Cardigan

Tonight, I couldn't speak to you. So I fixed your cardigan. Is that why you left it behind? I wondered if you were cold, right then, at that moment, wishing you'd taken it with you. I took it off and put it in my lap. I got out my sewing kit and spent a long time closing up all the holes around the neck. Lots of tiny stitches, more subtle than words are. While I was sewing I thought round and round soothingly, "that's better... That's better... that's better." It will be hard to see it was ever torn at all. I was sad when it was finished. There should be a way to stitch the night closed. Nights without you are a slow unravelling.

Inshallah... inshallah... inshallah...

My Heart

My Heart - Free-Write 20/10/10 I am not afraid I am not afraid to stand all alone I am not afraid to stand all alone with everybody I am everybody I am everybody's love I am everybody's love tearing open I am standing I am standing with my feet in the soil I am standing with with my feet in the soil of the earth I am standing with my feet in the soil of the earth that is my earth (mine!) I am standing with my feet in the soil of the earth that is everybody's earth all alone with everybody's love tearing open with my feet in the soil with my head in the clouds puffed up and floating all a-mingle with everybody's vapourish dreams of thunder crying rain down into the soil of everybody's earth soil of everybody's love dancing to my heart everybody's heart My heart is sweet, scarlet music. I am not afraid! ________ Every so often I get a leap in understanding, a leap closer to myself, and everything in my life becomes clearer. An actor/writer friend wanted me to take a look at a play he'd written, so in return, I asked for a little help with my performance technique. This was the day before yesterday, and it was all very informal. We just went through a couple of poems and he told me what he saw in them, and how to access the emotions of my work. As often happens in life, this exercise was illuminating in ways that extended beyond my performance technique. I realised that I try to shrink all the time, apologize for myself. I pull back when I long to go all out, I flake when I need to commit. I realised that I spend a lot of my time half-trying to express myself and half-trying to disappear. I had that little tutorial and it all clicked somehow. My entire being said: "ENOUGH!" So the next day(yesterday), I did a poetry performance that was filmed for an internet TV show, Manorlogz. It was a poem I'd done before, but something had changed in me. I wore red heels. I stood up straight. I didn't bother with my habitual 'look at me, I'm a poet but I'm like, suuuuch a mess' schtick but just paid attention to the piece and allowing myself to be alive on stage. It was liberating. It seemed like a microcosm of my life! All my shrinking had to stop! Fast-forward to today and I did my Free-write Wednesday offering, and the feeling crystallised into words. Every so often, I read something back and I get that feeling, 'yes! that's exactly what I meant!' And it's almost like being understood by somebody else. My eyes welled up. It seemed to mean something. No dexterous wordplay, I haven't excited myself with form, but I've shocked myself with the epiphany that I am full of joy - from nowhere, from everywhere, just to BE here. I got that feeling again where it seemed there was a clue to the order of things inside me, and that everything was connected.. I think maybe all artists - maybe all people in general - are stretching their fingers toward the light, trying to feel the pattern, order and beauty of the universe under the suffering. I am here. I'm here and I want to be here, deserve to be here, and need to be here exactly as I am, doing exactly what I do, feeling exactly what I feel. And you too!!! Jeez, I'm such a hippie... lol! Peas and gloves! xxx

To Whom it May Concern

Dear Everyone,

I am sick of writing. I would rather do anything else instead of writing. Writing makes me very scared and tired and leaves not very much time for speaking with friends or watching television. It makes me scared because it's so big, and I am such a small part of everything, and it feels like life is speeding by while I sit in a corner with a dunce cap on turning words this way and that to catch the light and going 'duuuuuuhhhh'.

I'm sick of constantly trying to find the right words to say things when there are so many words and so many things but at the same time too many words and not enough things and too many things and not enough words. I'm afraid that life is going to speed over my head like rush hour traffic.

I'm afraid that everyone is forgetting about me and talking behind my back and saying "where is she? Dead?" and saying what a rubbish friend I am because it doesn't seem like I'm ever really around and I barely go anywhere or do anything and what a weirdo and what exactly is she trying to make, anyway? I am sick of writing because so far it has taken me 432 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, a day, an hour and10 seconds to do this one draft. Or at least a year and a half.

I am sick of writing because everyone else has much more interesting things to say and report on Facebook and Twitter about all the shinier things they are doing and all the cooler things they are doing with words on various stages and theatres and even on TV instead of alone in ratty exercise books. I'm very scared a lot that I'm not big-brained or deep-souled enough to say all the beauties I'm desperate to put in this world.

I'm sick of writing because it creates this weird compulsive seeking of loneliness where you pray someone will call but then if they do, you don't pick up, and you're not sure what call it is you're really waiting for because it's pretty certain that God doesn't need your digits to reach you. Or really what you want is a warm, re-grounding hugging and loving and sweetness that's unavailable on a regular basis as yet because Things Are Not Established even though there's this guy who completely abolishes you with light like having the sun in your eyes.

I am sick of writing because my back is really painful from hunching over and falling asleep in my notebook and as a consequence I am never comfortable in any position apart from maybe in a hot bath which I very rarely have time for. I would rather be racing my son in the park and teaching him how to count with cotton balls. I would rather be listening to music. I would rather be eating pizza. I would rather be kissing. And I am sick of writing because no matter how sick I get of writing it is always the only thing to do because it's the only way I get to keep all of those things, the running and the kissing and the pizza, turning them this way and that to catch the light and going 'duuuuuuhhhh'. Even if I one day get senile dementia, or when I'm completely extinct or even if the world has ended I will have written those words and writing is the only way I get to say things like 'being abolished with light' which makes love always an especially beautiful thing no matter what becomes of it because this way I get to keep it all even while I'm giving it away and maybe now I've said all of this I can [sigh] finally... get back to work.

Free-Write Wednesdays

To help ease the feeling - neck-deep in my second novel - that I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing and will witness the complete collapse of Western Civilisation before even a first draft sees the light of day - I started a little group on Facebook called 'Free-Write Wednesdays' where members post/share a free-write every Sunday. Okay, I'm joking. Every Wednesday. Check it out here if you want to get involved: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=21727182150&ref=ts From now on, I'll be sharing mine on this blog as well as facebook, but here are the last 2.

Enjoy...?

Gem xx

Freedoms and Hungers - Friday-written Free-Write Wednesday 13/08/10

by Gemma Weekes on Friday, August 13, 2010 at 1:11pm

Now let me tell you about Johnny, do you know Johnny? Me, not so much. Johnny most of his life has been a free-wheeling, shiny-shiny man with his body always sky-angled and every movement in life he takes in the pursuit of open spaces. I don't know what to write about him except there is a lot to be learned from this man about freedom, what freedom is and what freedom does. It's a slippery word, he says. If you've pinned it down, then you've lost it, if you chase it, then you're a slave to freedom. And to be a slave to freedom is an oxymoron, no? He has an interesting turn of phrase halfway between an academic and a madman. He tells me the problem with human beings. He says the problem with human beings is that all human beings want a home, and all human beings are natural runaways. Sometimes they just want a home to runaway from. Sometimes they just want to runaway so they can feel that pull and tug of home deep down in that deep down swamp of their hungry bellies. He says to be human is about hunger, and that freedom is one of those hungers that sometimes directs you away from food. There's that pull always between the man who wants love, a wife, a room, a house, an ideology, a passion, a life-work, a God, and the man who only wants the freedom of wanting nothing. But what the hell do I know, I say to himself. I'm not Johnny anymore. I'm just a pile of rags piled up in the subway of Old Street Station. I've not been Johnny in a long time.

Love - (late) Friday Wednesday Free-Write - 06/08/10

by Gemma Weekes on Friday, August 6, 2010 at 4:22pm

Your profile over there, waiting
eases my face open, smiling, eases
my chest open, loving, and the night open
with dreaming, that universal dreaming
of embraces and homecomings.
We lead each other through the dark,
blind and deaf to the noisy cityscape. All is hush.
So good to see you. Good, right, true -
affirmative. I don't have
much more to give than words
but I cooked you dinner
I like watching you eat. I would do much more.
many days of conversation have piled up.
Gestures, insights, complaints, enthusiasms
and steep drops sometimes between words
when I am just -
looking at your face. I know this face
with more than my eyes. Our kisses are
too much joy for one body. I'm meltiiiing! I joke
Gosh, didn't God knit you beautiful
I'm clever just to make you laugh
so He can hear you.
What a sweet tangle we are
the smell of your neck makes me cry secretly
i haven't cried many years just
from awe! A great love is in me, bigger
than the sound of rivers or the
depth of sky outside my window
big, and deep, and quiet
I don't know big enough things to do with it
my mind is an orchestra of silence
the quiet after goodbyes with you is
like a blanket of snow on christmas morning
all is hush and sacred, and a train platform
becomes the scene of great humility and
passion
I surrender. something has happened to
me, is happening to me, and maybe we are
happening to each other
maybe -
i want to write something clever but my my mind
is drunk, all real love is mystical
all real love is God's -
(thank You)