2022.10 Free & Divine

I headlined at Here Comes Everyone Magazine’s Fire&Dust Online gig tonight, and did that thing where I write a piece referencing everyone else’s piece and random stuff around the gig. So, here’s what I wrote for them. Hope it makes sense!

Sparkling lines of vibrating texture guide us,
alchemising the negative into something magical,
renewing knowledge of youth and warmth,
mystery threading landscapes through our heart,
time travelling to wave-rides and the braw froth of
the sweet visions weaved by a wain’s imagination.

We are comorbid, mounting in spirals, woven into
subterranean caves, listening to the tink-tink-tink of
reasonable hammers. And even with the difficulty
of narrow bandwidths we can lever prophetic flight from
rocky starts, starlight rhythmic as tsunami.
Early morning prayers sing us home, familiar as
hugs, shameless as true love, tugging at our roots.

We can duck awkwardness, dodging the bottles of
what-if, glancing over our shoulders, moving to
turns, wild and free, unfettered by strings.
Chanting trips into a bridge-tight hair-trigger,
summoning up dissolution, letters to internal
editors, and apologies are bottomless. We have a way,
negotiating meanings, slaloming through salvation
and the layers of elucidation.

We light time, primal as water, anger, sanctuary
peeking through the failure, hand to hand, candle
to candle, ascending amiably through consonants
that my family lost in too many moves, leaving behind
the texture of drumlins, exchanging them for valleys.
Tá brón orm. Mae ddrwg gen i. And you are our poem
and we are your poem, homecoming and hiraeth in
one package, arms wrapped around each other,
the redemption of pain and healing.

We map the details, plotting efficiency, signalling the
wilderness, hinting at mysteries, a beautiful shield against
selfishness. We are the best type of pretentious, overwhelmed,
yet intent on honouring the gorgeousness of divergence,
inventive in the face of indifference, hitching names to
faces, taking pieces of peace, breathing free of sickly-sweetness
clawing at new embarrassments, coursing through our veins.
Messy twenties a lesson for all of us, a course of penalties.
Or psychedelics, it’s difficult to say.

We point upwards to the ones before us, catching the web of
silk-strong love, raising beauty from the barren, astronomical,
hotter than fire, injudicious. Boiling rage floats masterfully,
navigating straight-edged friendships in the best ways, waves
of nostalgia buoying a connection that stretches across divides.
Cheek by jowl the intersections bless us, one world and another,
one word and another, a chain of absences, better than never
having met.

We have touched, minds and voices, seeking exit points, biting
wits switch-hitting themes, unhinging spectres, triggers content
in honesty. Abortive starts stutter into sympathetic syncope,
wide open and broken, boiling tears into hilarity, opening
the next phase, phrasing lovely lists into inferences of quality.
And we flower into flame, taking our place in loving dust,
waiting for the next breath to bring to the light.

From “Protecting the Plant from Catastrophic Combustible Dust Explosions” by Doan Pendleton

I don’t know if the piece will mean much to anyone who wasn’t there, but I really enjoyed creating it.

Thanks for the inspiration. ❤️

fayroberts · Free & Divine

2020.17 Ere Am I, Incredible

This one is very much a work in progress…

I’m mired in it,
Stuck down where the
Clean can’t reach me,
Because I am, by every
Definition of the Catholic Church,
A sinner, unrepentant as hell.

And yet. While I freely confess
Without regret the masturbation,
Homosexuality, heresy,
Apostasy, and missing mass;
Attracted polyamorously,
Proliferate in profanity,
I battle with the Big Seven daily.

It’s like anything else:
Everything in balance, a
Measure of functional imperfection.
Essentially: sadness is the sane response to tragedy,
Depression is a weight on the world.
Lust is a natural drive to reproduction,
Pleasure, intimacy,
But a terrible central tenet.
We crave nourishment,
Covet comfort,
Have built ourselves a social system
That spins on this
Philosophy of worthiness-in-possession,
And so some sins have greater penalties,
It seems to me,
Knee-deep in the fashion of each era.

An it harm not others, do what thou wilt
Say some, others:
Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the law
Still more a complex set of instructions,
Proliferating sin into the central condition,
Saddling each newborn with a burden
Bereft of innocence.
How original.

I have a complex relationship with sin,
Preferring a general definition:
Deliberately diverting energy against what is healthy,
An excess of going your own way
Into what you know, at every level
Is self-evidently
Wrong.

Of course, Pratchett said that it begins
With treating people like things,
A man whose own rage,
Righteous and otherwise,
Strides pages and stages
And mazes of minds,
Winding tight around some aspects
And not others – fans frantic
At the pick’n’mix banquet of this
Fantastic philosophy.

That’s a side-bar, naturally,
And I’m not sure it matters;
Frankly, I’m having my own battles
With gravity and entropy,
The only flightpath I can see
Being through the dark door
I’ve had the keys for since
Before I was born.

It’s the fifth one
(according to Wikipedia)
Which is giving me these
Congenital difficulties.
When does determined tip into
Stubborn?
Where does passionate advocacy
Snap into anger?
How does a howl of righteous
Ire get mired in the offence of wrath?

Because I’m tarred and feathered,
This sin’s heft in every expression
Because when patience failed,
Rage got me through,
Hoist my arse and told me what to do,
Because I knew already, and all I needed
Was one final straw for kindling,
Kindness and self-effacement dwindling
When considering
That someone else’s sinning
Had me treated like a thing.

And that’s all well and good,
Or would be if it could discern when
What looks like injustice
Is just chaos
When, instead of wielding a mace
And wading in it should pace itself,
Drip-feed fuel to a banked fire
Driving the underlying hum of:
Come on, you’ve got this
(instead of torching the place
and staying to make faces
at those attempting to flee).

I’ve long since decided that
The world can be divided into
Two groups:
Those who nodded when Banner said:
“That’s the secret – I’m always angry,”
And those who shook their heads.
If rage is built into your DNA
It’s hard to know what to say to
Those who maintain:
Just chill, as if it were so easy,
Who’ll never know how much better
Fire is than freezing.

Image source: Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) by Vera Klimova via Artmajeur

2018.10 Here be Unicorns (or: my 40s are a lot better than my 20s)

Ladies and gentlemen (and every other particular), strap yourselves in for what some call the ride from Hell; the deceptively exclusive:

Bisexual Bagatelle 

Our choose your own adventure starts with you -
A newly-sundered miss
Who’s strayed into the Hetero Zone
And now finds yourself cut adrift.
Misanthropy beckons, but you’ve reckoned without
The healing power of friendship
(and the unending source of solace that is:
The Internet.)

Let’s site this in context:
2004, another door slammed in your face,
And, having been placed in the category of
“Failed Lesbian” (true story)
Our heroine is keen to reboard the
Train to Lapland (if you know what we mean)
Strapping yourself into a magical capsule
To bounce around the board that we call
GayDarGirls
(other products available, your mileage may vary, your peace of mind may be at risk if you don’t keep up repayments into the Bank of Bliss.)

Cite your preference,
Sit this psychometric test,
Bless yourself with a unique username.
No, not that one.
No. Not that one either.
Adding 69 to the end
Will garner you no friends
And besides: someone else already did.

Bingo! You’re appellated!
Now, reach out! It’s easy!
But don’t forget to pay attention
To geographical preferences
And sexual preferences
And romantic preferences
And hair preferences (that’s length, style, colour, and body… oops)
And musical preferences
And fitness preferences
And bodyshape preferences
(though “no fatties” (really) is less important than the far more common “no drama”)
And smoking preferences
And pet preferences
And kink preferences
And hint: preferences may change over time.
And this is 14 years ago (almost to the day!)
So no chance to say that
You’re starting to feel unreasonably constrained
By the Exclusive OR of female or male…

What’s this?
No bisexuals
Okay. Next…

Lesbians only
Okay.

No bi’s.
Fine. Bye.

No bisexuals - no offence
I wish you’d get off the fence…

No non-lesbians
I GET IT!

Wombyn only
Give me strength…

And then we’re bounced to
The other end of the spectrum -
The seemingly unending stream of people
Keen for you to enhance their lives
By joining them.
Both of them.
In their marital bed.
Their copy-and-paste charm
Seems harmless and direct
And yet you can’t help but wonder
Whether you’re ever going to be other then the glue
To someone else’s imperfections,
The gold chasing to their cracked vase
Your body the album-pressed memory
Kept from the grandchildren,
Banished to attic dust,
A one-time dare.

And yet.
And yet you’re tempted.
So you don’t answer no.
Not yet.
Don’t scrawl your own Ctrl-V, fleet and meaningless.
Not. Yet.
Because you’re no stranger to polyamory
But you do want to notch that stick
With My First Threesome.
And it would be so easy…

But you play it cool,
Keep switching up text dialects -
Butch enough without being brutal,
Funny enough without being futile,
Deep enough without the drama,
Real enough to balance your karma,
Carting your dreams between
This weave of half-truths,
Bemusement,
New acronyms,
Apparently ancient profile pictures,
And women with interesting issues.
And husbands.
And children.
And cats.
And bad habits.
And a real failure to grasp basic grammar
And the realisation that you are a snob
A hypocrite
And desperate,
And you’d best get back to better
Masturbation techniques at this rate
Except your toys all bear memories
Of him.
And her.
And them.

And unending despair is
Leavened only by the ping!
Of notifications,
A good half of which are
Angry men bent on negging
Your HTML, of all things, and
Showering you with dick pics
Which you hadn’t expected to pick up on a
Queer dating site, for shite’s sake.

Time to close some profiles.
Time to block some pricks.
Time to pick and choose.
Time to get back your diurnal rhythms.
Time to sew the schisms of your soul.
Time to dole out some peace,
Pay the fees for qualified counselling
Instead of rendering yourself down
For literally faceless strangers.

Time to admit:
You are not ready to date again yet.
Time to admit:
You need sleep more than you need sex right now.
Time to admit:
It’s fine to be alone for a while.
Time to admit:
You’re more than someone’s ex.

And now you’ve anecdotes,
And a list of narrow escapes,
And new ways to say no,
And are no longer hopeless,
And have at least one new friend as a result,
And know that you are not alone,
And that you’re more than just some mythical creature,
And that treating yourself well is the opposite of weakness.

Lean into the calm curves of self-acceptance
And smile.
A day is coming when you’ll stop bouncing
And start to weave your own path
Between extremes.

(And, in the meantime: there’s always erotic fanfic and fingers.
Always.)

2017.29 - The Beginning Is Always Today

We are greeted by the voices of women
And the visions of women
We step into a forest of arms held wide
And fists held high.

We enter a riot of colours
All the shades of defiance
All the textures of acceptance
All the shapes of love.

We are told to be bold
We are granted permission
We listen and we are heard
We watch and we are seen.

Here are the dreamers of worlds
And the builders of dreams
Here are the wall-shakers
Here are the bringers of light

We have encoded resistance
Into an insistence to be heard
And we have changed the shape of conversations
In the realisation of worth.

And by one man’s metric,
We are nasty. A degeneration of
Our one true station of servility;
Civilisation’s demise in four syllables.

Sad.

Listen: if the tower must be dismantled,
Brick by brick, to be rebuilt as kilns
And hospitals, and libraries,
And bridges, so be it.

If the walls must be torn down,
Again, we’ll lift our busy fingers
And strong hearts to the task,
Talking all the while.

And we will break silence with song,
And fear with laughter,
And dark grey fences with pinks and browns,
With violets, whites, and greens.

And we will plant flowers on your
Place of rest, and remember.
And we will walk on,
Dancing into the dawn.


We’re very near the end of the month, which is exciting (and, if I’m honest, somewhat relieving, and also sort of sad: I’ll have to make up my own excuses to write poems…). The last Sunday of every month is usually Allographic’s open mic, but this month we’re teaming up with Nasty Women Cambridge to help them celebrate the end of their exhibition in aid of Corona House (housing single, homeless women with a Cambridge connection), Cambridge Women’s Aid (providing dedicated and specialist services to women and children affected by domestic abuse), and Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre (offering support to women and girls who have experienced rape, childhood sexual abuse or any other form of sexual violence).

What’s that got to do with this poem? Well, glad you asked. I went to see their exhibition on text art resistance, and came away with my brain buzzing and my heart dancing, as I was pretty sure I would. I wanted to write something for the exhibition. And that’s definitely how the poem starts, but it becomes more about the general Nasty Women movement and I am so looking forward to performing this to a bunch of other footstomping, outspoken, resistant, Nasty People of all genders on Sunday evening. The title comes from one of the pieces which, in turn, is a quote from one of my literary heroes, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Boom.

2017.1 - DK Oblivion

He strides up to take the spotlight
Bedecked in the essence
Of everything he’s ever heard,
And burdened with glorious purpose.

He starts bold, stance strong, voice clear:
“Dear Geography teacher...” he preaches,
Reaching for shared disappointments,
Anointing himself the mouthpiece of youth.

Soothsayer, truthspeaker,
A peak of platitudes and gratitude
Screwed to the sticking point of
Oxygen-stealing line lengths.

Depth! Regret! Insight!
The clarity of distance!
The angst of yesterday!
The way it fits so neatly into three minutes.

In the circle of his usual,
Mutually exclusive demographic
He telegraphs his copy-and-paste
Graces to clicks and roars.

But here, in the open,
He chokes on the silence
Reflecting the abyss that beckons his
Dissolution, resolution wavering...

Hey! No! Raise the volume,
Boom across an abruptly unclipped mic,
Dive free of constraint into the teeth
Of these zombies

Homage is lacking, blank eyes merely polite
What kind of witchcraft is this?
Hisses and shrieks of feedback greet his
Inevitable momentum across the speakers.

Time’s up and he steps from the light,
Bright with sullen flames,
And waits for the explicit verdict,
The indications of his numbered worth.

On the way home he Tweets,
Greets reality with passive aggression,
Abetted by peers sneering of
The obvious ignorance of others.

Comforted and cozened he makes his way,
Braving disappointment with denial
Wild vows aimed anywhere but inwards,
Arcing further into solipsism.

The lesson of this is... complex
But, in essence: when you stop learning
You burn your bridges into a wider life
And I... am at least as guilty as the next poet.



This started life with another stanza (“This poseur supposes/ His notion momentous/ And shows off his woke ass/ Erroneously”) but then it went elsewhere in the putative build up to said stanza, so here’s what happened instead... And yes, I guess this is written to perform, and to purge, and probably makes sense if you’ve seen a slam or two...