Large, Loud and Visible

 Gray Bloc tactics are a good idea

if a change of t-shirt helps you disappear,

but I stand out even when I’m indistinguishable,

even dressed in grey I’m too large to stay invisible:

so I might as well be loud and I might as well be visible,

even if I might get noticed by some fun-hating criminal

who doesn’t think I talk the way that well-behaved women will

when I decide to hit him with a little bit of ridicule

for warming up the cuck chair watching Elon and his polycule

of twittering little bigots

‘til a trickle from his spigot

stains the corner of his crusty flag

and leaves him feeling jiggered…

Most folk’ll never fuck a flag but then again this bigot will,

and until he puts his dick away

I stay

Large, Loud and Visible

because I know how much seeing me is guaranteed to piss him off:

A fat trans queer cripple who’s not interested in keeping schtum?

Who’ll make absolutely sure that the teenager he’s creeping on

is aware that he got jailed for his career as a Peeping Tom?

No matter how hard he maintains the threat to her is immigrants

or people like me sitting in the row of stalls she’s pissing in

the fact remains that he’s the only one of us with prison time

for stealing women’s knickers from their backyard washing lines

(I’m not making this up, that’s an actual local fascist’s crime!):

they throw ‘round words like ‘groomer’,

deal in hearsay and rumour,

while all the while they wallow

deep in homophobic humour

but statistically the far right are more likely to be diddlers

and until they all admit it

I’ll be here,

Large, Loud and Visible,

unblushing and unsilent and unstintingly insistent that

the world spins only forward and we all get to be citizens,

that there’s a world of difference between cross-fondlers and Christians,

that pogroms are not protests even if the press insists they are,

so point me out and pick on me and threaten to get physical

if that makes you feel better, but the fact is that I’m finished with

my years of staying super-silent, blending in and playing small,

and as long as someone’s needed here to drown out what you bray and bawl

That person will be me, 

Forever

Large, and Loud, and Visible!

De garrotibus non disputandum est

 

(I started writing this poem back when the government's plans to ban pornography which featured 'strangulation or suffocation' was merely a proposal - in the time it's taken me to finish it, that proposal has now become law - a law I disagree with. As I point out below, an awful lot of women enjoy some consensual breath play from time to time, and as one of them I resent the government not just policing my sexual imaginary but implying that it in some way contributes to violence against women and girls when - again, as I point out below - I think the causes of that are much closer to home, where this government is concerned. I wrote the bulk of this in one session when, as I say, the law was just a proposal, and the rest of it today. The result is something that varies very wildly in tone and structure, and which may need a lot of editing before I can get it into a form I'm happy with. I publish this version of it here because there are some bits of both sections I quite like, and I think it would be nice to have some record of those bits somewhere as the poem eventually coheres into what it's properly going to be.)

Some go under the gun when they get a tattoo,
some make do with the ol’ stick-n-poke;
some like to know that they’re loved when they screw,
some find that puts them off their stroke;
some like getting down to it, some want to be woo’d
-         and some of us like to be choked.
 
Some caress with ethereal lightness of touch,
and some love to maul, grab and grope;
some people don’t bother with sex all that much,
some hit a dry spell and can’t cope;
some like it tender and some like it rough
and some of us like to be choked:
 
We want leather gauntlets instead of kid gloves
-         we may be, in all other ways, woke;
we might push back on claims kids need toughening up,
and interrogate off-colour jokes –
but in amorous matters, when push comes to shove,
some of us like to be choked
 
with consent, within limits, with safewords in place,
and having informed our close folk
where we’re going, and leaving a trail they can trace,
quite aware of the risk we have took
for the thrill of at once feeling helpless and safe.
It can feel nice to be choked:
 
to be gradually forced between strong arms or thighs
which then tighten their grip on your throat;
to feel strength leave your body, to feel panic rise,
the relief and release at the break:
it’s both terror and pleasure you’ll see in my eyes
in that moment. I like to be choked,
 
and while I will admit I’m a deviant case,
I know that I’m far from alone.
Thirty per cent of us broads share my tastes
(which is ten per cent more than the blokes):
a sizable chunk of the whole human race,
it seems, rather likes to be choked,
 
and I don’t think you’ve room in the prison estate
to throw so many folk in the poke
for consumption of content reflecting our tastes,
as you piously seek to propose,
alongside the thousands you mean to detain
for the Palestine flags on their clothes:
 
you might get off dreaming of your own police state
but said state’s something we all oppose,
from the tops to the bottoms. We won’t tolerate
your intolerance of people whose
one crime is the fact that we get entertained
watching people like us getting choked.
 
So what if we do? I think Cop Killer’s cool,
that doesn’t make me Raoul Moat!
I liked Tommy Lee Jones in that Under Siege, too,
and I’m not out here hijacking boats!
Yet apparently you think I’m down to abuse
because I get off on being choked?
 
There’s a word you’re ignoring in your rush to censure
and that word, of course, is consent,
though that doesn’t surprise me – your mate Pete’s pal, Jeffrey,

wasn’t real clear on what that word meant;
him, and lots of chaps friendly with your buddy Wesley
seem to be of a sinister bent,
 
like the cops on that force you so keenly defended,
your kaffeeklatsch chums from the Met,
men like Couzens and Carrick who– do you remember? –
were both once assigned to protect
the likes of yourself and your high-value brethren,
like Andy, who claimed not to sweat,
 
or your manager, Charlie, once best friends with Jim –
oh, I know we don’t mention that, yes,

it isn’t the done thing to talk about him
but I’m not one of your friends in the press.
I write poems, not PR, Keir, I don’t give a shit
what you’d rather have me forget,
 
and I have no incentive to not join the dots up
ahen you make what I’m into a crime
or have all my mates and their grandmothers locked up
for t-shirts that say Palestine
while you and your media mates march in lockstep
to run cover for genocide,
 
not just in the Holy Land but here at home,
where 46 trans kids have died
since your friend Mrs Cass had their blockers withdrawn
and Wes came along for the ride.
Dead kids worry me more than choking in porn.
Mustn’t have my priorities right.
 
And I know the excuses you’re going to make:
it wasn’t your hands on those throats.
You can’t be blamed for what you made them choose
when you made them strangers to hope.
And furthermore…
                I’ve heard more than enough.
It’s a shower I need, not your cope.
 
So I’ll be on my way,
with this one thing to say:

I hope 

that 

one day,

in
an

en

tire

ly

un

kinky

way
 
I get to see you fucking choke.

The Next Day

 

They'd never dredged the like of it: 

a mound of lego, sodden books

and posters, toys, pig-Latin plaques,

ceramic shards that once were mugs

and, threaded through the seeping haul,

scarves of scarlet, bootleg yellow and

authentic gold, a bolognese 

of guilty conscience - things 

they'd not be seen with down the tip. 

'They must have done it in the dark,'

one muses, 'were they queueing up

or side-by-side lined down the quay?

Bet no-one met another's eye. 

Was it like this when Jimmy died?'

An older head shakes. 'Nowt to chuck

except the medals. Few enough

of those about. And shellsuits could 

be scouser costumes. Nowt like this.'

They sat there silent, paced and smoked. 

The youngest spat: 'They must have known.'

A Work of Mercy

Looking at a dog the night before

she dies, she will remember

a conspiracy of kindness:

the cat they called Old Smokey,

smuggled in from the back lane

and spoiled with sprats or cuts of ham

behind their mother's back,

and how, one night in winter

at their window, averring

in near-chorus that he must be cold, 

they'd hear their mother say

you think I'm stupid, but I know

what you get up to, then

go on then, let him in. 

(for Evelyn Fish, 1950-2022)

First World Contempt

I would like to make him live one day

the way he has made others live.

I would like him to wake up in rubble

with dust in his belly and throat,

and walk, on blistered feet, to somewhere 

somebody said there might be food

and find none. I would like him to know

those who raise his plight in the rich nations

are dragged off to prison 

for the words that they have 

on their T-shirts. 

I would like him to know

jokes more callous than his,

and less funny, are being made about him 

by the golf club bores 

and the roundabout painters. 

I would like him to learn what it's like 

to feel first world contempt. 

I know that I ought not to want this.

That it is uncharitable,

even to him; rather, what I should want

is for a new spirit to grow in him,

inspire him to right his own wrongs

then go out to right more. 

This is what I should want. 

It is not what I do want. 

A Whole Civilisation

 

When planes flying from our bases

'destroy a civilisation' tonight,

what will we say? 

When people of that civilisation 

scream rage in our faces,

what will we say?

'Woman, I am not one of them'?

Will we tell them that this

is not who we are? 

Will we express bitter contrition 

and say not in our name?

I remember one night, back in Brixton,

my friend Nila saying to me 

"You say 'them' when you speak of the English,

but you're English. It's not 'them', it's 'we'."

I don't know what I'll say

when our planes fly tonight

sowing death. But I will not deny

that, as much as I hate it,

they fly in my name;

and when the blowback comes

I will accept that I, just like the rest of us,

am as legitimate a target,

a more legitimate target,

than two-hundred schoolgirls 

or a six year old child in a taxi,

and will accept my civilisation 

- about which I once pompously worried -

died long ago;

and pray,

for the rest of the world,

that its corpse may stop shaking.

Good Friday poem

 

Noose pin worn by members of the Israeli knesset to show their support for the introduction of the death penalty for Palestinian political prisoners. 

your job is this

a man lies down

across two planks

you hammer nails

into his wrists

into his feet

the nails are long

the nails are thick

the nails are sharp

your job is this

you hammer nails

you do not flinch

you do not stop

your job is this

to never stop

to never flinch

to never think

of them as wrists

to never look

them in the eye

to never hear

the words they cry

you hammer nails

your job is this

your job is this

your job is this