and now for something completely different...
thought it was about time i put one of my poems on here. i sailed to scotland today and took some trains to edinburgh, where i'll be until wednesday. it is so good to be back in a city that i love. as much for the drunks at the bus stop and the peruvian panpipe players as the fire sticks lighting up the castle and the curling, cobbled streets. tonight i went to my first book festival event of the week...paul farley, vicki feaver and hugo williams reading poetry. to be honest, they didn't get me in the gut. i could respect their work and appreciate certain observations and perceive their technical craft...but their themes didn't move me. their words didn't wrench me out of my chair or make any of my body hair bristle. and i think poetry should. or, at least, i think it can. and you'd think that an hour listening to the poetry of three distinguished writers would contain at least a pocketful of epiphany.
so, here's my offering. i'm not saying it's hairbristlingly brilliant. but it is, something.
August and Everything After
Smoking last summer with my flatmate’s
Innuit boyfriend while fire-twirlers conjured
Beltane into the season of littered streets
and tourists and the Ladyboys of Bangkok
and chalk scrawls in the cycle lane and the big top
turning the grass yellow in the middle
of The Meadows while Kylie blasted Marchmont
well past midnight
was like that time we climbed onto the bus shelter
to get onto the wall of the graveyard
and sat there kicking our legs and scuffing our heels
against the 15 foot high wall while I cried
and talked about baptism and drank Stella
from a pint glass from the bar across the road
where people we knew were making out
that their lives were really quite together
the time it took an hour to walk ten minutes
after Tom’s party at 5am when the world was in reverse
or the time we drew on the ground outside Anna’s window
at dawn on the day of her birthday and she cried
because the inscription was chalk
and they would be leaving soon in a rented van
the bricks Lora used to make shelves in our top floor flat
with its banging front door and broken fire door hinges
the comings and goings of that year, the engagements
and the thirteen people who lived there for a time
talking through everything, talking through the walls.
