I know how this goes

Social media – a slippery slope

Lots of information, keeps you on your toes

I know how this goes

I know how this goes

Someone trusted has once laughed at Snopes

And your friends are smarter than your foes

And you’re smarter than average Joe

I know how this goes

Bill Gates’ name will surely be invoked

When I question, an offended moue

A suggestion to read up – no more

You have research on YouTube to show

All the while my disengagement grows

I say “science” and you say “I know”

scary times, under a microscope

this is how, it’s such a human trope

tell a villain story and then stoke

all the feelings, reel them in, how broke

information, media system, go

try and fix it, fail, it’s too big, low-

key give up, pray we stop this – hope…..

do you know, do you also know

do y’all know how this goes

today I’m writing a thing. I’m asking noone, today, I’m writing, my thing, noone allowed me – today, I asked zero people’s permission to write – and capitalism also didn’t bite – just me myself and I.

remember childhood. Heroines who wrote on stolen paper. Little girls who read books on hiding. My own sneaky ways reading books when I should’ve been in piano practice.

writing journals that would then get stolen or lost. How luxurious is this. I am here. No Margaret Atwood visions interfere with my holding of this pen. I’m writing in purple although that’s “not serious”, I’m writing longhand though it’s less “productive”, producing nothing, earning nothing, except my own, my own precariously held

peace of mind.

I used the different prompts today and they all came back to the same love story *throws hands up*

when Shakespeare was concerned
you were limbs and words, flying
high, you were the verse
it filled you curl by curl
standing by your universe
blinded and surprised

only I have long since cursed
the memory of your smile

when Shakespeare was concerned
you were hands and words, flying

bye.

little pink monster
with turquoise ears and big teeth
novelty coin purse

guarding one coin
my one pound for the cupboard
by the swimming pool

be well, pink friend
maybe some day soon
we’ll go swimming again

the notes of the saxophone
glisten
glissando making its way
up and up and I
listen
let out a sigh
forget I’m not alone
mesmerised by
the melody, the tone and

the saxophone player
without breaking her stride
winks at me.

This poem should probably be edited down, but I had so much fun with this freewrite, I’m posting the whole thing!

1.

I wonder what birds make of us

We don’t sing for joy greeting the sun

rarely offer seductive solo dances to chosen mates

(not in public anyway)

what are they thinking, tweeting happily in the sky

like butter wouldn’t melt in their beaks

How do you process the world when 

with a flick of a feathered wrist 

you can reduce a threat to 

a ground-bound fleck of dust

Maybe birds think that crawling on the ground is good enough for us

they’ll deign to visit but never fully stay.

No wonder we were jealous.

They must have been perplexed about planes.

2.

Birds used to be dinosaurs 

except they survived

I don’t know the science

I sometimes imagine pigeons

 wearing lizard skin

Cats are also jealous

they can’t lick their fur into wings

possess the gift of flight

by eating their enemies.

3.

Wish I could melt into sunshine

and reassemble. Eat it

like a passion fruit mousse. 

Wish I could fly, wings noisy and sure

be my own current

steer through the air with a feathered tail.

Free to visit but not to stay.

Prompt by Apples and Snakes.


Lublin. I was born
Did all I could, had to leave
If you don’t fit, go.

London. I was born
Into new language, only
Cut off my big toe.

First I read Captain Awkward’s essay on middle class worldview in Way of the Artist (at her paid Patreon), then there was a Twitter chat and a prompt. The common denominator there was… horses.

I think it was the horse that gave it away
the gardens could’ve passed for public space
the fireplace – pah, just a fireplace
think it was my horse that gave me away.

scarcity mindset will get in your way
– work hard and you shall have a horse one day!
I’m working class now, cos acting don’t pay
must have been mum’s horse that gave me away

otherwise I’d likely have been in the clear
I deleted the picture with the chandelier
and head held proudly, I entered the fray
– but the horse picture, it gave me away.

it scared the water. down to blood

its body heavy; frozen pond

the trees are trembling in the wind.

.

it hurt the water. silver fish

that glide soundlessly just beneath

they kept on moving, racing through

.

and all above was frozen still

and frantic movement down below

.

survival hinges on the warmth

.

it froze the water down to blood

.

can’t stop until the thaw.