For all of you, for all of it, but especially for India,

who taught me how to hold my own.

TIRESIAS: I will go, once I have said what I came here to say.

– Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

Contents

Tiresias

CHILDHOOD

For my niece

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now

Snakes in the grass

Girl next door

Thirteen

Bully

School

Sixteen

The cypher

Age is a pervert. Youth is a fascist

The boy Tiresias

WOMANHOOD

The woman the boy became

On Clapton Pond at dawn

India

Remembering the way you kissed me once

Some couple

The old dogs who fought so well

What we lose

You eat me up and I like it

Fuck the poem

Waking up with you this morning

The woman Tiresias

MANHOOD

The man Tiresias

These things I know

Watching my dog sleep

Learning curve

Morning after opening night

Down the pub

The point

Penance

Man down

BLIND PROFIT

The prophet Tiresias

Ballad of a hero

Sigh

Progress

The downside

Fine, thanks

Cruise control

And as we followed dinosaurs

Radical empathy

Party time

Prophet

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Kate Tempest

Tiresias

Picture the scene:

A boy of fifteen.

With the usual dreams

And the usual routine.

Heading to school with a dullness inside

Borne of desires left unsatisfied.

Is he stifled or is he just

Learning the ways of his times?

Give him limbs that are awkward

But know how to climb.

Give him a gait that you know.

Give him hopes.

His days are so painfully slow,

But he copes.

This morning

He wakes to the same old alarm.

Slumps in the shower

Like a frog in the rain.

Winks at the mirror – does cool, does charm.

Shaves soft skin.

Nods at the pain.

No hair yet. Soon though.

Headphones on.

Last half of last night’s joint in his lips.

Bass so loud it feels like a movie.

Scuffing his trainers.

Swinging his hips.

They’re always laughing,

The kids at the bus stop.

He tries to ignore them,

But it doesn’t help.

Hood up, he walks past them.

Blowing out smoke rings.

Singing out Wu-Tang.

Hating himself.

Into the woods, he takes the old path.

There is the rope swing,

There is the bath lying broken.

There is his name in the bark.

There are the trees,

So slim and so stark

In the thin little woodland.

Hardly a forest,

The last of the green washed clean by the grey.

There is the bike chain that nobody wanted,

There is a child’s shoe

– hope they’re ok.

Out of the damp leaves and mulch in the pathway

His eye is caught by a glittering flash.

A dark moving something,

A mess of bright muscle.

Ore in a forge,

A deep, billowing gash.

Snakes. Two snakes!

Coiling, uncoiling

Boiling and cooling

Oil in a cauldron

Foil in a river

Soil on a mood ring.

He stares:

They spoil each other.

They do things

He has only dreamt of doing.

His blood’s alive inside him, fizzing.

He shuts his eyes and watches blotches

Underneath his lids for minutes.

But peeks before he knows he’s peeking.

Clutching his knees, he squats on his haunches

Watching the scales as they bounce and contort

And before he has thought he has reached out a fist

And picked up a short stick that lies near a ditch.

He swings from above

And breaks open the fortress.

The snakes, now apart,

Seem smaller, more awkward.

They flee for their love.

The boy, swaying and nauseous

Falls to the floor

More raw than before,

More tortured.

He feels himself shiver, contorting.

A current is coursing within him,

Shorting his circuits.

He curses,

His curses are perfect

The trees bow their branches in worship.

His body’s responding to something beyond him.

Swells where before there were dips.

A crunching of muscle, the hips

Opening up, bones roaring,

Beneath them, boyhood shrinking, falling inwards.

Thinking nothing.

Feeling new blood rushing.

Scuffing ankles on the forest floor

As his shape moves

His body pours itself to puddles.

He fits and starts.

He will be more than the sum of his parts.

He shakes and shouts, a screwed-up mouth.

A pain that only women know

Grabs him in the guts.

He slows to gently stuttered breaths

He stops.

He feels.

He’s still.

He rests.

And slowly, with caution

She climbs to her feet.

Wipes tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.

Frowns at the trees.

How could you stay so calm?

Places a nervous palm

Against her new face, her new chest,

The new flesh of her arm.

She approaches the school gates,

She can’t face her class.

She can’t go home, not now.

She is glass

Amongst sand.

She turns and retreats.

Finds herself deep

In the smog and the heat,

The fog and the meat

Of the bodies that beat out their lives

In the throb of the street.

She learns to be small and discreet.

She learns to be thankful for all that she eats.

She learns how to smile

Without meaning an inch of it.

She learns how to swim in the stink

And not sink in it.

It’s as if this is all she has known.

Give her a face that is kind, that belongs

To a woman you know

Who is strong

And believes in the rightness of doing things wrong.

Give her a body that breathes deep at night

That is warm and unending; as total as light.

Let her live.

Brighter every day

That she was not so young and desperate.

Bigger every minute

That she settled all the restless

Urges in her chest

And when she woke from nightmares, breathless,

She would piece herself together

Like some relic found in ash and clay,

A precious, ancient necklace.

When she was complete again,

She’d wolfwalk into town.

And drink down every wave that came

To break her spirits down.

She was wild and wonderful.

A star throughout the district.

A red light dreadnought.

Queen among misfits.

And yes, sometimes they sneered

When they glimpsed her in the gutter.

It made her crack her knuckles,

Shake her head and start to mutter

To herself under her breath

You posh pricks don’t know fucking shit.

And they would look away

And light their cigarettes and spit.

She liked to giggle with the pretty boys and kiss the lonely addicts

And weave exquisite curtains for the dismal little attics

Where they lay their heads at night,

Out of beads and string and plastic.

Each corner she inhabited made warmer by her magic.

She grew expert in the field

Of love

She learned to see and feel

The deepest secrets lurking in

The hearts of those who came to swim

In her dark waters.

She knew things.

She knew Kings

And she bore daughters.

She knew love, she made her fortune.

Till she met her match.

Exhaustion.

He was an older man,

A man who liked to hold her hand

A man who made her feel like she was rolling round on golden sand.

A man as soft as any girl

A man as hard as any luck.

She understood what life was for

Each time they bucked and came unstuck.

True love takes its toll

On souls

Who are not used to feeling whole.

They tangle limbs and feel the shudders,

All the world is nothing.

Lovers:

Promising each other not to take the vital parts,

While even as they mutter it, they’re giving up their hearts.

It is a new moon

In late May

She gives way

To his weight

They are laid out flat by a lake.

She can feel

His blood in her veins.

He can feel

Her pulse in his wrists.

And they kiss.

And the moon hangs open and orange

Like a wound in the mist.

He asks her to marry him.

Have him forever and never be lonely but only together.

She thinks that he’s taking the piss.

Throws him a scowl so sharp his darkest parts are shafted, blasted, ripped in half,

She starts to laugh, she hits her palms

Against the grass. He lifts his arms, I mean it

Shining cheeks, his garments creased,

Naked skin on cold damp heath. I mean it.

Silence. Let it land.

She cannot breathe or stand.

She crawls towards him, smiling.

Takes his hand.

Of course.

They kiss and both expand.

She decides she must go back,

Seek out a past.

A mother, a father,

Whatever she has.

A blessing or something,

Maybe an answer.

She packs some things and leaves at dawn, alone.

And heads out North. For home.

By dusk she’s walking the woods of her youth,

Smelling the air.

Is this where I’m from?

Who was I when I was here last?

If this isn’t home

Then where has home gone?

She sees a small clearing between the trees.

She’s rocks in a river.

She’s leaves in a breeze.

There is a shopping trolley

There are some keys

There is a hawthorn

There’s a horse chestnut

There’s a used condom

There’s an old desk lamp

There’s a nice conker . . .

Is that blood or ketchup?

Birds in the branches

Light in the darkness

Like sand in the toes of the bushes.

There!

Right there.

There in the path. In the leaves and the bracken

Two black backs untangle, dragons.

Coupling, shuffling, grappling.

She is staggering.

Can’t stop looking. Strange unravelling.

Something from before, something forgotten.

Someone she used to be.

Some rotten something in her darkest somewhere,

Scale and danger.

Nature, sunglare.

Faint, she takes a branch and holds it

Steadies herself. Stills her shoulders.

Snakes and sex and innocence

And nothing really makes much sense.

Who was I then?

She watches awed.

And grips the branch like it’s a sword.

Believing.

Believing.

I should be leaving.

She breaks the branch with sudden force.

She swings the branch, and knows its course:

The snakes, no chance, are soon divorced.

A sudden dark and squelching tension.

She panics, sweats, can’t breathe. Head pounds.

Her body writhes and juts.

No sounds.

The image of her lover’s face

Begins to shake and wilt and fade,

She loses him, there, in the shade.

It hurts. She’s felt this once before.

She knows this pain, this change, this awe.

She feels herself retract and harden.

Feels her bones enlarging,

Moving, arching.

Something charging,

She’s old milk bursting from its carton.

Shaken, floored, a body heaving

Writhing, smiling, something’s pleasing,

Finding her throat open, screaming,

Hoarse and full of light

Her body stops. She feels his might.

His veins thicken in intense delight.

A man again.

He stands, confused.

And walks away.

Too much to lose.

This poor once-boy, sudden-woman,

Who’d lived so long and done so well

And kept so much so deeply hidden,

Now found himself before the bell

Of some new door in some new town.

The pain of new beginnings.

Everything that went before

Gushed in him.

Water overfilling.

Smash the cup and let it happen.

Tiresias.

A full grown human.

Moves on from what he cannot fathom.

He swears his past will not consume him.

And so the man with many pasts

Matures into his present,

But he feels his waters move

In the last arc of the crescent,

And as the moon expands to full

He feels his blood respond,

But as all humans know to do,

He holds it in

And soldiers on.

Imagine how it feels

To walk so far away from life and love,

To know that all you’ve known

Is now

No longer enough.

All the blood they’d bled,

All the children they had borne,

All the mouths their mouths had met,

Behind them now.

Forlorn,

He staggers knee-deep through his pity

Sadness grabs his shins.

A stranger in a strangers’ city,

Where new strangeness begins.

In distant god terrain,

Mount Olympus, pink and milky,

Zeus and Hera fight again,

Raw and honest, foul and filthy,

Hera with her eyes screwed up

I swear you’re out to kill me.

She weeps and screams and he enjoys

The feeling of his power.

He froths and paces, thunders, pleads;

Tempers frayed, their bodies need

A break from fighting –

But none comes.

Not after this – another tongue

Roasted in his total blaze.

Surprise surprise, old Zeus has strayed.

The fighting carries on for days.

Down on Earth the weather’s mental.

Hurricanes and ancient heat.

Sudden freezes ice the deserts.

Rain leaves craters in concrete.

Hera’s ripping up her dresses.

– Am I not enough for you?

Zeus is melted, stares intently

– Sister, you are all I love.

– Then why?

– Because these others tempt me.

And unlike you, I lack the guts

To turn away and know my path.

Hera swigs straight from the cask,

The nectar’s strong and soothes her heart.

She sighs in disbelief, don’t start.

Zeus, bored of being wrong and sorry,

Puffs his chest up, shows his might.

Hera knows his godly body

Well enough to not take fright.

I don’t know what the fuss is for

Zeus begins, playing wounded.

Women like it more than Men.

I don’t even want to do it.

What you get from me is more

Than what I get from you.

Red rag to a Minotaur.

What? says Zeus. It’s true.

They row like it’s a holy war,

The Earth suffers their anger.

Finally, when neither has

The strength to raise the anchor

And the ship of their relations

Is broken-keeled and sinking,

And they’re fighting over what the other

Might have just been thinking,

They stop for ragged breaths.

The sky is bruised and black.

Hera won’t be pacified

Until he takes it back.

Tiresias, at peace at last,

Is older now than ever,

He’s found a lovely partner

And they’ve made a life together.

He won’t walk the woods alone;

He’ll only walk the heath.

He blanks out all the lives he’s known,

But they survive beneath.

He’s started doing pottery.

He’s joined the local choir.

If he thinks about his history

His heart is set on fire.

There’s no way back,

There is no track

That leads to his past lives.

He sets himself on forwards.

And he loves.

And he survives.

His lover is a gentle man,

Together they are free.

They enjoy each other

I love him. And he loves me.

But on dark days he likes to walk

Beside the heartsick sea.

And as the waves begin to howl

He drops down to his knees,

And cries for all he’s lost

And for all he used to be.

Zeus – in final stage of fury –

Beats his massive fists

Against the stormy clouds

And says – there’s only one who can fix this.

Tiresias is home alone,

His partner’s out all day;

He teaches in the local school

Good students but shit pay.

The weather’s turning nasty

The house rattles and moans.

The door’s ripped from its hinges

And Tiresias is thrown.

The house is filled with stormclouds

Rain smashes at his cheeks

He is too shocked to recognise

That this is how god speaks.

Suddenly the storm abates

The house is filled with sun

Zeus, in his human form,

Sticks up a golden thumb,

Hey.

Tiresias is terrified.

He can barely speak.

Zeus nods in recognition.

Swans in, takes a seat.

Look, me and Hera

Are having this domestic,

Pathetic – I know.

But that’s what’s to be expected

From an eternity of marriage.

Anyway

You’re my only hope.

And Zeus takes him by the hand

– might as well have been the throat –

And ascends the mount Olympus

And dumps him before the queen.

Here’s the guy to settle it.

Tiresias has been

Man and woman both.

So ask him – who enjoys it more?

A woman or a man?

Tiresias is stunned

But wants to help them if he can.

His mind begins to shudder,

Every kiss comes back to bite him.

His body buckles under

The old echoes of excitement.

He sees every time his open mouth has yelled,

All tongue and teeth,

He sees the necks and backs and legs,

His rising chest, his blushing cheeks.

He remembers after sex,

The woman he once was,

Lying in her happiness

Like nothing had been lost.

He thinks of how he finds it now,

Spent and drained and breathing deep.

The agony that follows.

The desperate need for sleep.

He feels it moving like a hand

Across his shaking thighs.

He takes his time and works it out,

And slowly he describes:

If you could split sexual

Pleasure into tenths,

Women would get nine.

That leaves just one

For men.

Zeus grins,

Smug,

In that way he does.

And Hera feels the boiling of her blood.

She, in rage and consternation,

Screams towards Tiresias

Takes the eyes out from his head

And leaves him blind and sore and red.

And gore is pouring forth before them all.

His arms are spread.

He wishes with his broken heart

He could be someone else instead.

Zeus is shocked, appalled, impressed.

Mate he says Ah mate.

Tiresias knows better

Than to howl and remonstrate

But his swollen eyeballs roll in grief;

His face is aged with pain.

Zeus, still reeling from his victory,

Accepts it is a shame.

What one god has done,

No other god can undo.

I can’t give you back your eyes

But I can give you something new.

Zeus lays a mighty palm

Against the bloody sockets

And floods the body’s blindness

With the inner sight of prophets.

Tiresias was melted,

But inside the vision grew.

A weakness in his legs,

A sobbing emptiness, shot through

With some new tenderness,

Some blue

And calm uncurling in his guts.

He staggered like a child pretending blindness,

Hands out in the dark.

But couldn’t close his eyes to what exploded in his heart.

He could see the truth of things

He couldn’t look away.

Nothing left but to accept,

He had been born to live this day.

And so, with face streaked warpaint red,

And every sense burnt white with pain,

He was given seven lifetimes

And dropped back down to Earth again.

A whole life lived

At the mercy of the fates.

Here he comes again,

The old seer with the shakes.

Wheeled on to mutter prophecy,

Chased off by angry kings.

Tiresias, you lived for more

Than what the legend sings.

Tiresias – you’ve lost

Everyone you ever loved.

But you stand beneath

The cruelty of the sun that burns above

And you offer only toothless grins

For all that you have seen.

Tiresias, you hold your own.

Each you that you have been.

You walk among us, slow,

A ragged crow,

With breath to blow,

In which we’ll see a truth

That we’ll wish we didn’t know.

You’re the crazy on the corner

Old, and smelling weird

Queuing for electric

With birdbones in your beard.

You stagger on regardless,

Swaying in the street

Summoning an oracle

That can’t be arsed to meet.

While we assemble selves online

And stare into our phones,

You are bright and terrifying,

Breath and flesh and bone.

Tiresias – you teach us

What it means: to hold your own.

Childhood

TIRESIAS: You long for knowledge;

you will soon long for ignorance.

– Euripides, The Phoenician Women

For my niece

I hold you in my arms,

your age is told in months.

There’s things I hope you’ll learn.

Things I’m sure that I learned once.

But there’s nothing I can teach you.

You’ll find all that you need.

No flower bends its head to offer

teaching to a seed.

The seed will grow and blossom

once the flower’s ground to dust.

But even so, if nothing else,

one thing I’ll entrust:

Doing what you please

is not the same

as doing what you must.

I was so much older then,

I’m younger than that now

It roars. Precious and hot and before time.

We played games on the alleyway railing.

I was the fat one. Good-natured and kind.

They were my friends. The world was our plaything.

We climbed hills to bury things. We drew maps.

Pulled our feet from the suck of the Quaggy.

Rules were if you flinched they got two free slaps.

My specs were large and my clothes were baggy.

Collected things that we found on the ground.

Always the goalie. I never complained.

I told the stories; they did the sounds.

We painted potatoes whenever it rained.

Snakes in the grass

I was walking my dog in the park.

He ran down to the wooded bit where I wasn’t allowed on my own

and I followed him, calling.

I was a kind-hearted child. I’d run across the road to save a spider.

I glimpsed the top of his tail and clapped my hands.

I found him!

He was sniffing another dog.

The other dog was sat beside a couple lying down.

They didn’t have their clothes on.

I dropped to my haunches to talk about dogs.

He was above her.

His elbows dug into the grass.

She was scowling at me,

her hair was long and sweaty.

They were wrapped in a cream blanket.

I stroked their dog.

Asked for his name.

Explained that some of my best friends were animals.

He told me to Fuck off.

It was the first time I’d heard it.

He hissed it full of venom and his eyes were black as 8balls.

Girl next door

I was seven,

my neighbour was eight.

She stuffed a pair of socks down my pants

and straddled me and called me big boy.

I didn’t have a clue what it meant

but I’ve been dizzy on that feeling ever since.

Thirteen

The boys have football and skate ramps.

They can ride BMX

and play basketball in the courts by the flats until midnight.

The girls have shame.

One day,

when we are grown and we have minds of our own,

we will be kind women, with nice smiles and families and jobs.

And we will sit,

with the weight of our lives and our pain

pushing our bodies down into the bus seats,

and we will see thirteen-year-old girls for what will seem like the first

time since we’ve been them,

and they will be sitting in front of us, laughing

into their hands at our shoes or our jackets,

and rolling their eyes at each other.

While out of the window, in the sunshine,

the boys will be cheering each other on,

and daring each other to jump higher and higher.

Bully

I was sat beside her on the bench.

It was lunchtime and the boys were all playing football.

The girls sat on benches beside the field

and watched the boys.

Every now and then she’d grunt and say things like

cor I wouldn’t mind having him

She’d had her period,

she said it was like being sick out your minge.

And she’d been fingered

and she had spots

and she knew swearwords

and she had boobs

and she gave blowjobs.

Before I had music and rhyming,

I was too big and I walked like a boy,

and I was too soft for the school that I went to

and I was too smart and it made her suspicious.

I had to be tenderised.

In the changing room,

girls sprayed so much Innocence it made the air toxic to breathe,

and brushed each other’s hair

and sang pop songs.

The bully would point at my crotch

and ask what I had.

And I wouldn’t understand

but I would blush and blush and blush.

Her sidekick was skinny and not very smart

and had hair like a short lampshade

and every time a boy walked past the bully would shout

shut your legs you minger, I can smell your dirty fanny

and the sidekick would stare at the ground.

Their mothers had been friends since they were at school.

School

We wander into school, happy children;

kind and bright and interested in things.

We don’t yet know the horrors of the building.

The hatred it will teach. The boredom it will bring.

Soon we’ll learn to disappear in public.

We’ll learn that getting by is good enough.

We’ll learn the way it feels to see injustice,

and shut our mouths in case it comes for us.

We’ll learn to never think but copy blindly.

To ally with the mean and keep them near.

We’ll learn to not be talented or clever,

and the most important lessons

for success in a career:

How to follow orders when you’re bordering

on nausea and you’re bored

and insecure and dwarfed by fear.

Sixteen

They think we’re bad kids.

We have nothing but fury and bass

and dead friends that keep us close to each other.

We’re tied to our fate like it’s mythical.

But nothing is certain.

I’m a talented thief.

I push trolley loads of fancy booze out the doors of Tesco’s

with a smiling nonchalance that makes me famous.

My family are worried.

Me and my dad are fighting with our hands.

My sisters can’t reach me.

I’ve stopped coming home at night.

I’ve dropped out of school to sit around and laugh at people.

Waiting in the pool room for the Triad with the coke,

walking through the rain with a bar of hash strapped to my chest,

I feel like punching every stranger in the face.

My friends pass me the laughing gas.

When other kids throw parties, they hope that we won’t come.

When I meet her, she is just like me.

I wake before her and start drinking.

She sees me at the foot of her bed,

smoking skunk out of her window,

watching all the chaos come to life below us.

And she whispers things I’ve never heard a person say.

When we walk down the street holding hands

grown men stuff theirs down their jeans and stare openly.

Groups of boys follow us to ask her why she’s with me.

When we stand kissing at a party,

a man we’ve never met

grips the back of both our heads

and sticks his tongue into our mouths.

When the rumours start

I don’t believe them.

Before her there were things that I trusted.

But now there is a loneliness so deep it sends me foetal.

And dark endless raves where she makes us both a spectacle

and all I want are the friends I’ve lost,

the certainty of knowing I have nothing.

The cypher

A circle. Shoulders and hard chests and arms like rosary beads

from push-ups before bed, eyes narrowed.

We wear our hoods up. We talk in couplets.

Two lines at a time and my heart has

never been calmer than here,

in the cypher.

I stare at my trainers and listen to deep voices

throwing out lyrics through smoke.

I know I can do this much better than them.

I can feel it. Something like stillness,

but nothing like stillness.

It creeps up my throat like water creeps down it.

It spreads itself over my tongue.

My shoulders are squared.

I move like the boys,

I talk like the boys,

but my words are my own.

And when I unleash them, my eyes widen and focus.

The streetlights stop flickering, just for a moment,

the arrogance prickles like sweat at my temples,

I’m moving as if I have never been gentle.

The kinder among them look at me sideways.

Smiling, shaking their heads,

I feel it all through me.

It’s shaking my legs.

I push my fist against theirs, my soft arms are clasped,

I’m embraced like a man, my back slapped,

and my heart all the time getting faster.

The beatboxer nods his respect.

And I’m feeling bigger than

all of these buildings.

I wait for my turn again,

everything burning.

Age is a pervert. Youth is a fascist

Youth hates age, age loves youth.

This means we are born for unhappiness.

This means we will keep buying outfits.

Youth, in his hard-bodied, glistening bullshit

stares at the sagging mouths of his elders

and feels utter disgust and it makes him annoyed.

Why aren’t they ashamed of themselves?

His youth is his victory, he wins every day that he’s young.

He beats people up when he’s bored.

He sniffs cheap drugs and plays with his balls in the classroom.

He can’t stand ugly people.

When he steps out onto the street,

everyone is speaking his language.

He feels like the first to have ever done anything.

Age stares with dismay at Youth.

He’d shared that same air once

but now, he stands alone on the high street,

his glasses steamed up,

pulling his saggy pants out of his arsecrack.

When he thinks back, his entire life is movie stills.

He watches the arrogant arc of that young skull,

the swing of those young limbs and feels his guts drop.

If he could hold something young

just for a few good strokes

The boy Tiresias

Watch him, kicking a tennis ball,

keeping it up,

the boy on the street in his sister’s old jumper.

Watch him,

absorbed in the things that he does.

Crouched down,

observing the worms and the slugs.

He’s shaping their journeys

placing his leaves in their paths,

playing with fate.

Godcub.

Sucking on sherbet.

Riding his bike in the sunlight.

Filmic.

Perfect.

But one day

he’ll be hunch-backed, riddled with pain.

Desperate for love but too weak to enjoy it.

Mumbling at strangers on trains, how strange

that when we have youth we’re so keen to destroy it.

We do not choose

but follow blindly.

We do not own

just sometimes carry.

We do not make.

We undertake

to be more alive

each day we wake.

And this is a must.

And the days are all dust

and the only thing worse

than losing the trust

of a lover is finding the rust

in their kiss.

He will live longer than all of his passions.

But for now, he is young still, and everything’s his.

Because the boy will grow up

makes him no less innocent.

Watch him,

staring at what doesn’t bore him.

Sun of himself. All things are his moons.

He can even now

feel his destiny calling.

He holds it to his chest,

like a dressing to a wound.

Womanhood

TIRESIAS: The truth with all its power lives inside me

– Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

The woman the boy became

Born more brawn than most,

Born warm.

Born close to ghosts.

Born storm.

Born old.

Grew young.

You could tell she wasn’t from

The same place as the rest,

Born strong.

Born wrong.

She grew.

Growing is what anyone would do.

Given the particulars

She knew what she knew

She was ridiculous.

Born too smart and too dumb.

Born to hold the world under her tongue.

Don’t swallow yet.

She felt

All the things that others didn’t feel,

Or if they did,

They did a lot to conceal what the feelings were.

She felt skies and bricks and rain.

She felt it all

It made her fall

And weep beneath a crawling dawn

When everything was ruined; torn.

She felt ill.

But she felt still.

How many yous have you been?

How many,

Lined up inside,

Each killing the last?

How many times have you

Seen yourself change,

Felt yourself splitting in half?

When does it happen? There in the moment?

Or when you look back and say

– that’s when my changing began?

Born hero.

Born freak. Born weirdo.

Born blind.

Born seeing.

Born man.

She stands.

The hillside beneath her is crumbling.

The sky frowns.

The land wants to return to the sea.

She is food for the gulls and it’s humbling.

But this is not all

That she was born to be.

All of the things in her life that have happened.

All of the changes.

All of the strangers.

All of the nights and the days in her heart

Have been present in her since the start.

You don’t learn.

You remember.

Born with it all in your chest.

Born first.

Learn last.

Burn fast like paper

Unless you’re wet logs.

Wet dogs shelter in her caves when they get lost.

Howl with her.

She has been touched without asking.

Punched by a madman.

Drunk in a bad town.

When she puts her hands down

And feels what’s beneath

She feels all the grief

Of the world.

Lay a wreath

For the girls.

She will march

Till she feels the tarmac respond.

She will die for our wrongs.

We won’t notice.

She is fire

And sleet and granite,

Space rock shattering the planet.

She wants to stop it spinning in its tracks like a dumb child.

She will be prophet one day.

For the moment

She soaks up all that she can

She will own it

This filthy body this life

The dethronement of all that was precious

In favour of all that is tepid.

Opponents mean nothing. She’s Titan.

Born of the first breed.

Born in the last days.

Frightened of nothing that bleeds.

The more that you hate her

The less that she needs.

All of her childhood passed in a flash

When she woke on her back in a clearing.

Time to be me now.

How many yous will you carry,

Weeping and desperate to marry?

How many yous will you churn out?

Turn out the light for the night.

She has burned out but she’ll be alright.

She is coming up.

Child of her time.

Red morning.

Blood on the tips of the thorns,

And the awning is dripping

With all of our scorn. We were born in

Days that will fill you with porn and with boredom

Grey little faces march in the squadron to warsongs

Penned by cynical fiends,

The latest big hit that cements the routine.

Sell us the download.

And kill all our dreams.

She rises.

She will see through the disguises.

They stab knives in her thighs.

See the swell of her iris?

She survives.

She will run till the cities are vanquished.

And all of the children are gods again.

On Clapton Pond at dawn

The pond was calm

the sky was new

your voice was soft your lies were true.

You were me and I was you

and I was going blind with you.

You told me I reminded you

of Venus when I smiled at you,

or angels that go flying through

the paintings in the quietest rooms

of galleries. Renaissance girls,

all soft curves and floating curls.

We sat there and the light shone through

the leaves and we admired the view.

I loved you.

I had died for you

that night,

I’d closed my eyes

and through the gaps

I’d sought your silhouette.

I’d given up my mind for you.

We did what all our kind would do.

You sat beside me, finding new

ways to look away.

You kissed me. It was lighter fuel.

It burnt the night away.

And when I took my eyes off you

I saw that it was day.

India

It was quite funny really.

We sat round the kitchen table,

a sisterhood,

drinking vermouth.

I opened the window,

blew my smoke into the night,

passionately drunk.

In love with two women and playing charming as hard as I could.

At some point

I asked you to carve your name into the flesh of my arm

with the blade of a Stanley knife.

You asked was I sure.

I said yes I was.

Looked at you and nodded deeply.

You were excited

in the way that you get

when things are unusual.

And so you pressed the blade in and you drew blood

and it hurt like everything hurt with you.

I smiled winningly

and bled everywhere.

The other woman I was in love with

filled my open wound with ink

and together

you rubbed fag ash into the bleeding letters.

Smiling at each other.

And at me.

I didn’t realise it would last forever.

Now I wear your name in capitals across my right arm

and people think I found myself in Goa.

Remembering the way you kissed me once

You were driving, my legs were across your lap.

I rolled your cigarettes while you rubbed your hand over my ankles,

and picked my foot up by the sole

to kiss in between my toes with your tongue

and I giggled as if I was a beautiful girl.

And as you sucked my toes and drove the car,

I dared myself to focus on the side of your face.

In other cars, on other roads, in other towns,

I’m sure other lovers were glancing sideways,

smiling like morons, pushing their thighs down into their seats,

but none had the stop of blood,

the fall and crush and emptying that I had, right then.

Some couple

There’s always some couple

in ravenous stages of loving

just when we’ve argued ourselves into cunts.

We’ll be fuming,

walking along, saying nothing,

when suddenly,

here they come, skipping in front –

whispering,

smiling,

tickling,

cooing,

it makes me feel

empty

and angry

and dead.

But when I look at you

silently screwing

I know

I’d much rather

have this love instead.

The old dogs who fought so well

It struck me that morning. I was in Ireland, terrified in a tiny tent.

Outside, a storm was gathering gale force and I was going out of my mind with the guilt.

The drugs had made a monster out of my face.

In my head I was listening to Chopin and I was reading Joyce and I was in love with them for being so human and for saying it all so well.

I felt myself shrinking and desperate and worthless and I wondered if they ever felt like the most alone and despicable people in all of Poland, or Paris, or Dublin, or the World.

I could see him, Chopin – thin and pale at his piano stool, sicker every day, watching his hands getting older.

I could see Joyce, tearful behind his eyepatch – throwing himself into it in a room as dark as wet earth and I smiled to myself, and stopped trying to sleep.

The wind was still making an orchestra out of the tent. But it wasn’t a requiem anymore.

Three mornings later, I woke up and reached for one of the books by the bed.

It was Bukowski. I opened him at random and read a poem I’d not read before – it was called How To Be A Great Writer and in it he said:

remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

if you think they didn’t go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you’re doing now

without women

without food

without hope

then you’re not ready

And I laughed out loud. Because it’s always the way – when you’re alone and feeling like you could jump off the edge of the world,

that’s when they find you and tell you they all went through the same thing.

And it makes you feel special because you feel like of all the people in all the world, these yearsdead writers wrote whatever it was that made the blood run in your veins again, just for you.

And you say their names out loud when you walk the city in the middle of the night, and you feel close to something timeless;

you feel like someone just lay you down on your back and showed you the sky.

What we lose

When I was young

I could speak to animals,

these days

I don’t know what to say.

They used to sniff my ears,

but now

they smell my fear

and walk away.

You eat me up and I like it

The air is wet with pressure.

You stare at me across the table.

I feel like if I move

It will begin to rain.

You pile your fork and smile through mouthfuls.

Overwhelmed, I lean across to press my smile against your chewing lips.

The first thing I noticed about you was your lips;

Shaking with pressure.

Capable of mighty mouthfuls.

I gave you my hand. All my cards were on the table.

When we stood in the storm by the river, I couldn’t tell your kisses from the rain.

We kept still and let the planet move.

It was your move.

You raised your eyebrows and licked your lips.

My clothes were cold skin from all the rain.

You grabbed me with so much pressure

Your fingerprints stayed on my arms after you’d gone, like tea stains on a coffee table

And my body shone all over from where you’d had your mouthfuls.

You say my name in between mouthfuls.

I feel you feeling me move.

The books, the lamp, the whisky all come crashing off your bedside table.

I bite down until I can taste blood on my lips.

We tried to play it cool. We promised no pressure.

But I couldn’t keep myself from falling. Like the rain.

I lay in the dark and listened to the rain.

Drank the night in breathless mouthfuls.

The sky hung low and gave in to the pressure.

I stared at your back, desperate for you, trying to make you move.

But you were busy, chain smoking, swinging those legs off the edge of the table

And I could feel myself burning up each time the butt met your lips.

I watch your profile, the stretch of your nose, the curve of your lips.

The walls are the colour of rain.

I am jealous, territorial, stalking the pool table.

Swallowing drugs in clammy grey mouthfuls.

Eventually, you move.

On the jukebox, Under Pressure.

The train was full of people. I looked out at the rain and watched everything move.

You smiled tiny, wet mouthfuls out of my neck, lay a coat across our laps and did it to me underneath the table.

I couldn’t take the pressure. Your eyes were bright with guilt. I saw the smile before it reached your lips.

Fuck the poem

I haven’t written in ages

’cause I’d rather stare at you than stare at pages.

But what would be great is

making a poem that could be half as courageous

as you when you’re naked.

I try for a minute –

Your love is my metal, your kisses my rivets.

You are like the ocean beneath the slick of a spillage.

Fuck the poem.

There’s a bed here

and you want me in it.

Waking up with you this morning

You yawn. I watch your chin obey your mouth

through eyelids not yet sure that I’m awake.

Small creases gossip softly on your face.

The warmth you emanate will heat this house.

I watch you coming back from where you’ve been.

It clings to you. Your naked shoulders glow,

catch dawn and hold it still and make it slow.

Your eyebrows play your dreams through scene by scene.

You burrow down then climb up laughing, squash me,

your hungry kiss-mouth wanting to be fed.

Slow and soft, you spread yourself across me

your lips lead mine like needles leading thread.

Sometimes I catch a glimpse and I’m amazed:

I’ve seen you but not looked at you for days.

The woman Tiresias

At first she was worried, of course.

Dragged her shape around like chains.

Was it real or was it magic?

She watched herself in the windows of traffic.

Heard the drivers call her darling.

She threw herself into the rituals.

Manned the tills for bed and victuals.

Worked like she was born to work

And soon she felt, as we all feel,

That if it’s happened, then it’s real.

What a body’s for in times like these

Is yours to guess or know.

Her body was a new and ancient rite

She felt her wanting grow.

But could not reconcile her wants

With what she knew she was.

She let herself be touched

But not for pleasure. Just because.

New flesh for old,

She learned her limits and controlled

Her deepest fidgets.

She sought wealth to lift her up.

Could not rest with feeling stuck.

Getting by is fine for some

But she was after better luck.

Sitting in the finest winebars

Sipping from a shining wineglass

She remembers ancient times

When she was young, a boy who climbed

On top of girls to feel them grind.

And how she fought so she could find

Herself top boy. Those days, divine.

All tough and raw and caked in grime.

Those days are in her, howling still,

Yes, she’s calm and humble now,

But that dark music, wild and shrill

Still plays each time the night comes down.

Those days still follow her around

Stagger leering through the streets

Growling at her, gaining ground,

While she unwraps the posh pink sweets

From suitors who mistake her charms

For something strange they’d like for theirs.

Those simpletons who think they dance

A step that no one else has shared.

Her body smarts, she grits her teeth,

How many of us must we be?

She knows that she is full of something

New and foul and deep and free.

The boy in her is strong some days

And calls out for a girl to touch

The girl in her is full of rage

And craves the things she hates so much.

She must be more than sex and body?

Sex and body’s all she’s got.

Like all hard lessons, learn it softly.

It only is until it’s not.

Manhood

TIRESIAS: All men make mistakes, it is only human.

But once the wrong is done, a man

Can turn his back on folly

– Sophocles, Antigone

The man Tiresias

It came out of nowhere.

All teeth and tussle.

Shouting like huge crowds behind him.

It stamped on his bones.

It shovelled his muscle.

Alone in a clearing where no one would find him.

He writhed in its jaws:

his lovers flashed past him.

The routine, the dinners, the dishes.

He felt the dense forest

close in and enchant him.

Cleansed of his longing for kisses.

He rose like a wreck on a winch.

Swaying and derelict.

Suddenly boy again. Soon to be man.

All of his grief was a burden to keep

deep down in his guts.

And he turned and he ran.

Fighting with shadows.

Swinging at birds as they laughed.

Too shaken to hate what had happened.

All that he’d learned to be true

fell to pieces.

He stared at the sun till it blackened.

Watching his body like it wasn’t his.

He pushed his new shape

to the edge of the clearing.

And found the red road

that led out of the city.

And screamed until no one could hear him.

He journeyed for days,

until he was purified.

Feasting on tree bark and roadkill and petrol.

Macho man; ate cars for breakfast.

Natural man; skin the same texture as cactus.

Hands grew wild and dextrous and flew at his side like two kestrels.

His feet became tougher than limpets

his eyes became keener than knives,

his breath melted padlocks.

He heard a leaf falling

from five miles away,

and he moved like a dog on a ham hock.

All knowledge was his

and he learned the old words

for the things that he saw. He spoke out their names.

He learned to forget

his hurt and regret

he walked on his own, legs like two flames.

He grew dirty and tired and thirsty,

at the next town

he decided to stop at the bar.

And he saw then: no matter how far you have come,

you can never be further than right where you are.

These things I know

Language lives when you speak it. Let it be heard.

The worst thing that can happen to words is that they go unsaid.

Let them sing in your ears and dance in your mouth and ache in your guts. Let them make everything tighten and shine.

Poetry trembles alone, only picked up to be taken apart.

Instead of an elephant, roaring and shaking its ears,

it’s one of those handbag dogs, yapping and scared of the rain.

The clever folk talk in endless circles and congratulate themselves on being so untouched by passion.

But since when did the clever folk ever know anything?

Sometimes things are as simple as they seem.

It’s as much about instinct as it is about intellect

And if you feel it, it’s alive.

Let it be magic.

These are not engines we’re making.

Wherever you come from is a holy place.

Do not love the idea of life more than you love life itself.

The world is a terrible place for sensitive people

but the closer we come to losing our minds, the harder we’ll work to keep them.

If you’re not fighting for it, you don’t want it.

Taking things for granted is a terrible disease. We should all be checking ourselves regularly for signs of it.

Sensitive people are frequently beaten up by things insensitive people can’t see.

If you’ve been beaten up, good for you.

If you’ve never been beaten up, good for you.

If you get beaten up all the time, you should take up boxing.

It’s ok to feel alone.

Usually you are.

That’s what poetry’s for.

It’s good to care about things so much you feel exhausted.

Don’t read women’s magazines. They’re bad for your stomach.

You’ve only yourself to blame when someone half as talented as you ends up achieving twice as much.

If people judge you badly and misunderstand you,

it’s good for you.

Fame is the worst thing that could happen to your reputation.

If you want to know your worth, ask your lovers.

Especially the ones who don’t talk to you anymore.

You can’t be a good person and treat your lovers badly,

no matter how much you give to charity.

Better to have been a dickhead and seen it,

than be a cunt all your life and not know it.

A thousand fans screaming your name is nothing compared to one lover who whispers it and knows what it means.

Although of course both would be nice.

The world is getting stranger every day; you’re not strange for noticing.

You don’t have to be young to be good at what you do. You just have to be good at it.

There’s nothing wrong with dogs being dogs and baring their teeth at each other.

The pain of having fucked things up so bad will never leave us.

If you say something funny on Twitter, it doesn’t matter.

If you’ve been an arsehole today, acknowledge it.

Try not to be one tomorrow.

Never underestimate how nice it is

to make someone a cup of tea without them having to ask.

If you have a shit job and you don’t love your girlfriend and your life is killing you, take a fucking risk for once.

If some people don’t hate your work, you’re not doing it right.

Watching my dog sleep

after Dermot Healy

Murphy is dreaming:

his muscles are twitching,

his ears are alive,

his paws scrape the air.

He’s dreaming of yesterday,

stones thrown into waves.

The heartbreak of chasing

what’s no longer there.

Learning curve

You taught me what a body’s for.

Before you I was scared of being stripped completely naked

even in the throes of it.

I never quite lost myself.

But would watch it from above.

Never so completely moved

that I understood what all the fuss was for.

Since you, I stare unashamedly at strangers.

Hold their eyes for seconds at a time.

Smile like I’d know what to do if they smiled back,

panic when they do.

I am faithful to the lessons you have taught me,

but they’ve flooded me with hungers I’ve not satisfied before.

And so I find myself breathless in a Brooklyn tranny bar

stunned by a woman who is kissing me like I am you.

Morning after opening night

So that was it. And it is done,

and now the artist can move on.

Behind him, what he has achieved

is slouching close. Morose, aggrieved.

Most days he can’t abide the work,

it spits from every seat.

Most nights, it sends him half berserk

and turns his flesh to meat.

A first night. A public showing,

a winning smile. A finished poem.

Applying perfume to the skin

of all the mess that lives within.

Ideas are such perfect things.

But soon as they’re made real

they’re cringing, clunky, turgid things,

so difficult to wield.

That’s what keeps him trying though;

he’ll stare till he’s half blind.

It’s the search that will define him,

not the thing he’s trying to find.

Seeking out a secret in

the light, the rain, the traffic.

A thing that makes him less alone.

Some sudden, brutal magic;

an angel in the takeaway

who floods his veins with sun.

The sentences that strangers say.

A child having fun.

Daylight on a dozing man.

A damp patch on the ceiling.

Anything can shake his hands

and flood his soul with feeling.

And it’s worth all the agony,

the wanting to be more

for that fickle ecstasy

when he knows what he’s for.

That burning punch from paradise

eternal in the moment.

When it’s good it’s very good,

the rest is all atonement.

Down the pub

It was something about the shape of his face

the size of him. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

I just wanted him to know without me saying

that I needed him to put me in my place.

We were joking, all together, shooting pool.

I was standing, legs apart, smoking fags and swearing.

Beside me, with their slender waists and shipwreck eyes

the girls were dancing, and I was dying

to be like them; until one put her breasts

against my body and my feelings changed.

The point

The days, the days they break to fade.

What fills them I’ll forget.

Every touch and smell and taste.

This sun, about to set

can never last. It breaks my heart.

Each joy feels like a threat:

Although there’s beauty everywhere,

its shadow is regret.

Still, something in the coming dusk

whispers not to fret.

Don’t matter that we’ll lose today.

It’s not tomorrow yet.

Penance

What you don’t know is that

I’ve written this poem a hundred times,

scribbled it over countless takeaway menus and flyers for shit raves

in the only pen I could ever find,

which was always a miniature turquoise rollerball.

I’ve found scraps of it in my pockets

and set fire to it on fifteen different windowsills.

And watched the wind catch the ashes

and each time blow them back in my face.

I write it, and imagine giving it to you,

and I get so scared that you will shake your head

and tell me you can’t trust a word I say

that I screw it up really small

and wedge it down the back of the bus seats

with the chicken bones.

Man down

Let it be known: no man is entirely alone

No man is a man all through.

I’ve seen you. Shivering. Fleeting weakness.

Cold rain scuffing its feet on the beaches.

Young human. You. All feeling, flesh.

Brine eyes. Man, but human first.

Stand up. Tall and strong and curved.

Your body makes my body hurt.

A godkid. Perfect. Gloss and dirt.

None of it’s real, we are made manifest

By the hearts that bang hard on the bars of our chests –

Let them out.

But we can’t though. Too much to lose.

You’ve got to keep face, keep pace. Keep cool.

And what do I know? You’re the man here.

I’ve got to stop telling you things.

You’ll give when you’re ready.

I’ve got to stop wanting.

Your mind’s made up.

I’ve got to stop pushing.

You’re trying to keep steady.

No man’s too man to hear things.

No tears no tantrums. Resorting to type. So handsome.

No woman’s too woman to take it all in.

Quietly solve it, not try and control it,

But fix it so subtle that no one will notice.

Be all that you are, all woman all soft.

All man. All soft. All flesh. All bone. All organ.

I find you more than yourself. I hear you talk to yourself in the night-time.

But don’t worry, I won’t say a word to your friends.

Your voice. Your tears. Your cries. Your panic.

You are more man when you break and weep.

When you shake and sleep,

Body wrapped around your pillow

Safer than a body that bites back.

Your billowing shirt as you sprint through the dirt. Night cap.

One for the road. But the road never loved you.

I love you. I love what you hate in yourself.

It’s perfect.

Let it come out.

The best boys would feel like a lady in your arms.

The best girls would fuck like a man, given half the chance.

The good ones are good ones because they are whole ones.

We’re at our best when we mean it.

We all start part of a much bigger notion.

And lock ourselves down like we don’t have a say.

We come from man and woman combined

And we’ll carry those parts till we see our last day.

Hear me. Let it be known.

Your muscles are mine, let’s stretch.

Dawn by the bins. We giggle and wretch –

The dawn’s on your skin. You’re shivering, wet.

You’ll cry from your pores if not from your eyes.

Your blood’s the same colour as mine.

What a man ever was is enough. It’s enough.

Stop trying. Give everything up. No shame here.

No woman’s too woman to stand tall and strong.

No man’s too man to want loving. Need guidance.

All hearts shrink before violence.

All fists clench for their friends.

We’re from here.

We carry it.

Everything that ever went wrong here.

Every single body that gave in.

Caved in.

Break through the boards in the windows.

Find a man thinner than string.

Blinking.

Trying to keep everything in.

Foul smell of the things that we do to escape

There is no glamour in this. No rock and roll.

This is just endings. This is just grief.

And you’ve got a soul worth living for.

I’m blocking blows for you. But I can’t protect you.

I’m too slow for you.

I’m too alive to be near all this death.

I love you. I will not walk off.

But each time my heart falls out of my chest

And sits there, knees pulled up to its chest

It strikes me that there’s hardly anything left.

For all of the things that we learnt in this city.

For all of the things that it taught.

You are more than the last pair of trainers you bought.

Never just one thing.

We’re all things.

But all things fall short.

A man is a man when he clings to his friends.

A woman’s a woman when she holds it down.

A man is a man who takes up her cauldron.

A woman’s a woman who takes up his crown.

And wears it for all the right reasons.

And stirs it for all the right reasons.

Humans.

Born with the bodies that need to release.

Find me inside you.

Let me be all that I am.

Tiresias. Wringing my hands.

Tiresias. Singing the hymns of the land.

Blind Profit

TIRESIAS: Where’s the glory, killing the dead twice over?

– Sophocles, Antigone

The prophet Tiresias

So after all that.

Three lifetimes behind you,

And just at the moment you’ve found some peace,

You are dragged before the gods,

No mention of the lives you’ve lived.

The things you’ve learned to cultivate, like

Living in the moment.

You’d be angry if you weren’t so resigned

To letting nothing take you by surprise any longer.

That first dark journey.

Begging your feet to carry you somewhere you might recognise the smell of.

The whole world spinning within you.

A darkness. You can’t get a breath.

The howling of Hera still sharp in your ears

The feeling of godsized palms on your forehead,

The sudden nausea that trampled your body.

When your eyes began to fog, it was just spots of dark at first,

Expanding out.

Until nothing. Straining to see round the edge of the smudge, through the middle or something. Pushing,

But nothing.

While within, another sight, another sense is growing.

Some lightness somewhere.

A feeling of certainty.

The ache of a purpose. The fear. The crippling doubt.

Here it comes.

Ballad of a hero

Your Daddy is a soldier son,

Your Daddy’s gone to War,

His steady hands they hold his gun,

His aim is keen and sure.

Your Daddy’s in the desert now,

The darkness and the dust,

He’s fighting for his country, yes,

He’s doing it for us.

Your Daddy’s coming home soon though,

Not long now till he’s back,

We’ll dress you in your smartest shirt

And meet him down the track.

He’ll put you on his shoulders and

You’ll sing and clap and laugh,

I’ll wrap my arms around his waist,

And hold him close at last.

Your Dad ain’t left the house again,

Your Dad ain’t brushed his teeth,

Your Dad keeps getting angry son,

At nights he doesn’t sleep.

He’s having his bad dreams again,

He seems worn out and weak,

I’ve tried to be there for him, but

We barely even speak.

He can’t think what to say to me,

He don’t know how to tell it,

Won medals for his bravery,

But just wants to forget it.

He’s drinking more than ever son,

Before, he never cried.

But now, I wake at night and feel

Him shaking by my side.

He spoke to me at last my son!

He turned to me in tears,

I held him close and kissed his face

And asked him what he feared.

He said it’s getting darker,

It hasn’t disappeared,

And I can see it sharper

Now the sand and smoke have cleared.

There was this kid he’d got to know,

Young boy. Just turned eighteen,

Bright and kind, his name was Joe,

He kept his rifle clean.

Joe’s girlfriend was expecting,

Joe loved to joke and laugh,

Joe marched in front of your old man,

As they patrolled a path.

Everything was quiet until

They heard the dreaded blast.

The man that marched in front of Joe

Was completely blown apart.

Some shrapnel hit Joe in the face,

Gouged both eyes at once,

The last thing those eyes ever saw

Was the man in front:

Limbs and flesh and bone and blood,

Torn up and thrown around,

And after that – just blackness.

The taste, the stink, the sound.

I tell you this my son because

I know what you’ll be like,

As soon as you’ve grown old enough

You’ll want to go and fight

In whatever battle needs you,

You’ll pledge your blood and bone,

Not in the name of good or evil –

But in the name of home.

Your Dad believes in fighting.

He fights for you and I,

But the men that send the armies in

Will never hear him cry.

I don’t support the war my son,

I don’t believe it’s right,

But I do support the soldiers who

Go off to war to fight.

Troops just like your daddy son,

Soldiers through and through,

Who wear their uniform with pride,

And do what they’re told to do.

When you’re grown, my sweet, my love,

Please don’t go fighting wars,

But fight the men that start them

Or fight a cause that’s yours.

It seems so full of honour, yes,

So valiant, so bold,

But the men that send the armies in

Send them in for gold,

Or they send them in for oil,

And they tell us it’s for Britain

But the men come home like Daddy,

And spend their days just drinking.

Sigh

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by payment plans

Progress

Once there was a purpose,

so I hear: there was a God.

It made it all less worthless

and it gave us the because

we’d all been searching for.

An unarguable truth.

A reason to be kind and just,

a reason for the noose

that sent the sinner off to sinnerland

and made us all feel better

in the knowledge that the righteous

would be right and just forever.

Once there was religion, and it ruled.

We had it bad.

We fooled ourselves to sleep at night;

This was This, and That was That.

And if our morals ever shook,

we looked no further than The Book.

But over time we felt the pressure;

it became the great oppressor.

And without God, the wars seemed crueller

life seemed bleaker. Art seemed foolish.

Death seemed stranger now than ever.

What was mankind for? What terror

flooded us to understand

there was no point, no grander plan.

There was just living out each day.

Work. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. Pass away.

Without the fear of retribution

we found guilt-free pleasure

but we lost the sense of union

that had kept us all together.

We needed something new

to fill the emptiness that grew;

and what’s better to believe in

than all-you-can-eat Freedom!

The joy of being who we are

by virtue of the clothes we buy.

The dream of getting rich enough

to live outside the common life.

And now, there is no purpose

that exists beyond our needs.

Now there is the worship

of convenience and speed.

We run around the circuit,

pit our grace against our greed

And all we have is surplus

to what’s needed and we feed

our callous little urchins

in the best way that we can.

And then wonder how they’ve grown

to only know what’s in their hands.

Now we have the Screen,

and it rules.

Our kids are perma-plugged into its promise,

admiring all its jewels.

And couples eat their dinner,

in the glimmer of its rays,

we stare until

we’ve learned the world’s ways.

Pre-teens learn what heart-throbs are.

Heart-throbs gorge on hot pork and watch sport.

Reality played for us to sneer and weep at –

here is morality at last! See us caught

in full colour, high definition.

Look – a cripple on a blind date.

Look – young people getting fucked in Magaluf,

look – the mother of a dead son, weeping, irate,

look – a celebrity eating shit and singing Agadoo.

We used to burn women who had epileptic fits.

We’d tie them to a stake and proclaim them a witch.

Now

we’ll put them on a screen if they’ve got nice tits,

but they’ll be torn apart if they let themselves slip.

We’ll draw red rings round their saggy bits.

And flick through the pictures while we eat bags of chips.

You can either be a beauty or a beast or a bitch,

you can either be cool or kooky or kitsch.

Before

you were damned for the things that you did,

or if you didn’t live how the villagers lived.

Now

You’re handed the mould and told – fit in to this.

And maybe one day you could really be big.

Behind-the-scenes footage

of a famous last gig.

Backstage close-up

of the singer’s last twitch.

Before she pulls her gun out

and blows herself to bits.

The world is your playground,

go and get your kicks,

as long as you’re not poor,

or ugly, or sick.

We never saw it coming,

like all the best tricks.

Once we had the fear;

now we have the fix.

The downside

They cornered me

and held their knives up to my throat.

They asked me for the football scores.

They asked me for the winning horse.

They asked me for the lotto draw.

Six numbers each and bonus balls.

All I could see

in flickering, ultraviolet pixels

Were their great-grandchildren

ripped to pieces by the missiles

Fine, thanks

To really see the state of things is lethal.

It’s safer just to see what we can bear.

Exhausting being fear-struck; howling, weak-willed.

Much nicer to be bathing in the glare

of all that we have built to shine and soothe us

what use are eyes at all in times like this?

Please don’t bother raising arms to shoot us,

we’ll shoot ourselves. No really, we insist.

No guns. Just give us brands and bills and wages,

and rent that takes our dignity away.

Don’t trouble yourselves with handcuffs and with cages.

There’s cleaner ways than that to make us pay.

What good can come from listening to our instincts?

You think it’s easy putting up like this?

Don’t make a fuss, you know us, we’re the English,

and peace on Earth won’t help us feed our kids.

Our eyes are trained on pinpricks in the blackness.

The telly helps to end a dismal day.

The visions come when we are at our weakest.

But they don’t last that long, so it’s ok.

Cruise control

The weather will change,

We’ll think it malicious.

Speak hurricanes’ names and worry in secret.

The waves will build somewhere way out in the ocean,

And flatten whole towns when they break on the beaches.

It won’t be enough. We’ll plough on

The mightiest we’ve ever been.

Standing like gods on the shoulders of history.

Or tossing our curls in the sun.

We’ll stare down at the screens in our hands

And smile at the photos. Didn’t we laugh.

Strange voices will sing from street corners.

Powerful men will mumble it into the backs

Of the people they fuck. This is the end.

Health and safety slogans will resonate like ancient proverbs.

Don’t use the lifts in the case of fire.

Make yourself aware of your nearest exit.

We’ll bury our heads in the sand of our lovers.

The waters will boil in the oceans.

Dead things will float on the waves.

The ice caps will thicken to slush puppies

As hurricanes twist

Like boxers in sleeping bags, trying to throw punches.

There’ll be fires in the forests, floods in the cities.

And men too rich to swim will die.

The skin on our children will toughen and harden.

And still we will debase ourselves

For that piece of land or mineral

That rock or bomb or golden egg

That might allow one dying person to imagine

They are worth more than another.

And as we followed dinosaurs

Whatever follows us

Will hunt for footprints in the lowlands,

And piece together fragments of our habits

From the internet.

A fossilised smartphone preserved behind glass

For the new young to traipse past on school trips,

Yawning.

Radical empathy

I feel a peace beyond these fumes.

It’s coming. I can feel it surging.

Drumming on the curbs, it’s burning up,

It’s gaining ground.

A peace that we are born deserving.

One we learn to think absurd.

It’s in us, or at least, the yearning.

Quickly, stamp it down.

It must be getting nearer.

We can feel it shake within us.

While the echo of each violence done

Pulls out our teeth and breaks our fingers.

Each time you walk the street and flinch

At shadows, see a demon coming,

Visualise your body falling

Under trains or into nothing,

Every time you sense a figure

Running for you, grabbing hold,

To beat you down and leave you dying,

Rob you blind and leave you cold –

It’s not the fear or the desire to fall.

It’s a memory.

Each wrong is repeated relentlessly.

All thought is eternal.

All life is empathy.

The streets are thick with everything that’s ever happened anywhere.

Feel it in the presence of the crowds.

Shouting in your ears when you are bowed and in tears.

It’s here.

We can turn our backs forever but we’ll never drown it out.

Every time a body’s bled its last,

A child dead before it’s learned that life is fast,

It stays behind, repeating.

You say you feel the monsters in the dark,

They are not monsters,

They are memories of human things that need to be addressed, appeased.

But there is peace, not heralded by muted brass or soaring strings,

Not worried by the children necking fizzy drinks and sticky wings.

But in us, throbbing, telling us we resolutely must

Not partake in one more horror

If we’re to learn to trust.

Fine enough for poets, but in real life

The blood is flowing.

Fine enough to know it,

But it feels like

The love is slowing down,

Getting tired. Cannot lift its weary head.

And all of it continues.

And still nothing can be said.

We are not hateful creatures,

We are good. Our goodness screams for peace.

Everything that’s happened can be felt.

Each mouth deserves to speak

Whichever words come to it in the throes of truthful feeling.

But instead

We plunge to numbness.

It’s much safer, safety’s so appealing

And what’s wrong with wanting comforts?

My family are worth protecting.

Why should I concern myself with people that I’ve never met?

And no one’s got my back, so why should I have theirs?

My heart throws its head against my ribs,

It’s denting every bone it’s venting something it has known since I arrived and felt it beat.

Party time

He’s drunk tonight.

He can’t bear another moment

of all day committed to a calling

he never asked for.

He’s singing at the roof tops.

Nobody is listening.

He is the old crazy walking into parked cars.

If he sees you strolling home with your arms around each other

he will shout wildly at you and you will smirk knowingly, while you try and shake the terror that he’s airing your most secret dread.

That deep, raw bark is his calling.

Even tanked up like this, he can’t put it out.

Tonight, you see him at a party,

jabbing the air with his fingers,

some kid picked him up on the way over.

Thought it would be funny.

He stands smiling into ears and necks,

dancing like the ancients used to.

But there will come an hour when the dawn is nearly dressed,

when he will start to sway with purpose

and all the laughing kids will hold their sides

and find each other’s eyes, like have you seen this guy?!

While he bows his head and makes his incantations,

singing like a rabbi.

He’s summoning their destinies,

sentencing their spirits;

poor things, the joke’s on them –

they think he’s rapping lyrics.

Prophet

See him, the old man, blind as our greed,

Alone in the caff with his meat and his gravy.

Witness to every great nation that rose up in hope

And fell prey to itself. This is slavery.

Is that what he says to himself? Was it maybe

A mumble that meant something else? Was it baby

I miss you? He gets up slow from the table.

Gripping his cane so he’s able.

Shuffling, lonesome, sipping black lager,

Park-drunk. Spouting maniacal laughter.

Hard up. Head down. Scarf, gloves, parka.

Every other bastard with a half-arsed grasp on the last judgement is sitting in his bathtub

clasping his palms. Each night got his guard up so far that he can’t dance till he’s half-cut.

No damn charm, all they want is to be martyrs.

He spits brown phlegm at the oncoming darkness.

He ridicules grandeur

He understands squalor.

Cake for breakfast.

He can do what he likes.

If these are the last days,

They’re no more fast-paced

Than all of the other

Last days and nights.

Buzzwords everywhere. Progress. Freedom.

He picks his teeth with a dirty needle

And kicks his feet to the latest jingles.

Ain’t got no time to be dating singles.

Far too busy trying to make things simple.

This old tribe ain’t nothing special.

All my life I’ve watched men wrestle,

Stealing land to fly their flags.

He keeps his eyes in a plastic bag.

He keeps his eyes in a plastic bag.

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to Becky Thomas, Don Paterson and all at Picador.

‘Ballad of a hero’ was originally commissioned by Tongue Fu for The Space and appeared on thespace.org under the name War Music (after Logue).

‘I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now’ is a line from Bob Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’.

Extract from ‘How To Be A Great Writer’ from Love is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski (Ecco Books) © The Charles Bukowski Estate.

KATE TEMPEST was born in 1985 and grew up in South-East London, where she still lives. She started out as a rapper, toured the spoken word circuit for a number of years and began writing for theatre in 2012. Her work includes the album Balance, recorded with Sound of Rum; Everything Speaks in its Own Way, a collection of poems published on her own imprint Zingaro; GlassHouse, a forum theatre play for Cardboard Citizens; and the plays Wasted and Hopelessly Devoted for Paines Plough, both published by Methuen. Her epic narrative poem Brand New Ancients won the Ted Hughes Prize in 2013; it completed a sell-out run in the UK and New York and won a Herald Angel at Edinburgh Fringe. Everybody Down, her debut solo album, was released on Big Dada Records in 2014.

Also by Kate Tempest

Brand New Ancients

Copyright © 2014 by Kate Tempest

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eISBN: 978-1-63286-206-8

First published by Picador in 2014

This electronic edition published in March 2015

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