WRITINGS, POEMS & SPOKEN WORD
WEE SPIDER
WRITTEN FOR A FRIEND AND PERFORMED AS PART OF SATURDAY SPOKEN WORD 2020
From the beginning
There was one wee spider
On the window
The exact same place every day
Every night
I could see it against the streetlight
Small and delicate
Spinning and bopping on the web
Why are we scared of something so small?
So delicate
As it crawls along the wall
Why does its shape,
its legs terrify us?
Because we’re told to fear what you don’t fully understand
Now two wee spiders
Another has came along
Almost identical
It’s amazing the way they work
They’re keeping apart
One keeps to the corner
The other keeps to the middle of the window
Social distancing
Social spidering
The wind blows their creation
The rain lashes it
and things stick to it
One day a massive complex structure
Another day nothing is left
Amazing how it keeps just building and building again and again from scratch
One day I see the new spider has caught a fly
It takes it quickly and scuttles away up into the window frame
Did the first spider get anything
For months I saw this spider and that other spider
For the last few days I’ve not seem them at all
Maybe they know I’m watching.
THE BREATH OF KINDNESS
WRITTEN AND PERFORMED FOR SATURDAY SPOKEN WORD 2020
That warm glow.
That sudden rush.
Like a tingle.
A soft spark.
A reaction that feels gradual, slow and soft,
yet is so quick and forceful,
That smile starts,
That brimming from ear to ear, eye to eye.
The mouth widening.
The face releasing.
That tear
in one eye,
then the other.
The sniff in.
It holds you for a moment.
Tight and tense.
The tear drops.
That exhale of breath.
Letting it out.
Collapsing into it.
The tears now flowing.
The body uncontrolled.
Your breath shudders.
Breathe it in again, and again.
That’s kindness.
THE CURRENT CONSTANT
WRITTEN AND PERFORMED FOR SATURDAY SPOKEN WORD 2020
Contact, communication, connection.
A conceived or coincidentally constant cycle of keeping in touch.
Keeping out of touch.
The crackling of voices over a screen.
The slowing down and then the going.
Locking in to lock out. Locking down and looking up.
Grateful for the good and the great.
The small moments and the meaningful words.
The decided and the indecisive.
Emotions showing more with even less.
Learning in the now and not knowing what’s next.
Time is now more than ever in the now.
What seems so long can seem like nothing at all.
Wants and needs.
We need to want.
What we do need,
we cannot want.
The mind thinking and the body considering.
One impulse however seems against the other.
Ironically a survival shaped science of an unknown sport where have the wrong balls.
In which we have parted ways, becoming smaller yet underneath becoming larger.
This new sexuality, where we are in our bedrooms, where we have become the fluff from the hair we cut, we sit our bum, on the floor, the grass, a table, a kerbside, a doorstep for a sheer difference. We see a jug and a bowl in a different light, we are in a garden with a sausage and we are in a cinema but we are the screen.
HUG
WRITTEN AND PERFORMED FOR SATURDAY SPOKEN WORD 2020
There are many different types.
Different ways.
They have all one thing in common though.
Three stages.
The enter, the embrace and the exit.
Time, duration, intensity and temperature all vary
It’s said twenty seconds at least is needed to really feel a hug.
To release the bonding hormones.
Think back to the last time you shared a hug.
The most recent one you remember.
How did it begin?
A turn, a step in
A walk towards
A pause?
Arms stretched out.
To hold.
Or body made smaller.
To be held.
Entering a hug can be a negotiation.
Often quickly though, on impulse.
Without a thought? Or with subconscious thought?
An instinct, a feeling.
Do we agree in advance, “let’s hug!”
Is there a look, an unspoken signal.
Sometimes this is where it can get awkward
In a nice or funny way too.
The actual embrace.
Arms everywhere
Lower or higher.
Shoulders, in, out.
Waist?
Hips?
Heads to the side.
Which side?
Eyes closed. Eyes open.
Once in how long do we stay?
Do we move?
Do we pat or rub the back?
A squeeze or a light soft touch?
Is there a heat? Is that normal.
Is there a coldness
Is that normal?
The embrace is often the thing that gives the most benefit but that we rarely understand how or why it happened as it did.
You often think about how the other body feels to you.
Do you think about how it is feeling because of you?
How does your body feel?
Are you hugging the person, them hugging you or are you hugging each other?
Exiting can sometimes come with an automatic sense of relief or release.
A decompression.
Like a muscle has been tensed and then released
Air comes between the bodies again, arms widen and a step is taken back.
It’s funny how it happens naturally
In a short space of time
For a moment.
What a funny thing
What a funny, fuzzy, feeling thing.
A thing to be done as often as possible.
WHAT YOU ARE TO ME
WRITTEN FOR MYSELF
You are my frustration
My liberation
My mirror
My reverse
My focus and clarity
My confusion and questions
My thinking
My distraction
What am I to you?
SMALL GRACES
WRITTEN FOR A FRIEND - JAN 2019
Like wee trees, our foundations are strong
Our branches may not be seen high amongst many others,
We are rooted in to a deeper level
Leaves will change colour and fall to the ground
Not to die or be gone forever
But to enrich and strengthen the roots below
Branches will blow in the wind and be drenched in the rain
Only to grow stronger in the Spring again
Like a bridge over troubled water
And when darkness comes, rattling
We will play, create and inspire each other
Until the time to shine has come
Fair play to you and fair play to me
Always a carry oan we will see
If you need a friend
I will ease your mind
I’m sailing with our small graces right behind
GET UP
USED AS PART OF 29 30 PERFORMANCE IN 2019
Get up you brave coward!
From your open-eyed slumber.
Rattling with the racing mind of your empty head.
Come down from your deep hole high in the sky.
Say hi to the world that’s beneath you, above you and all around you.
Get up!
WHAT DO I NEED
USED AS PART OF 29 30 PERFORMANCE - DEC 2019
Is this forever.
Sitting here.
Again.
Feeling it envelope me.
Feeling like, me.
Is it really just me.
Can you feel it too?
Or am I just creating something.
Out of a need for something else.
What is my something, my someone?
What do I need?
It’s funny when people ask,
When they try to help.
There’s nothing they can do is there?
There needs to be a willing.
A trying,
A rising up and away.
A total change from this.
Rattling in my head.
The jingle jangle tangled mess.
The rumble of this tired jumble.
It sounds poetic.
It feels crippling.
Can you feel it too?
Or am I just hearing because the silence is deafening.
What is my something, my someone?
What do I need?
It’s funny when people ask.
When they try to help.
There’s nothing they can do is there?
Somehow they can’t see it.
And I can’t say it
But I know it makes it easier when it’s lifted.
Up and away.
This warm crushing on my heart.
Warm is meant to be soothing.
But I can’t breathe .
Or am I just feeling because I’m scared to feel.
What is my something, my someone?
What do I need?
It’s funny when people ask.
When they try to help.
There’s nothing they can do is there.
NEW YORK SUBWAY LADY
WRITTEN AFTER A TRIP TO USA 2019
I was looking all around for a face or for many?
Someone to notice me there, to hear me here.
In this tin can speeding through a tunnel in a land I was a stranger to.
With my drunken determination.
My warm, blissful ignorance of hope.
And there you are, were. An unknown face.
Cutting through me like a knife with your knowing stare.
A stare I didn’t know was there.
A connection that felt more than skip deep.
Healing me just as soon as it sliced.
A painful smile. Each bruising, battering blink of an eye.
You had listened to my silent call that fell flat with everyone else.
In the silence, your look shouted at me like the screech of the tracks.
The sudden stop at a station.
You shouted, sweetly, soundlessly in a way that accepted me.
Congratulated me on my fail and appreciated my attempt to break through the silence.
The silence stays.
The sadness at the thought of never seeing you again.
Of you never seeing me?
Or do you see me every day?
What do you see.
Speak.
The doors opened and closed.
As they have a million times. A million faces. A million more.
Two worlds we’ve become, again.
I hope when I sober up, waken up, I’ll remember you.
Or remember how you felt.
How someone in a world of everyone,
Can make you feel like nothing and like everything at the same time.
Thanks New York Subway Lady.
I’ll always forget your face
