Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart

 I'm delighted to announce that my poetry collection - Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart - has been published and is now available in paperback and ebook formats from the usual online outlets. 

I'm really grateful to everyone who has subscribed to my writings via this blog over the last twelve years. Your responses and support mean the world to me. Thank you. 

Liberation

 since way back when i felt inadequate, wherewithal-less

- not that i would have called it that back then -

so i set about finding people, things

that might adequatise me because

god forbid the shame of being less than

whatever the fuck late-stage capitalism

and the spiritual marketplace

tell us we should be.

 

on one particular day, not so long ago

i began to feel how much energy

had got tied up in trying to overcome this,

to this’s detriment, and how the overcoming

shamed this, so terribly,

this being the inadequacy, the lacking-ness.

 

this does feel wholly inadequate according to

whatever parameters might be applied, and for so long

i was in thrall to the idea that

something needed to be done about it

(i’m so glad i don’t believe that any more).

 

this (me? i don’t really know any more) feels utterly inadequate,

wholly lacking in all areas, totally without wherewithal -

not that that’s being claimed as a badge of honour,

or paraded in a look-at-me kind of way.

 

this inadequacy – i saw that day – never needed me

to take it on or pick up its cudgel or

attempt to correct it or overcome it or

better myself out of it or

love it or accept it or or or

take it to any number of healers or

self-described spiritual teachers or anyone else

who fell under the category of

people i thought were superior to me

to do with it whatever their schtick was (frankly,

all the schticks left it untouched, save

for feeling a little worse still,

having supped at their supposedly superior cup).

 

that day, it was a monumental relief to say:

this just is breathtakingly inadequate and

totally lacking in wherewithal (and

any other kinds of -withal there might be)

and right now,

i fucking love it,

not with some sappy welcome-it embrace-it love-it gloss

but with a sweating-in-the-mosh-pit,

too many beers and smudged mascara kind of love

that wants everyone (including me)

to keep their (possibly) well-meaning but

otherwise very misguided hands off it.

 

and that day this – my – inadequacy had never felt so good or

so real or so alive or so glorious, because that

was all it had ever wanted,

and it was such a liberation to repeat, on and on,

utterly inadequate and totally lacking in wherewithal,

and with each repetition

my body sighed and smiled and

i began to fit into myself like never before,

a yes throughout my being at the truth of this

and a wonder at how it is to be real.

 

Body

 And my body says:

there's a fucking cosmos in here

suns stars galaxies comets

you should know

I am so much more than 

a storehouse for your trauma or

a battleground for your conflicts or

the bearer of your scars or 

the carrier of your soul

so don't pull your reductive objectifying imperialist bullshit on me

I am not something to be colonised by

whatever good intentions you have this month

or your warped ideas 

about purity and perfection. 

Let's just say

I know all your sleights-of-hand

your baiting and switching

we both know who you are

and we both know that you should be

on your knees

sinking into me

worshipping at my feet

and howling at my very miraculousness. 

Aftermath

In panic

I ran

from one place to another

to another

to another,

from one person

to the next

and the next. 

I took to hiding

in the spaces between words - 

silence a temporary refuge. 

I took to disappearing

into the slivers of stillness

between moments,

those lulls in which

no-one was noticing -

(there are more of them than you think) - 

putting off the inevitability

of emergence. 

I was always going to have to come out,

eventually. 

Table-Turning

 I want us to rise up and start a war -

Or at least to cause a commotion.

I want us to go to town on a Saturday night

And start a fight. 

I want us to rain down blows 

And cause men to fear. 

I want us to lose our shit in public. 

Long have we borne, cared, endured. 

Long have we nursed, tended, understood. 

It's time the tables were turned. 

Contribution

Lying on my sofa in the late-afternoon sun

I sink into time, and time takes me 

To the duck-egg blue of the cabinet

And I see that somebody – somebodies –

Made all of this.

 

Wrote these books,

Painted these paintings,

Fitted these windows, more than once;

Plastered these walls,

Played this music,

And laid these pine floorboards,

A century and more ago.

 

Somebodies made these things of beauty,

These things of practicality,

And now their commingling voices

Come rippling through time.

 

Countless hands, countless minds,

Countless contributions, both seen and unseen;

Cups of tea made,

Dishes washed,

Secrets heard, 

Locks fixed.

 

Tears streaming down my face, now I see:

The preciousness of our souls cannot be measured

By the size or visibility of our contributions.

 

Wild

No more pain, the wind says - 

You've been too long in its quicksand. 

Beyond the muteness, 

Beyond the cravenness,

There's this -

This inlet where the tide comes in

These limpet-strewn rocks and

The orange beak of the oystercatcher

In the dim winter light.

Yes, layer upon layer has been stripped,

But what of wildness?

On this rain-lashed beach

It will no longer wait.

It wants me back:

I have been on loan to civility for far too long.