Thirteen Years

 

(Content note: the following deals with themes of suicide, genocide and racism. Also, the edition of Kicking the Pricks linked to is not the same edition as referred to in the poem, but I couldn't find a link to anyone selling a copy with the original cover)

Thirteen Years:

that’s how long it’s been

since I first saw the Hardy Tree, and you

sat in the corner of the kitchen of the

co-op you once lived in back in New Cross

 – though mostly I remember you in Brixton,

waging cold war with the craft beer beards,

with the man who ran the Ritzy, 

with the disability inquisitors

who got you in the end.

If I call it murder do I rob you of your agency

over the last decision of your life? Maybe:

but I think you’d agree. 

Their machine’s designed to make us want

to kill ourselves: when we do it is working

as intended. A system’s purpose is the thing it does. 

Convict the one who gave the order: they murdered you

and used your hands to do it,

Wore you down, chipped away

at your marvellous militancy. I wish

that I could lend you From the Clinic to the Streets,

like you let me tote your copy of Kicking the Pricks

in my bag the last time I visited Brixton,

when you showed me the house where Darcus Howe

saw out the uprising. That book was in my bag

when I sat under Fenner Brockway’s gaze,

afraid of knives; that bag sat at the edge of the matroom

when I wrestled that girl in Seven Sisters (strictly research, natch)

and I was reading Jarman when I nursed

my aching muscles at the Barbican next day. 

I wish I could lend you Sheehi,

but part of me is glad you didn’t live to see

what we’ve connived to do to Palestine

or our slow genocide at home. I’ve made my peace

with dying in captivity of one kind

or another, but intend to still cause trouble

right up until the moment when they shoot me

in the eye. I think, if I can do that,

I can look you in yours when we next meet. 

Nothing Is Solved

 

On the edge of Dartmoor Charles begins to realise

How weak he has become: how much control

Has slipped through his arthritic, bloated fingers.

As he dips them in the blood he barely smells

Its metal tang above the excrement 

She voided not – they tell him – when she died,

But when she saw the vehicle. 

The new one. From the North. 

He thought he’d like it. 

What must it have been like

When she answered the door,

And saw those eyes fresh in that face,

Free of the circle? When it took

Her whole head in its hands did it at first

Try to be tender? Did she fight? Did she recoil?

Did he have to assert control? Is that

Why he concussed her ‘til she bled?

Or was it trying to externalise

What it felt in its head? Did he attempt

To drink the haemorrhage? Could that

Have been enough?

He never understood it, 

That whole Plantagenet hangover:

Leeds is so very close to Manchester,

Isn’t it? They should have got on like a…

Chip pan fire? Where’d that come from?

He can’t keep it straight. How did he think…?

House. He means house. And couldn’t they…

No. No. It’s out. A fire, now, would prompt

Too many questions. And that isn’t

His responsibility. 

The story. 

His responsibility…

Was calling quarters. Summoning and banishing.

To bring him up to now, to cast him down to then,

But now he’s in it and it’s out there

And it’s already decaying, 

Skin already like a shell suit

On a hanger made of bones,

Worse than the Barrister after a decade.

Because unbanished. Out of the circle. 

Then at large in now, unbounded.

No perspective. How’s about that then?

They’re going to notice. Going to start asking. 

How now? How now? How’s about that then? 

The blood would not have been enough. 

He’s been told not to look. 

He shakes his head. It does feel heavy, 

As they say. How it couldn’t be.

He’s barely slept. He knows it wouldn’t

Be enough. He has the evidence before him.

How it couldn’t. How it was. How it was then. 

Who he is now. Now, then. Now then. How it was. 

Be. He wouldn’t. He would. Did. Did then. Does now.

How’s about that then? Come not in that form. 

How’s about that? He senses a great evil. 

How’s about that then? How he’s out there.

Who’s he out there? Who’s he in there? 

How’s about that? About that then? 

Who’s out there then? Who’s out there now?

Who’s out there now? Who’s still with him?

How about that? How? How is 

Andy? How is Andy? How is Andy? How?

How’s Andy? How’s Andy? How’s Andy? 

How’s Andy? How’s Andy? How’s Andy?

How’s Andy? How’s Andy? Who’s Andy?

What year is this?

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.