for the party people

When we last saw you - you were wearing roller skates with loose laces - a glitter jacket and a pony club rosette - warming up the dance floor - letting the shimmer slide off your shoulders in pint glasses you stacked and skated round - beat mapped star gazing - full mooned - inflated and incredible

exultant and somnambulant - a bit too pleased and a bit too plastic - half-cut eyes shut shuffling heedless to the cliff’s edge teetering towards a urinal - poring over the cream swirls at the bottom of one of the pint glasses looking for an oracle to rule in your favour - sucking out the stale air from yesterday’s session - singing of all things bright but mournful in the tone of it - calling in sick tomorrow - forgetting it

 

the title is from the Fatback Band track "Wicky Wacky" (1974)

 

 

Backhanded Sentiment

the hand that caressed us

fed us our handful of dust

 

stroked our night curls

pushed our face into its blankets

held the dark at bay

 

pulled back the curtains to bare light

pushed our hands together in its prayer

turned its pages into our day

 

dressed us in hand me downs

eating handfuls of hand outs

handed hand to mouth

our desires hidden away from us in handbags

 

the hand imprinted invisibly upon our necks

handicapped us handsomely

and when we raised our fists

washed its hands of us

 

written as part of a series on instagram @martindaws

 

 

Sonnet for White Redemption / Extermination 1  *after Terence Hayes

When John Coltrane and Nina Simone each lend

me a voice I am immediately seasick. Ms Simone’s

saliva excoriates my palate and Mr Coltrane’s tone

gives me a nosebleed. I didn’t expect to get the bends.

Should have asked for Sinatra or Brubeck - I spit

between bouts of nausea kneeling over the toilet sink -

bitterly tasting the realisation that at least this way the first

song of my new repertoire is from the gut. Retched gurgles

projectile scat authentically extempore my voice into birth.

Burbling gagged gospel I gasp - desperately attempt to master

it - write it down - but my lexicon can’t contain the scale

of this humanity - even the vacant spaces between the words

seem more meaningful than the words themselves until - at last -

I am quelled - and in silence begin to sing as my final white breath fails.

 

this poem was written in an online writing workshop facilitated by Martin Daws that used Terence Hayes' "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins" as stimulus

whatever could be better than to lose myself in you

and in the softest of your touch

brush stroked to find myself again

to awaken naked to the dawn

nature binding me to memories of myself

 

I'm greater than the sum of my hearts in you

 

this poem appears in this layout in Martin Daws' poetry collection "Geriau Gogs" (2016)