Goodbye Whitney :-(

The night gets a little broken and
a little of the stuffing comes out

the first thing you feel is old. The second thing you feel is robbed
some people are more than people -

an era -
a cocktail of longago moments
a snapshot of you in pastel-coloured legwarmers
earlyyouth and innocence
her death is not
one nervous system stopping
its more like giving up
your childhood walking into your present and
saying "i give up"!

(But wait! Before you go - tell me
where do broken hearts go?)

Whitney was the one
who taught you about love!

from whom you memorized every vibrato
every voicecrack of heartbreak
before you'd so much as held a boys hand

taught you what it meant to lose
what it meant to long
in a way that seemed beautiful - in a way that felt
safe, as if being a woman would be no different than being a girl
but more fun!

mountains of curls
a face impenetrably happy,
a face too pretty and not beautiful enough to be tragic
the face of a girl who's voice knows everything

Every line from the top of
how do I know! to the bottom of I wanna dance
made you want
to feel that quality of pain - because love
would be worth it!
that was the promise in that voice
that voice that always seemed to have a whole lifetime buried in it!

not the type of voice that dies at 48 -
before you know what happens to broken hearts!

Its a voice that's been holding your hand
since before you knew what music was

it mattered not if she was a genius
not judged and critiqued like MJ
just complete and whole and far away
like childhood

you shut your mind to what she had become
as far away from herself
as innocence to cynicism -

the stuffing gets knocked out of the night a little bit
you are thinking of how sad it is
you are thinking of her daughter

but you are also thinking of yourself
thinking

in her songs

both of you
are the same forever

ARMIES

Been a while now, hasn't it?

I started the whole Free-Write Wednesdays idea so that I could outrun my inner critic at least once a week and make something - anything. The past few months, the inner critic has [quite evidently] won. But miracles and disasters have a way of shutting her up...



Public disaster and private miracle have conspired to wake me up before sunrise and have compelled me to pound away at my laptop...

Here's the 'disaster' bit first.

Won't bore with glib musings on state of affairs, will simply present today's offering:

ARMIES

You already know it,
when you call them 'greedy'
that this 'greed' is your greed
(the army of your nightmares!)
that spares nothing, cares for nothing, consumes
everything
you have given them billboards for hearts
you have sold their futures for figures
you priced them out of everything
even their own education
but they are wily though
(the army of your immorality!)
you call them wily
but as you say it
you know it is the exact flavour of your own trickiness
robbing with one hand while you distract
with the other
from every pocket, from every continent

spreading the pain, preserving your wealth
they are 'without conscience', 'careless vandals'
'careless arsonists', lit petrol bombs, big-chested in the firelight
(the army of your callousness!)
'mindless' like mindless made-up money
bombs like your bombs, 'empty' like you are empty

of everything but lies and justifications
their 'empty' is the exact hollow
shade of your selfishness
they burn at the exact heat of your
coldness
burning, burning the houses they will
never afford to buy
burning, burning the shops they can't afford
to shop at
taking the products that mean nothing

they have been told mean everything
they run in 'gangs' like your interconnected
gangs of moneyspinners and rhetoricspitters
(your army of thieves!)
they steal like you steal from us
they are the bad children
you are the parent who neglects
who abuses, who sells your children for
cash and for control
(the innocent army of babies
on the front-line of capitalism
the innocent army of babies on the front-line of racism
the innocent army of babies on the front-line of class-ism!)
you stand there
stand there and tell us
GO ON! tell us
like some retarded big-jawed effing super-hero
that you're going to send the army in
but you know and you know and you know
that
you ARE
what you condemn!

Can't say any more than that right now... But maybe next time I should. Or maybe next time I should talk about miracles...

Soon,

Gemxx

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