There's Always One...

First of all, check out the banner to the right of this entry. Thanks to Jamie Sport, who runs the mighty Daily Quail and who also works in social media for the British Red Cross, there is an even easier way to donate money to the relief effort in Haiti. So please do click the banner, and give what you can, if you haven't already (or even if you have already and are feeling extra generous).

Second of all - it was a dead cert that as soon as I'd sent off the manuscript I submitted to the Grievous Prize, a poem would show up that would have been perfect in that collection. At first I thought I'd only let her out on Twitter and Facebook, but it seemed unfair to let her languish unseen while all the other poems at least had some potential chance of being published, so here she is. So she's a straggler - not everyone's punctual.

Rainy Breaktime

Sat on the bench, sheared off from the others,
legs crossed, Tupperware lunchbox discarded
beside me, reading something they say
is too old for me; she is too old for me,

two years above, short hair, a nose that juts
out like a challenge, leaning her long body
all arms and reach, back
with a come-on-then cockiness,

asking me questions - what's that you're lookin' at?
Who wrote it? Funny name...What's it about?
and shy me is flattered to answer this girl
with her bad-boy looks, her eyes locked on mine,
drawing closer, hand sliding behind me

- and if the dinner lady hadn't came
I would have found out, painfully,
that hand was cocking a lighter.

* * *

It's a poem I've been trying to find a way into for a while, this one. At least since over a year ago, when I tried to write up an account of this incident (yes, it really happened, the me in the poem is me) in a dreadful attempt at memoir which, if it had ever existed on paper, would have been one of the pieces I'd asked my literary executor to burn but which, thankfully, now only exists as junk code in one or another of my memory sticks, if it hasn't been airlocked in a bulk delete already.

But it's an incident I was thinking of again, recently, after a conversation about bullying which I had on Facebook with Ira Lightman. It occurred to me in the course of the conversation that most of the bullying I had to deal with at school came from (cis) girls who, in my experience, can be a hell of a lot nastier than boys. Boys will punch you in the face, sure, but we tend to raise boys not to be particularly emotionally literate, so that's about all they can do (and the domestic violence statistics are an indicator that we ought to stop raising boys who can only express themselves with their fists, but that's another rant for another time, petit furets). Girls, however, are raised to be incredibly emotionally literate, which means they have a whole set of tools with which to hurt you far more deeply than the meatiest of knuckle sandwiches.

I don't think a boy would have formulated a strategy as subtle and twisted as the girl who did this. Find a mark who's obviously shy and socially-inept, talk to them, express an interest, make them feel flattered by all the attention, then, just when they're thinking hey, wow, she really likes me, set fire to their blazer. I'm pretty sure no major conflagration would have occurred, but I'd have jumped up shocked and made a fool of myself in front of everyone, which was probably what she was aiming for. And of course, what really hurt wasn't the fire and embarassment that didn't happen, but the sense of being used, of being toyed with and being so easily manipulated purely for someone else's sadistic amusement. Which meant the plan worked even when interrupted. Sick, undoubtedly. But you have to admire the technique.

Anyone wishing to admire my reading technique, scattershot as it often is, should be aware that I will be performing at a gig at Black Flame Books in Heaton on February 6th. Come along, if you're interested. But don't bring lighters.

Weeks like these will happen to you (1)

Crazy times. For one thing, I seem, largely as a result of my goddam insomnia, which kept me up way past any normal person's idea of bedtime, involved in the efforts on Twitter to draw attention to the Haitian earthquake, the ways that people can donate, and the reasons why rich, privileged, white people like us should donate as a result of the horrible history of colonial interference in that country's history. Haiti is the one country in the world which had a successful slave revolt, and, as Noam Chomsky points out, colonizers have to punish successful dissent pour discourager les autres. So, despite the failure of a variety of European powers, including both Britain and Napoleonic France, to conquer the Haitians, they were eventually starved out and forced to submit anew to our dominion, and - in one of the most twisted moves in the sordid history of colonialism - made to pay reparations to the French for the 'crime' of daring to revolt against slavery.

During the twentieth century, as a country in 'America's backyard', Haiti was a battleground in the Cold War, and the US, pursuing its interests, supported the monstrous regimes of 'Papa Doc' and 'Baby Doc' Duvalier , and undermined more democratic governments. The constant interference, terrorism, and atmosphere of coup and counter-coup destabilised an already-weakened country, and created the conditions which have made it hard for the country to deal with this disaster.

Haiti is our problem. The wealth that we, in our privileged nations, enjoy, is based in part on the fruits of colonization, slavery, and the economic terrorism leveraged against the Haitian people. That's why I've been telling people as often as I can, via Twitter, to donate using sites like the British Red Cross site here. There are other places to give. Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation and Medecins sans Frontieres are doing good work too - I gave to the British Red Cross because I know they have people on the ground there, and I could donate in pounds. But please, whatever you do, visit one of the sites, or some other, and give what you can. I gave, and I'm poor and unemployed (though that's 'poor' in the sense of 'spent stupid money on skincare stuff today' and 'unemployed' in the sense of 'had two interviews this week', so...).

I don't want to go all 'white man's burden' here. But I don't think that's what I'm doing. We created this problem. We are complicit in a system which keeps countries like Haiti poor, and badly-placed to weather disasters like this. It's not paternalism. It's not white guys knowing best. It's privileged people making up for the shit they created.

In fact, y'know what? It's not even that. It's being a good person. It's not passing by on the other side. It's doing what we can 'cause, really, but for an accident of birth, we could be sleeping outside tonight, surrounded by the wreckage of our country, wondering if tomorrow we'll see the corpses of people we know piled up by the Canape Vert road for identification. It, like everything I pull people up for not doing on this blog, is being a good human being.

So...if you've been good already, then thank you. If you haven't, yet, then go be good. You don't have to give money, if you can't afford it. Just tell people there are ways they can give. Throw your weight behind ideas like granting Haitian refugees temporary protected status, or cancelling Haiti's debts (the modern-day equivalent of those reparations). Just keep going on about it - that's all I'm doing here, really. Keep it trending, keep it in the media, keep it before the eyes of the powerful and the privileged. Keep it going.

And...I'm done. I had intended to talk about other stuff in this post. I finished the manuscript for what might be the most important book of poems I've ever written yesterday. Today I had a fun day in Morpeth attending an interview and doing a lot of other stuff. But this isn't the time for that. I will talk about that, but not now. Not today.

Today is the day that we think about Haiti.