get thrown
some scraps and crumbs,”
forgets to explain
why the sixth-richest country
can’t afford a welfare state
but can buy bombs
even the army doesn’t want,
speaks about how now
if we try to organise,
they’ll demonise us,
stamp down hard
with heels ever more jackbootlich,
pretending it’s to protect ‘essential services’,
some vague idea of Britishness,
try to make us nervous,
too scared to take action,
keep us split into factions,
with distractions - horror-stories
of immigrants, the poor,
the sick and unemployed,
how our island’s full, shore to shore,
with those ‘other ones’
some are shades of brown,
follow different gods, or none,
some are anarchists – shhh,
we all know they’ve got black hats
and fizzing bombs, might protest,
disturb the wealthy’s cosy nest
and you can’t invest to get
fat dividends from informed dissent
while Take Me Out’s light-up Cupid,
helps keep everybody stupid
and tribal, like never-ending sport,
gameshows, fake reality TV and soaps,
political-slot comedy barely on fire,
state-sanctioned satire
pretending to have an edge
but there’s more revolution in a single veg
allotment-grown, free from Monsanto,
or meal given away on the street,
each witness borne
and DIY spark of creativity -
for every nose-in-the-trough
torn down from a lofty perch,
all Commanders-in-Chief,
CEOs and High Church,
takes us one step closer
to something better,
and you know, if this is the end
of entitlement-culture like you say, Liz,
get ready to live without the Civil List.