Commonword Blogs

Treading water
Stuck in one place
Wondering when the pain will go
And release me
From its grip
Holding me hostage
By my emotions
Tears uncried
Anger unvented
Love left, unused

Had too many ciders tonight
My head's reeling
Straining to hear the sound
Of Chris's beats
Spinning effortlessly on the
Pristine turntables before him.

My feet start to move
In fast, fluid fashion
To the electric thumping
Of "Insomnia",
Faithless' finest hour.

It's 2am,
Any second now
It'll be chucking-out time.
I wait in anticipatory dread
For last orders to be called.

Did my first performance
At The Green Room
For about 18 months
Amidst the glory of
Jazz, hip-hop and soul melodies.

It's as if I've never been away.
"A Unique Celebration"

Innocense

Innocence is bliss induced not knowing
It's closed eyes and ears not seeing
Fresh untouched pores un-feeling
Not-sensing the trauma
The pain
The fear

Innocence is staying clear
Open to suggestion
To positivity
To hope
It's the clean slate clear freshness
Of baby soap
Lots of time
Lots of energy

Sunny Paddling pool days dreaming
Laughing
Smiling
Uncaring
Forever sharing

Making a life full of daisy chains
Happy rainy days
The squelching greyness
Did'nt matter
Sweets didn't make us fatter
No nastiness
No lies
No flabby thighs

Just sweet dreams

Ordinary Men

They took us out into the bush at night
And made us sing liberation songs till dawn but they couldn’t –
Dismantle the image we'd built of white men as gods in our minds

They spoke of Independence
Of Ghana, of Nigeria, of guerrilla warfare but they still –
Couldn’t take the fear out of our hearts

Finally, they beat us
When world war two began they told us to resist but we still –
Went off to enlist

Until we saw them –
Ordinary men
Comforting weeping wives
Kissing screaming children on their cheeks
“Back before Christmas!”

Colours abound
Thoughts amble
Through a wild haze
Of uncertainty.

I'm stiff
Yet fluid
In movement
As my instability
Begins to surface.

Garbled conversations
Are all I make
On subjects
That make no sense.

It's been a wild night
Where I stagger
Home to face up
To what I've experienced.

I've been dancing
To a different sound
To anything
I've known before.

My head slowly begins
To clear.
This is where fantasy
And reality
Clash as my memory
Returns.

It will take
Several hours however
For me to begin
Making complete sense again.

Too Much Too Soon

Two girls sat together;
Jane is 8, has a sleek dark hair cut that bobs in the 80's
Emma is 6 with curly blonde hair that spirals through the years

Bottoms cold against the step,heads warming in the sun
Jane says " I went to the park with dad yesterday"
Emma tells her, My dad hit my mum again last night
Silence befalls them
Child-like dreams caught in the net of adult reality
The truth dawning during the mid-day sun
Fish of hope hopping in the net

Emma thinks she should have asked if they took butties

Its quite nice you know

OFF PEAK

What if I dared to dream
And took a journey and had a look around a new life
A new sound and a new way of being
A fresh way of living
What if I took a chance and had a glance
At how it would be
If I wasn't shy
And was brave and didn't cry
What if I lived sunny side up and
Butter side off the ground
And I marvelled at the new luck I found
At the life I gained
What if I lived more free range
And courted and settled with a
Major change
The soldier of choice for this lost soul
For this wandering minstrel
With a special goal
The alternative doesn't seem so glam

This is an edited version of a poem I've been working on:

Make Love not War

Two women
One from the North of England
Saleha was her name
her parents good Muslims from Pakistan
she scattered Yorkshire vowels
drove a red, convertible babe-magnet

The other, her lover
from the South
we’ll call her Sangeeta,
her parents good Hindus from India
with a good Hindu daughter
Concentrating on work
Never chasing the boys