Yours to hers
I heard an annoying little squirt on the bus the other day say,
'It's a free world, I can do what I want'
I wanted to turn round and say,
'Don't be a cunt. It's not a free world. And if you only do what you want, you die.'
But I didn't. I let out a sigh and kept my mouth shut.
And I thought, is it a free world?
Are you free?
Am I?
Or are we just getting by?
If the whole world is in chains except me, am I free?
What about half the world? A third?
See if I apply that logic it becomes fractured.
Maybe my freedom is inextricably connected to yours, yours to her, hers to...
Maybe in fighting for your freedom, I find my own
finally find my way home to a place I've never been.
I see your chains but I need you to help me see mine.
Do you miss me
Do you miss me the way I miss me?
I opened my eyes and now I’m not sure I even wanna see.
Life was simpler when I was naive.
It was less terrifying when I interchanged believe with deceive.
No one ever told me that freedom is full of fear and faith.
No one said freedom is lonely.
I thought I was free
but really I was just a divorcee to honesty.
Fear and faith exist in the same space, interlaced,
is this grace?
Do you still love me when my fear chokes my faith?
Do you wish I still had my innocence?
All that’s left is dissonance.
I’m finally more at home with the unknown
but I’m still so fucking alone.
This is our resistance
She stared at the wall as she told her story of chains
That reached through the unspoken generations of abuse
And weaved their way into her being
The tentacles of control so strong she was invisible.
This was the story of her mother,
The story of her cousin,
The story of her sister
And the story of her.
Trauma is built upon trauma
like corpses are buried above each other.
No one believed her.
This is her resistance.
The boy ran from himself fast and hard.
‘I’m gay’ he shouted, but the one who ran away was not gay.
He threw his bible under the bed and let it rot.
He searched the internet for proof that he was him in the dark of his room.
He tried bleeding away his attraction to the wrong human
but his blood was the same as yours.
His blood was the cost of shame
And it flowed, river flow
Into a waterfall of silence.
Thirty years later, he is still running.
This is his resistance.
‘I didn’t give her what she deserved’
His body forced relax whilst his eyes grasped for a hug.
He didn’t know how to get away from the life that was his.
Hammers and crashing wardrobes,
Violence is the voice of pain he chooses to walk away from.
How do you talk when you haven’t been taught to speak?
He drinks his voice into being and asks for one to sit beside,
One to offer presence.
He left her because he was hurting her because he was hurting.
This is his resistance.
Resistance is inscribed on the souls of the enslaved.
Resistance is being alive when your world has caved.
You are not mine but you allow me to behold you
I will not take what you do not give
for my lungs expand in the receiving not the taking.
What you give today is enough.
What you will give tomorrow will be enough.
When you cannot give, it will be enough.
I promise to not colonise your heart.
It is your own.
I do not want it
but please let me behold it.
I've found sanctuary in your soft eyes.
Did you know soft is a synonym for courage
that drips from the cracks in your skin?
Someday maybe you won't have any skin
but for now your eyes are the only crack to see you through.
Don't blind me. We have time.
It is enough
Love.Like
You love me but you don't much like me anymore.
I can tell by how you keep score of all the ways I'm not like you.
You hear me, but you don't listen anymore.
Sometimes it seems like more of a chore to explain who I am to you.
You taught me to love truth and now that I do
I find that I am fighting you.
You taught me that love is the centre
but it turns out you meant more of a vendor where you buy the kinda life you want.
You told me everyone is made in the image of God
except of course those who live in Sodom and Gomorrah
they're fucked.
It feels like there's no point in talking to you.
I guess by now we have a different worldview
and you wear yours like a tattoo while I hold mine lightly.
You tell me you want the best for me
but it sounds like manipulation and if I don't do it your way
you've already signed off my damnation.
I thought grey hairs were supposed to denote wisdom.
Seems sometimes they are more like a prison where you are both captor and captive
creating your own schism between what you love and your fear of change.
Look, I'm ok that we are diverse.
Life seems more like free verse than a sonnet anyway
but watch who you curse cause it mostly comes back at you
and there is no button to redo.
I need to remember I'm not angry at you,
I'm angry at your ideas that cover the truth.
Cause ideas are more dangerous than a sword in your hand.
You can be weaponless but there's still death in no man's land.
Maybe you think well I'm not doing the killing
but ideas kill and I swear this is the hill I am prepared to die on.
Stop trying to make me your clone.
Don't worry I have enough shit of my own to atone.
This is not an arms race so just give me some space.
Because this hurts to say.
I love you but I don't much like you anymore.
Empty Space
Are you the man you dreamed you'd be?
That's a line from a song my friend wrote.
That night, it was floating round my head like it had nowhere else to go.
I was driving home with loneliness in the passenger seat
and I remember thinking, this feels like deja vu,
is my life just stuck on repeat?
The country roads were quiet.
It was just a random night.
Who knew space could ever feel this tight.
Tears are a sort of currency
but I didn't know what I was buying.
Maybe the desire to live
even if just to do more dying.
I had to stop in a car park,
the words were clouding my vision.
Alone in a car in an empty space.
I was that space
So empty I could just be replaced.
For some reason, I shouted fuck off
to a God I wasn't even sure was real.
I felt like my layers of skin were peeled to reveal
the shreds of my humanity.
Blood and water, water and blood.
Is that all I am? Water and blood?
I thought you promised there wouldn't be another flood
but what if everyday is a flood
and I am not the one being saved.
Maybe I'm just enslaved to this loneliness that follows me.
Maybe my whole life is just one long dam fight to be free.
If I'm not alone then why do I feel so fucking alone?
When the noise is gone and I sit there in a car park in the dark.
No longer even sure if I have a watermark
to distinguish me from all the other lonely people in other car parks.
So I sat there crying until all the water in my body had seeped out of my eyes.
Now I was only left with blood. Life is in the blood, not the water.
My tears had bought me one more day to live.
Maybe tomorrow I would cry blood.
I started the engine of my car,
reversed back out and drove home and got into bed.
I'm not even close to who I dreamed I'd be, but I'm alive.
Here I am
Here I am aching for the world.
Aching for what's lost and aching for what's found.
Aching for silence and aching for sound.
Letting your tears run rivulets in my heart
cracking it apart with the love that you stole from me.
Sometimes I wonder how do we live with this universe of pain inside.
A sprain that never heals, stain that never washes out.
Chains perpetually linking us to one another.
Never free, but at least we see each other.
I'm not afraid of my body in pieces on the floor.
I'm not afraid anymore.
I'm not afraid of letting pain be the door.
I'll listen to the folklore of your heart until your story is a part of mine.
I won't ignore you any longer, I'll explore you
cause I'm not afraid anymore.
This ache asks nothing more of me than to listen,
to hold, to breathe, to let go
to let it flow until the scars are the valley which hold the gold.
The stars my geometry foretold.
My shape is still unknown
but at least I'm not alone in this mess we've built.
Pain is not my enemy,
it's my identity and as I taste the ecstasy of empathy,
You are beautiful to me.
I see you, and you are beautiful to me.
Even if the throbbing of the world is all I hear.
Even if the throbbing of the world is all I hear.
Nada
It was a silken night.
The kind you only dream about
With the moon dripping tears of softness
On the cool hills.
Light was reluctant to bloom,
Reluctant to break the spell.
Emptiness, stubborn like the tide
Came in waves and heaped over my head.
Nada
It sunk into my body,
Tendrils wrapping around my bones.
I was clothed in fullness, enveloped in darkness.
The silence broke the world
As pieces of you, pieces of me
Covered the nakedness of the grass.
I sat wondering was I left alone.
Was I the only witness to this miracle?
I lay down, soaking the dew into my being,
Inhaling eternity.
Time means nothing now
In the vacuum of the soul.
Sometimes you feel alone in your own body
You are there and I am here.
One letter difference and yet
Can you see the insurmountable distance between us because I can.
People say we are united, humans are all one.
Open yourself up to being united with everything, everyone.
Yeah, I've had moments like that but can you not hear the story of humanity?
You are there and I am here
and here is not there.
There are two different words for it.
I'm trying to be there, with you
and yet you don't feel my nearness
because the distance between those words remains.
I'll try again.
Talk to me and I won't understand
but touch me and I'll know
because touch is more visceral than words
and wrapped in my arms
here and there seem a little closer together.
I know you feel alone.
I feel it when our bodies collide,
Slide to the left, away from your body, away from your pain.
You can't bear to remain because you despise being here.
It's ok; I'm alone too.
I'm learning how to be here.
I'll hold you tight
until you feel safe again
until your body is your own,
until my body is my home
draining the distance between here and there.
Press your body against mine,
Hold your head in my hands.
Maybe we are less alone when we are alone together.
Lost in loss
I'm made of holes
Frightening arcs of silence
Alone in myself
Small and tender in your absence.
The cathedral of my soul is no longer whole
and now the pain rattles, bouncing off the walls
Screaming hollow, hollow, hollow.
Loss is a paceman eating me from the inside
Fear is an acid making me hollow, hollow, hollow.
You are dead and I am here
Am I here?
It will be ok you said
But it will never be ok again, that much is clear.
Sometimes loss kills the only things worth having
And all I feel is hollow, hollow, hollow.
Your cold hands, your cold cold hands
I wanted to touch them but I didn't but I did.
And they were so so cold
Your cold. cold hands
My heart is falling out into your cold, dead hands.
