Say it

Say it. Let the sound fill your mouth

like curry, full on flavour and spicy

enough to set your breath on fire.

Then spit it out. Let them know

the wine is sour,

and the alcohol content cannot make up for it.

Bottle their gasps for later,

you can use them at the lightshow

when they try to blot you out.

And, with their retorts,

take off your cloak and mask

so their ice-words melt from your brightness.

Show them the spectrum,

not the gradient.

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Thoughts of past me trying to deal with society

Inside I bubble back all the things I want to say and do,

wondering if there’ll ever be a time

I won’t have to hold my tongue like this.

It’s so absurd that I can’t be myself

all to fit in with your pristine white glove ideas

of what is and isn’t appropriate —

what is and isn’t normal.

Your attention, please!

And standing, I take a breath

and place the last piece of the puzzle in place.

The click shakes the ground

and reorganises the entire picture

into a montage of how I got here

and the effort it took: the hours

of studying, crafting ’til midnight,

brainstorming in the shower,

putting on armour to shield myself from every rejection

and fighting for my voice to be heard.

 

The film keeps running,

I’m not done yet.

Three little birds

Three birds bicker on a telephone wire,

each wanting to claim communication as its own.

They tweet and tweet, overlapping, undermining,

swapping positions and stances. Hopping from foot to foot

and puffing out their feathers. A girl walks

by and catches their dispute. In her bag she carries

seed for the wild birds who visit her garden.

 

She offers some, but they ignore her.

So she leaves the seed on the ground and goes on her way.

 

As the day wears on, the bickering birds grow tired.

Hunger gnaws at them, and eventually they relent

and fly down to pick at the seed.

As soon as they leave the wire, they forget

what it was that was so important to them about it,

and after they fill their crops, all three fly off to roost.

Sinew

The tin plate is tacked over my mouth before I can even get the words out.

This body is mine, I breathed into it,

I gave it nutrition, trained it, nurtured it

until it grew enough to have my mind accept it.

Now I’m being told it’s only fit to be measured by eyes and instruments

that clinically access its worth.

To me it is lifeblood,

to them it is meat.

As seen through a round tank of water

Fill up the glass tanks, wear them on ours heads like giant fish bowls. If we spill any, we lose our worth and have to crawl on the floor with those dressed in rags, furiously mopping up after others and trying to fill our bowls once more.

The rags disintegrate, we are naked and no no-one cares. We are filthy and no one cares. We are hungry and no one cares. We have brains and no one cares. We have no glass tanks and everyone stares.

Pause. Consider.

Steady, hush!

Our words buttoned up on our lips.

Protests die in our throats

As we seek to still our boiling blood.

Conform, conform, conform.

We must conform.

 

But stoppered thoughts build pressure,

And one day the cork will be forced off.

Hubbub

Hubbub.

Who’s listening?

 

Chatter, natter, prattle

Prat.

 

Screens in our face, over our eyes

in our minds.

Siding with popular opinion,

shying away from engaging that hungry engine, the brain.

Work them, encourage them

steam-powered as they may be.

 

Quiet, I crave.

 

No, they sing.

We need the noise, need the buzz,

need the bright lights and sweat and alcohol

and neon screens

to feel normal.

 

Normal?

What is normal

but a falsity of who you are

trying to resemble

the falsehood of others.

 

Hubbub.

Who’s listening?

Chatter, natter, prattle

Prat.

 

Quiet, I crave.

Independent thinking, I urge.

Eccecentric. Weird. Outcast, they sing.

 

I don’t care

I don’t care.

I don’t care that most people struggle to understand your speech.

I don’t care that they don’t get the references to old films, games and music that you make.

I don’t care that they don’t see the many strengths you have.

I don’t care that they write you off as weird, strange or eccentric.

I don’t care that they don’t understand why I like hanging out with you.

I don’t care that they now label both of us.

I don’t care

because they’ve completely missed who you are, and the ease I feel when I’m near you.

I don’t care

because they will never know the solid, dependable make-up of our friendship.

I don’t care

because they are the ones who have lost out, and I have no pity for them.

Orange tongues

Fire. A blaze in my hands that I can craft into any shape I wish. It is my passion, my flame to share. You may call me arrogant. You may call me rash. I don’t care. Of course I don’t. I can wrap my fiery rope around you and change your opinion with little more than an ember of my will. Just give me the fuel.