You can’t help yourself,
I know. It’s indiscriminate,
this flail-handed need.

You hurl it at the masses.
Unsolicited cheap-meat
mail shot pretensions.
Fling it at every wall.
See what sticks,
even if it stinks.

Conversation like spam.
Shoved at me, one-sided,
no interaction required.
Just that I buy into this.
A half-baked recipe
to stake your popularity.

You’ve worked hard.
Read some self-help bible.
Social marketing. Networking.
How To Make Friends And…

At least your material is green:
relentlessly recycling a mulch
of wit’s soggy leavings.

Cut and paste sentiments.
99% of people who read
are tuning out right now.

Your conversation is spam.
Bloating and over-processed.
I’ve broken my tin opener
and gone vegetarian.

I like to hug trees. I do.
Just sometimes. In the dark.
Or at the first wink of dawn.
Breathe slow in ghost leaves.
You might think me barking.

I like big rocks too. Stones
standing. Me, in Lilliput
or Wiltshire. Mythic things,
history and munching sheep.
Bright air biting city knuckles.

I don’t like buses. I won’t
embrace them. Necessity
dictates my timetable. But
epiphanies occasionally leak
raw from slashed backseats.

The songs.
Was all about the songs.
Deep and dark and lyrics
to explain you. You said
you identified:
said the suicide
was in your soul.
I grieved.

The songs,
they moved as
our bodies moved.
Crooned words of
love and despair.
Emotions templated.
Instant way in, tuning
my heartstrings to
slicking of limbs
and tongues.

The songs,
they were just songs.
Beautiful songs, yearning
screws to ease me along.
Slow kissing rhythm,
bedspring percussion,
cries in harmony.
Always the same songs.

I know them all by heart.

So many songs.
the songs you said you lived.
I will not hear them again:
my ears would bleed.

He cultivates
a slim moustache
and a persona.
Both to be twiddled
and tweaked at,

along with a dinked row
of flesh-eating plants,
kept hungry and eager,
in his study window.

He addresses them,
(“old thing”, “dear heart”)
wads their gulpy orifices
with lengthy extracts
from his latest work.

They critique only mildly:
their practical bargain
for sunlight, nourishment.
Captive chewy stooges,
indulgent to his needs.

His adverb addictions.
Such obvious rhymes.
Plump leaves swallow
all his flourished wafts,
his epic intentions.

They steel their stems
against inevitable wilt.
These afflictions, puny
enough to be endured.

Carnivorous
to his excesses,
they suck it up.
lick his open palm.

“It was announced last night at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival that the Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos campaign has won the inaugural Morning Star Award for Protest in Poetry 2013,” says Mark Burnhope, one of the anthology’s editors, all of whom have put staggering amounts of work into the project.

The full article can be found here!

http://ftwpoetsagainstatos.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/for-the-win-poets-against-atos/

Well done all at FTW – much respect and very proud to have made my own small contribution.

Holly

She’s queasy in all this daylight.
Squinty and itchy and bleached.
Pavements ache under her feet.

She wonders what the moths do
whilst waiting for the soupy night.
Time to flitter round lightbulbs

and piss people off. She smiles,
like wires tugging sceptics’ lips.
Thinks she’d make a good moth.

It’s the thinnest coating, a skim over skin.
She’s never been one to lay it on thick.
Just enough. She’s got herself covered.

Protected. Contained. Disconnected.
She will not be moved. She can take
any heat or friction. Does not bruise,

scar or break. She has made herself
invulnerable. Toughened glass heart.
Locked her fragile things far, far away.

Deception assumes she’s translucent.
A witch laughing in a see-through mask.
Blades wilt. She winks, brushes you off.

Ok, so I can’t think of a song about Teflon, but in the meantime, have a bit of Sia… I love this woman’s voice and lyrics!

You don’t speak for me.
Complaining on behalf of.
Righteous mouth gabbling.
Jabbering out invective.
Incoherent, inconsistent.
Incontinent tongue.
Social fungus.
Never stopped to ask.

Never thought to question.
Are your intentions welcome?
Do I want your intervention?

Look! There’s a minority!
Flex your limpet limbs.
Insinuate. Join in. Fit in.
Tell them you’re shit too.
Just like them. Integrate.
The world’s against you.
You’ll belong somewhere.
At last.

Piggy your self-loathing
to slack-hang heavy
on unguarded backs.
Strangle your scrabbling
hands round needy necks.
Sate yourself.
Squeeze ‘til they bleed
for you to lick them clean.

Parasite your prejudices,
hook them deep.
Inject your infection.
Dig in to share your pain.
The Scream and freedom
of expression. Regression,
therapy and stark catharsis.
Only you can truly understand.
Only you can truly help.

You don’t speak for me.
There is no uprising.
There is no revolution.
I don’t want it. No need here.
I have other things in mind.
No bonds to untie, no unspoken
fears, no tears before bedtime.
Nothing tasty for feasting.
Nothing here to stimulate
your salivary glands.

There is no solidarity.
Co-dependent atrophy.
No common-ground “we”
for security. Numbers
are for maths, not safety.
I am not for crunching.

I stand on crowded trains
and for individuality.
You don’t stand for me.
And I am thankful.

A Doodled Blessing

I carry these hopes for you.
They are big but not heavy.
I cherish them in my fists.

Not long before you’ll grow
fierce into your bones, and be
someone quite extraordinary,

because you already are.
If you’d only stop cringing
from mirrors – take a look.

Ok, so it’s a poem about celebrating individuality and suchlike… Wanted to include a song. Now, I like Lady Gaga – she’s a bit different and seemingly quite nuts. I do however have a bit of an issue with this video: on one hand the song is about encouraging young girls to have healthy self- esteem…. And yet she’s prancing about just in bra and pants. Mixed message. Hmmmm…. But the song’s stuck in my head, so I’m going to share it anyway….

“These Jeans Will Change Your Life!”
That’s the label talking. Capitalised.
Emphatic italics. Exclamation!
It’s one hell of a promise.
A very big ask.
Yes, I said “ask”,
not the other big thing.

I’m dazzled. Denim-tempted.
Are the odds any better
than a lottery ticket?
And I do like a zipper fly,
with two percent lycra for fit.
These jeans might just change my life.
Maybe. Possibly. Not quite sure.
How are they meant to
know what I want?

The inside track to happiness
might be via the inside leg.
Sturdily stitched seams.
Belt loops to pull up by.

The power of suggestion.
Bargain-dangling dreams.
High Street blindness.
I’ve shopped around.

These jeans, they’re supposed
to change my life. That’s nice.
But maybe I’ll do it myself.