I began writing poetry as a teenager and never stopped. I read poetry, my all-time favourites, are Marina Tsvetaeva from Russia and well, dozens of others.
I’ve felt that love is wrong I’ve felt that the stepping stones Went into a whirlpool of drowned dead men I’ve felt that death blamed me for its broken teeth
I’ve felt that tree never had blossom And that streams never had fish I’ve felt that the only star in the sky Over the populous city really was alone
I don’t know if I’ve ever done anything If, when I looked at the sea, it gave birth to red cherubs Flying into the sky and entering the sun
If the iron gates of your soul Became like a summer dress On a designers studio table Asking for restaurant takeaways And filling in desk diaries
If I ever forced a change in the game Where turnstile bowed to me like coachmen And raised their hat and took my ladies bags To the swimming pool surrounded by trees With the singing of birds of paradise
Too quickly, I have to end it As if hanging men were watching accusingly The origami structure of love That are too fragile to be allowed to be real
Underneath Underneath that other you Underneath Underneath another you
Triangle you Percussion you Inca you Maya you
Your soul
That he dissa- Pears into you Inca you Maya you
On you The “L” shape Of the other you Where you disappear
L shaped you L shaped you
Close up things
Sometimes I feel I’m on a rope ladder that I have climbed up too high or climbed down too low That I’m carrying a bird in a pocket of my mind and that I nearly drop it into a piece of a dream Stretched like skin between the rocks of a cave That all my childhood days were empty like abandoned coal trucks linked together That I wake up in one each day without an existence My eyes would play with the close up things that my eye could reach Close up things were like a family This was my family before I learned to cry
I cried it all out Alone or in anger alone Yet some of it was stuck down deep Like coal in a deep mine So I drank it out I drank until only my bones were left of me I drank until I was quite sure That no one was there
If I can, why can’t I? Imagine mountain ranges far away a seashell garden a wide window of smiling glass and my soul sitting there musing over some happy event
I hear A dustbin lid clanging Someone telling someone lese What to do Amongst the hotchpotch building Of clashing brick and glass Executive and homeless Un-embracing and arrogant Class system, pecking order Of a flightless chicken coup Of London’s Ginny life
Celebrities fly in we love London they say smiling for the camera Oh it’ fine if you can afford it Mutter the pigeon waiting for spring to begin
If you can’t afford it You are squeezed into the paste tube Of backyard life
You get told what to do You get to make the dustbins sing
The only thing that’s happy Is the dustbin It gets All it wants to eat Everyday It is emptied once or twice a week By slaves in dumpsters Who never speak And sometimes it even get a special treat Of unwanted food In plastic raps Old ironing boards Old pipes for gas Oh, it’s great, great, great To be a dustbin
where is my community? It used to be like an ocean Where I my community? It used to be like the sky
Then some man in a pin-striped suit Got snipping at it with his Ryman scissors The land, the whole land was soon Cut to pieces, is it going to burn?
Breaking up a community like this Was what the Assyrian did to their conquests Here it done by team-leader Here it’s done by estate agents
Pueblo house Here Pueblo house Cherished By small birds Who visit the laurel hedge Or the tall birch trees That they Love excitedly With eyes and wings And bird songs Pueblo house I would rename you Pueblo house If I could To humanise you To take you off the grid Of municipal rules and squares That have counted The doors and the windows That charge for bedrooms Does it matter How many bedrooms In the flat? People here Do not want to live by numbers Do not want to live In categories In ordinances and censuses They come and go Stay still or change I have been made to believe In corners of stone And brick walls In tiled rooves and square pavement stones Yet I look for neighbours in the windows I listen for pigeons But here now There are people In pueblo house Who love and hate Fight one another Make peace Form allegiances Make lasting relationships In the courtyard They work On their cars Like secondary beings Like pets that are Part of their families They move shadowy Through the gates Into the mainstream of life They thump the wall When they are angry With pueblo house They stamp on the floor Above their neighbours In retributions They slam doors When their peace Has been threatened They gather in random groups Like strange adults Quizzical With no cohesion They whistle or sing Like territorial blackbirds Or loudly clear their throats For who knows what reason But pueblo house Covers them over Pueblo house Tucks them into bed Sings to them In the silence With another kind of silence Unrealised Unspoken Communal Enclosed Closed in Struggling Against the orders From the outside From the government As the postman Comes in and out Not smiling Not smiling At the smiles He does not find In pueblo house In a pueblo house One person’s sadness Is everyone’s sadness One person’s happiness Is everyone’s happiness Don’t let the world Carve you up Like new toffee On a tray And let you go cold I hate the name Birchfield It invokes School beatings Thorny surreal paintings Strengthened by building rules For enclosed spaces For detainments For disciplines I could live in a place Like pueblo house In a pool of humanity In a multilingual Multicultural Epiglottal Of doors on stairs Of sounds and silences That you would expect In a pueblo In a pueblo house
Woman of the pueblo
Pueblo: humanises a place as a state of being, as a set of values and allegiances
She’s worn her clothes so long And now they are worn out The city is tired out The streets are worn out
She wears the same clothes She washes them and then she wears them Like the moth is worn out by flying Like the bird is worn out by preening
The full moonlight glow brightly Crisply defined in the pool of blackness But the clothes that she has worn for so long Are now worn out
It is not by the laws of the seasons It is not by the capacities of wardrobes It is the absence of distant planet It is the wearing away of coastlines
It is the gap between full moons It is the length of endless tunnels
The rules of the skin Are thermometers, are barometers Science became involved When skin asked for a king
The rules of the skin Are eyes, are pictures The movies became involved When kin wore clothing
The planets turn nakedly in their orbits With barely an atmosphere Skin moves thinly And makes the whole body cold
While animals sleep on the frosty ground And the moon relishes her cold mirror Skin demands gold fabric and pearl buttons To cover her broken machinery
The bird of justice Is as hard as stone Criminals are warming Like spiders from their eggs
They cover the bird of justice like tar She runs through the woods She is captured by a sea captain
He puts her in a cage in his cabin Where she instantly dies of shock
The bird of justice cannot move her wings Her eyes cannot see a living soul An evil spirit put a spell on her And now her justice is cold
Looking behind me I see affirmations like columns of stone In those stone columns is trapped The water of love
Who could be so cold as to seal it in? Who could be so hot as to dry it up?
That their affirmations are rare Are vultures of jealousy
If humanity has a sea level It is a thin cover of water over the sand It does not make things grow In the heart
It affirms the rocks and stones But it leaves but so many of its children
In our Easter disguises Are thatched roofs Lifted by the wind The masks of children Are left on the streets
In our Easter disguises We follow the seasons of wheat And give up eternity Of the human heart
The fertility of the land Comes once a year We give birth to babies Continuously
under our Easter disguises our faces fade away our breath begins to smell foul our sense begin to ruin us
do you make winter fuel expensive does wealth dwindle in inter?
Do we crawl into summer like abandoned pets? Do we need fattening up?
Can you keep the storehouse full Yet make fire worth a fortune
Can you clothe the king in gold braid? While we sit by an empty fire grate
To those who make fire for money Will fire come to you freely?
I slept in a classroom Made of people The walls were made of people The desks were their desks
I moved around From one group to another People were all I cared about People were all I cared for
Then someone invited me to the door And I looked out to see With astonishment The glowing cloud The mushroom cloud Of a distant explosion
We are not afraid To nuke them said our leader We will defend our interests
they spoke slowly like dolphins slowly like volcanic eruptions of how their ocean is growing taller of how their home was decreasing
and then you were shown the giant incisors of the ocean waves cutting like beavers through thick trees cutting through the cliffs that crumbled like cake
they spoke slowly like stars glowing in the night they are the children of the ancient footpaths their huts are filled with the dark waves their eyes grow out of the ground like tall rhododendrons
then you were shown the plan of their village you were told how they were captives there among the oil drums and the heaps of rubbish bags and you were reminded of how they used to be free
run away, sleep with the polar bears in the ice caves and stay there until all this goes away
the ocean is upside down it’s head is a great deep monster growling in the deep ocean trough and with his many tiny toes he runs beneath the sky
the ocean is an upside down giant his head is stuck in the ocean depths and on a million legs of wind he hangs from the sky
the deeper you go down to his pillows of rest the more you tremble his voice is the sound of a deep sea whale his mouth can swallow a fallen star
Newtok, A New Beginning BY KATIE ORLINSKY The Yupik village of Newtok in western Alaska, population 380, is sinking as the permafrost beneath it thaws. Erosion has already wiped out nearly a mile of Newtok’s land, and it is estimated that in three to five years it could be underwater. The entire village is in the process of moving to Mertarvik, a new village site about nine miles away. Newtok is the first community in Alaska that has already begun relocation as a result of climate change—pioneering a process that many other Alaskan villages may soon undergo.
Time flows like a river for us A river that ends with the choice of eternity or death Time grow like the sap in the early spring flowers Time has to jump from one species to another to continue
Along the shore walk the swordsmen Cutting down anything they come across Sinking any boat moored in the reeds Throwing the fishermen into the river
At the rapids they gather like bears Like winging bears they seem to fly Mixing the blood of their victims with the white foam Piling up the dead on the down river shore
If all of life was dead time would cease Death is the enemy of time and of life