And On

a home for my words

[andalsotheravens]

pride week in Bristol

When I say I am proud, I mean that I am grateful that I have never once been threatened with death or harm or segregation based on the women I love, that I reject these antiquated views and that I am a human, the same as any other, and I am flawed and perfect and I will not let our heros down.

I am one of the lucky ones

It sucks to be a woman, but at least I am white. And it’s dangerous to be gay, but at least I’m middle-classed. I have a uni degree and I live in the UK, and the worst anyone has ever done is shouted at our joined hands or looked horrified when we came to dinner.

People stare, but no one hits us, and that’s lucky, and when we march we march for the dead and the dying and the hidden and the suffering, and we march against anyone who says that our siblings are not deserving, are not human, and we march against hate and incomprehensible rage.

And we also march to honour the fallen, the trailblazers, and to say to everyone who confuses lesbian with bisexual and asks us ‘how long’ that we are here, alive, people, and we are not afraid. We march to share joy with our friends, to hold hands and build a town so that if (oh god what if, but not here, not in this day and age, but what if) we get thrown out we have somewhere to go, people to hide with.

We march to make a promise to ourselves, our future beings- if the worst, oh god, if he wins, if they roll it back- if any of that or the rest of the horrors that we read in the papers comes true we will not hide, we will not betray the people who fought for us, we will rage and burn and fight until we build this world again.

And so I am proud, because people are cruel and the only way to beat them is to smile, smile, and not step down.

[andalsotheravens]

writing essays

There was a metaphor somewhere at the back of my mind as we stepped along warming streets in the moonlight last night

(it's not really moonlight, not anymore, it's about 95% streetlights and 2% the hypnosis of my phone)

About love – or was it marriage? – and about time and tenderness and life

But I forget, now, whether the object of the metaphor was shoes, or something more like the life of an ocean whale,

And if it was, what point was I trying to make, deep in the heart of my insanity? What words were formed never to see life?

At the time I thought that if I could only make these words appear then the heavy-bearing, angry slog of work and home and all and much would just fade away

Banished by the force of my creativity, my shining star, the smugness of my wholesome life

Yoga doesn't work

Not in the way they say it does- oh, it stretches and relaxes and it makes you weep-

But the real truth, the real path to serenity is in madness on a moonlit road, in conversations whispered against the skin, in home

Peace, it seems, needs work, or work makes us work for peace, and that's a metaphor my tired mind can understand

[andalsotheravens]

You know this fic for charity thing? Am I allowed to join in with blithering disjointed poems?

[andalsotheravens]

Promises

The thing about the future is that it is scary It might be nice cool, green aliens scary, or oh god we ruined the planet scary, or everyone is secretly a cog in a machine scary and do you even know who your neighbour is (although that scary is irksome because it hits a bit too close to home) We have glorious successes and withering defeats, and we might forget everything we've ever known through the warping mirror of time, and it's hard to tell whether it's more terrifying if we do so through progress or if we do so through loss We are hurtling, inevitably, towards the future, towards change, and towards our intangible, terrible, becomings of never-more, and so we take our fear and pin it down on screen and page and ink, and we make it majestic and absurd and we colour it in with fantastic shades so that we know that this will not be us, this is a story, a fiction, and we forget that time is a slide and a plummet and inexhaustive We use these stories to peer behind the curtains of what could be and dart away, amused, intrigued, scared, but above all safe, secure, and home, speaking a language we know and that we know our children will know, forcing the future into a box, into a book, away, away, away

[andalsotheravens]

We’ll call this jealousy for now, one day make it love

I guess I know you better than anyone, right? Or even if I don't, I know you, and I love you And more to the point you love me Because there is no ownership here, and everything we have is purely consensual Given, maybe for a day or maybe forever, It's a risk and a rush and a promise that makes it worth it A coin and a currency all of its own And you make me happy Like a warm hearth, or flooding spring, you make my heart feel alive Like the world was only ever an illusion, a play thing, until you came along And I make you laugh, or at least, when I panic I tell bad jokes, And you tell me every day, every hour, that you love me, that you are happy

There is no one in this world who will ever be able to get inside my head Not fully, not truly, Lonely little islands, trying to touch But not one of us can change that, that is not why I write Not now, at any rate If I love you, I can let you go- if I love you, surely, I can be alone- I can do anything for you, love everything you do Love is not all consuming if we want to breath But when I think of you I think of jealousy and need and I want to know all your thoughts and to give you all of mine All and completely, time and time, until we are I don't know One person, perfect? I do not love myself, how would I love that? I just know that you make me feel whole, and I am selfish, and want always to be a whole

[andalsotheravens]

Latte

If you want me, I'll be drinking coffee

Because I can still afford coffee and because I have learned

That good coffee is an indicator of affluence, that the cup in my hand

Red painted, paper, glass, a heavy mug,

Says that I am part of this world and should be considered

That I am not part of the multitude- poor, sad multitude,

Unworthy of living, unworthy of care,

Lesser and lower and beyond my sight

But I have my coffee and I drink my coffee and immediately coffee says

She could write, she could sing, she could be busy working on documents and papers

That spool out and out and show that she can do, she can be,

That coffee shows that this is her throne, her home, she speaks BBC,

And knows Italian words for milky drinks and probably thinks, and she has enough money to be one of us

One of us, one of us, none of them

And with my coffee I can reap in the world and hope and pray and laugh and lie and say

That I am that person, and I have worth, until through deference to my pretence

They give me worth and make me what I want to be

Alive, unhurt, speaking clearly, dressed neatly,

A good egg, a deserving girl, all of this and none of that

I become worthy, and I endure

[andalsotheravens]

tags

who am I, any of us, to judge you your dreams

of happiness, your sense of belonging, your smiling

face against the road that did not take a single one of you

to the destination you were promised

you write long, empty posts, short, heavy notes, and

your heart does not break when it should but instead

marches on, boom after boom after boom, a weary

living object of hope. 

This is not the house you should have had, this is

not the home, and yet you still dream the dreams that

make you happy, fit the world around your steps, and that

bold and stubborn joy cannot be, should not be, must never

be

wiped away by any of us, hard and heavy and afraid of love

[andalsotheravens]

soup

you boil, for hours, for days and weeks and months, until the tipping point,

and then you strain it all out, take the carefully cut pieces, the floating bones

and toss them aside, for what use do they have now? their soul is in the soup

it should be perfectly clear, a bright clean thing, all the ages of our ancestry,

gathered together in perfect simplicity, a bowl in a kitchen flooded with sun

perhaps we are still young enough to not know the truth of home, but our

bowl is filled with the clouds and shadows of the restless sea, the storming

river, our bowl will never run clear but it still speaks a truth that chimes like

a bell out over stormy oceans, keeps us afloat. not our truth, but shared

[andalsotheravens]

always

I don’t like the word always

the long loops of the letters making fetters

tying in an unknown later to the uncertain now,

building walls against the paths and pretenses of a future never seen

making a promise to wear like chains

give me a specific obligation, an agreement for now and now only,

a fixed term always, a finite cell

give me illusions for the mists of time, so that there is always the word maybe

someday

the belief that all this could change

I don’t like unending agreements, heavy contracts

and so I think you must be some form of angel

for my first, last, every word was you. Always you.

[andalsotheravens]

I am reading The Bees

come soft with me into this long day

rest your hands gentle on the corners of the world

and breathe

oh breathe, my darling, turning into the night

the tight locked deep trod mechanisms of this world

until the sky is frozen, perfect clear

the sun one long moment over man

and take my hand

my darling, take my hand

and we shall rule eternity in this time

[andalsotheravens]

At the bus stop

That was quick, I said, but it wasn’t It was someone else whose name is lost to time and static, and you Were unaware, wrapped in thoughts of the weekend, in Your own private hell I miss you, I screamed to the mountains, and they Did not hear me because I could not scream I live, I said, softly, to nothing. I am and I breath and I think, and the silence looked back at me In a riptide of silence, battered and broken and aching Made soft by the ocean, made nothing by madness, a pain and a word and not more I hurt, I said to the island, and it watched me, aloof and afloat on its twisting paths. I hurt, and it sat there, alone and unbeing, just like you and the bus and the crowds

[andalsotheravens]

I met a woman in the pub last week

Is the smile still a smile if the receiver never sees? 

Is intention good intention if it falls along the way? 

If the needy and the suffering take the smile and the light 

Is the smile still a smile, is the wrong turned right, and will the morning 

Dawn a little brighter after a long and lonely night? 

Is the sunlight still the sunlight if its lover’s dead? 

Is the daywarmth truly warming if not meant upon our bed? 

Can the sun intend its sunlight, can the smiler help their joy 

Is human kindness just a titbit or a right to take by all?

[andalsotheravens]

flowers in castle park

I hope that you are ever as happy as you look today

That love becomes love becomes love and the long years

Slip away slowly as victories won, as a brand new sun in the sky and

A new reason to rise and the joy that can only be found In lovers hands and lips and eyes

Remains constant

I hope you get coffee, live in a small flat on the wrong side of the centre, find peace

I hope that your hearts become one become whole I hope that you fall, that the bright colours of autumn flowers haunt your dreams,

That you hold tight in winter, steal kisses, steal clothes

I hope you love her, that she loves you like an ache in the heart, a balm,

A fresh start, the wind in the river and love in your eyes and this moment forever in time

[jerryharris3]

Evolution

One hundred years is nothing in the galactic eye,

a blink of time and space,

what lessons pass by,

a mosaic of changing place.

Do you know what love is?

Do you know what it means to sprout cities from the fire’s eye,

sun child, and Discordia array?

Do you know the order of the phoenix?

Do you know love and rebirth in the flowering heartbeat of a summers a day?

-Jerry Harris III

[andalsotheravens]

Home

For a brief while there was the smell 

Of fire roasting chickens, pickles the size of my fist, 

Wood chip and dark and dusty woodsmoke 

For longer there lingered the memory, 

Enhanced, improved, and untouchable 

 For a while there was the thump of drums, the sun 

Going down behind green velvet hills, the taste 

Of bitter cider harsh on my tongue, little circles, little bickerings 

For a while I ran away to coffee shops, 

Black gold hot and misty in the air, mixing with music 

Hopes and dreams and lives too small in a land too big 

Accents that were not mine, stories I couldn't understand 

For a while there was vodka, red wine, 

Sweat in the bar, bodies crushed on a dance floor, 

The swirl of fiddle music, drinking games, 

The taste of regret, of success, 

Grand homes that were not mine, 

Small flats that I could not keep, 

Faces fleeting in and out with the drink and the smell of smoke, 

Heartsickness, loneliness 

And now there are the few rooms of home, 

Coffee on weekends, the smell of laundry 

Red wine, bad TV, long days in bed 

Stories, written friends, stamps from homes 

We can't imagine, people we can't forget 

You, ever you, in the doorway, the sunset across a city 

Grey skies and rainbows and a different smoke 

Home.

[andalsotheravens]

in america

We have blocked out the sun, so 

You lie there softly as the little birds 

Coo and worry in the great desert beyond, and 

I have turned off my phone, so that the harsh mechanics 

Don't stir and shake you from a hard won rest 

I can't tell if you're happy, I can only watch and guard you, and 

At the very best I can believe your word,

 But if I do nothing else I want to make you happy 

Raise you up gently next to those little birds 

Ply you with coffee until I can make the world a softer place 

But you are asleep and we have blocked out the sun

[andalsotheravens]

you don’t, you know

even if your form could fit down the long corridors of life,

could your mind comprehend the metaphor, understand the longing for the room at the end

could you rationalise despair, could you understand

the pieces in the wrong places, the wonky edges, the faces turned away

the bitter, blinded emptiness that masquerades as depth?

when you cannot know the rage that comes with being powerless, the tears

that can only come from your own lack of knowledge

I can never conjure universes, can only make the stars dance by twisting the subtle signals to my brain

my angels are flesh and blood and brashly spoken, my prayers unsaid

I am not you and you not I, though we might be one form, one body, unbroken

leave me my despair and give me leave to wish you well.