rowan writing words

bug smith - they/them - 20 - writer from the UK

[mynameisnotbug]

Elegy to my Androgyny

O dog-cat flat-faced boot-lacer beaming down the ages with your jaw set in asphalt, somewhere there is a star-shaped hole in the crowd waiting for you.

O bird-legged long-limbed short-cropped caller swaying with the grasses spreading over your skin, somewhere there may be a pair of jeans that hang like a dream.

O child of all worlds, you belong to none, and no tongue or script can fix down the seven hundred threads that yank at you while you twist them through your blushing hair.

O all-lover all-fighter keep your fist and your song in the air, keep growing boughs of yourself and may there be none worth the forceful convention of the pole saw.

Your girl-boy magic is an easy talent but it flows on like a deluge, and we will make you a god of light that flickers and is hidden in smoke.

[mynameisnotbug]

After Mary Oliver

after The Gardener by Mary Oliver

Have I lived enough?

Have I loved enough?

What have I touched, and where, and how

lightly, with heat and a sure aim,

with the potential blade of my will,

Did I leave a hole in the world?

Have I considered Right Action enough?

Whose heart have I measured, and against whose, and which pieces

of the worldly cloth did I tear to hold it?

How steady is my conviction?

Have I come to any conclusions?

Have I experienced happiness with

an upturned hand, what have I given

in sacrifice, offering, suffering, is this

sufficient gratitude?

Have I endured loneliness and embarrassment and jealousy

and cruel gritty consequence

with grace, or gloating, or loving impatience?

Is it ungraciously lonely to say this, or think it,

How much is too much?

When I step out of this poet's garden,

what good will come of taking a cutting?

What tenderness in the roses?

What tendency in the children?

The pruning knife that separates the stem

is the thought of a simple man.

[mynameisnotbug]

Golden Shovel: "You're"

“a clean slate with your own face on”

you’re a rock and a stumbling ocean and a

country swept away with some new clean

borders you’re a pregnant slag heap of slate

you’re hands and slabs to build a church with

you’re not holy and you’re unfixed in your

great grand mother tongue you’re your own

coiled lock you’re what is left of a good face

pried ancient red flattened to paste it on.

[mynameisnotbug]

Revision: I Don't Know How to be A Woman Anymore but I'm Sorry I Broke Your Window

Here’s breathing broken glass: inhale, exhale, and blood.

The spit-up shards still hang on threads around your mouth.

They drag and rattle bright as chimes between my ribs.

Again you face me, wanting things and finding lack.

I sweep myself of all forgotten paint smooth-skinned.

Remember where the colour went, when this was mine,

Or yours, and not too many rooms stretched wide and cold.

I will remain a dreamt-of house where echoes knell

(of unborn sons, old landlords, workmen, salesmen, cops).

I’ll never make a mother out of septic wounds.

I’ll father nothing: doomed to hag-stone maiden-aunt.

The empty panes I’ve stomached turn to nothing new.

[mynameisnotbug]

my lover fast asleep

my lover lies slightly shining

shining sea at night

shining shoes for weddings

weddings in hotels

weddings each fall

fall in like a wall

fall like waves back

back curved shell-like

back in time

time again waking 

time stretching out

out of film in my memory 

out for a walk alone 

alone nights are colder 

alone your eyes flare

flare on the water searching

flare for the dramatic look

look forward to that 

look at your lips move 

move forwards when we dance

move fitful beside me 

me and a smoke out walking 

me left waiting at home

home is my lover asleep

home sick and sort of missing

missing teeth in photos 

missing out on something 

something something i love you 

something about this one

one day we will go to bed 

one last time not knowing 

knowing how

knowing you 

you breathing in slow hisses

you and your soft skin

skin to silk to skin

skin in your teeth

teeth like sea-quartz

teeth under pillows for change 

change cannot hurt you

change now out of those

those whispers

those marks like ink spots

spots of light brush your nose

spots of blood on the sheets

sheets for music 

sheets of lightning and rain 

rain

music

[gritsdotcom]

december’s issue of This is Not a Video is out now!

the theme is nostalgia and it contains work from @gurneykink @/alien.barbie.doll @mynameisnotbug and me!

[mynameisnotbug]

lyrics from may.

[mynameisnotbug]

all your parts are mine

all my body is yours if you need it

all my life i was apart from you

all my life i was a part of you

tell me the long stories, we have time

i have no words for how much i love you

we have time

take down the walls, you are all mine

put up the curtains, all you are is mine

[mynameisnotbug]

i stub the cigarette on the steps of the opera house, under the gaze of Molière and Cornielle, under the glare of the angels. maybe i was born to be a visitor. maybe we were born to find these quiet moments and watch the world as it goes around us, as i sit beside the carousel and inside it. outside the theatre and inside it.

[mynameisnotbug]

He tells me something and I think,

“You deserve better than a world

Like this.” I think how I want to 

Be kind and sweet and safe and warm.

“I want to understand,” I think,

“I want you to understand me.”

Like the slow pull of the deep sea.

Like the slow light of the moon, calm

As the waves’ breath. When he tells me,

“I don’t understand some people

And their cruelty.” Their Cruelty –  

I hope never to be cruel.

[mynameisnotbug]

Where did it come from, everything in me now? Am I a rock like my father? Am I an ocean like my mother? Has my heart been passed down for a hundred generations? Is that why it feels so bruised? Who will restore the ancient heirlooms of my eyes? I wonder if my grandfathers bellowed like I do, if my grandmothers wrung their hands like I do, if someone long ago began to feel this way and it never stopped and it never will. My nana used to smile and her mouth looked like mine. My jaw was pried from a man I never met. I want to tell them I’ll keep it all safe. I want to ask them how they took care of it all so well. I want to ask them what they might take back. I want to say, I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, I love it, so kind of you to think of me.

[mynameisnotbug]

July (a poem)

So it’s a Sunday, 

Early afternoon,

Oven-hot in the train carriage;

You don’t have a ticket.

A child clutches a plastic bucket and spade.

They are green and red, respectively,

Your face and your eyes.

You drank too much last night

And kissed people you shouldn’t have done,

Your head hurts and you’re sitting on the early afternoon 

Oven-hot train to Paignton

Of all places.

You tie a headscarf round your neck, like it hides anything.

The boy is going to the beach

With his mother, who looks like your mother

And is not looking at you or at him.

You are going home on the only train,

Halfway between a dry, quiet crying and your sea-swimming childhood.

It’s a Sunday, early afternoon,

Oven-hot in your mother’s car and she is smiling at you, in the mirror,

Clutching your hangover-green bucket,

Your misery-red spade.

by @mynameisnotbug

[mynameisnotbug]

Poetry is, or might be, the bending of a lense

To sharpen the image - folding and twisting

To double down your meaning. Why then

Can I not make myself understood? Listen.

There are things I should tell you years ago

Things I should never say, safely hid

Like a child a dog or a body

Under a sheet that smells like when you were a kid.

All this hangs together in the silence or noise,

And I am begging you to read without my notes

Critically. You are an artist. I hope it shows. 

Critical. I am a poet, God, I hope it shows.

by @mynameisnotbug

[mynameisnotbug]

Grief is just love with nowhere left to go

And missing you is just the ache of overstretching:

The cramping of cross-country reaching out. 

My love is a marathon runner. 

My legs ache when I think of you.

My love races the miles over, day after day.

All I need is a good pair of shoes babe,

All love needs is a pace to keep the distance.

by @mynameisnotbug

[mynameisnotbug]

minizine Seeing Ourselves by Bug Smith (me) 12/06/2022, considering of one aspect of icons in gay culture - also posted on my instagram at @ / mynameisnotbug

[mynameisnotbug]

below the ground - a poem

(inspired by Robert Frost)

I have not slept in such a long while now,

Too late to try, so blind I find the way 

And even miss the tricky stair that bows

Hollowed out by woodworm and decay. 

I wander down and out into the yard.

The grass is sharp and damp between my toes

And daisies dot the lawn as if like stars;

I wonder what the earth is like below.

A month ago we turned the soil with forks,

The stones and hidden roots there to be found,

And as I turned the worms face up, my thoughts

Were also turned to down below the ground,

The press of solid earth, a grassy quilt

That sounds a peaceful place to sleep, I think. 

Should fill with dirt, my veins with settling silt.

May flowers grow from me, in red and pink.

by @mynameisnotbug

[mynameisnotbug]

ideas for zines i want to make :

a fanzine for instant noodles (my beloved)

a perzine about claims-to-fame and connection

a minicomic about figuring out i'm aro-spec

a short story with printed illustrations

a how-to guide for talking to kids

a collaborative zine for young carers and disabled folk

"something borrowed" - an autobiographical comic about being enby and dating my shoplifting cishet ex-boyfriend

a found-objects zine for bottle cap badges

a collection of badly drawn dogs