Tuesday 25 October 2011

What it's all about

So, now I've posted one poem I guess I should really say what this blog is all about.

I've always written poems and song lyrics and little stories and such but have never had the balls to actually show them to anyone. Invariably they have sat on my hard drive, or in a book until I re-read them further down the line and have deleted or thrown them away due to lack of confidence. In an effort to be better I am no longer doing that. I am choosing confidence and embracing fear to try and grow as a person. So much so that recently I actually read Words (which can be read on this blog) at a local poetry reading, to a very good response. The bit is now between my teeth and I am determined to continue along this vein.

Special mentions have to go to all the people of The Loop (you know who you are) for encouraging me and giving me the confidence to see this through, to Kate Tempest (twitter @katetempest for being a massive inspiration to me), to Pete Wadsworth for always encouraging, to Sam Osborne "keep creating - it's what makes us more than animals", and to Joanne Gillan for always being there.

More words to follow.

Monday 24 October 2011

Words

Words
I love words
Mapping emotional, spiritual, political topology
But sometimes, irrelevant of meaning, it's just the sounds that get on top of me.
Get right into me.
Tickling and pleasing me.
Piglet - all percussive symmetry
Infinity - small label for a huge dude so big I can't begin to grasp your magnitude, you're just too big for me
Flippantly - thrown out with no forethought you care not a jot for the other words or phrases surrounding
Allegorical - your meaning woven through the pages of prose or poetry
Love - four little letters, so simple yet with just a thimble full of you dark turns to light, day from night and I find the might to struggle on, despite the pain remaining in the rest of my life.
Fuck - filthy-dirty and deliciously potent; violent, sexy and ready for all manner of moments
I love words
When packed with meaning they move and abuse me, hearing or reading them they allow me to lose me
Fusing me to a thought or thoughts that hadn't previously visited or viewed me
Crudely I try to use them to express the complexity I feel, the complexity that is in me, that is me
I don't say that lightly and I don't say it self indulgently
We're all complex, we're beautiful and we're all dying slowly
This staggeringly complex strength and frailty exists in each and every one of us eternally
Birth to death, from first to last breath we each express our best and worst and worst and best through the words we get off our chest
The ones we use, and yes the ones we have the unfortunate habit of using to abuse
We're all the conflicting feelings of peace and rage, action and passivity
The horror and the beauty is inside all the yous and all the Me's, it's in all our do's and all our deeds, it's in the he's, the she's and the we's, it's in our wants and in our needs across races, religions, colours and creeds.
I love words.
They're our greatest achievement.
Language gives is freedom, gives us the opportunity and the tools to reason, it both describes and inspires feeling, can leave us reeling in a million different ways; hurt, laughing or healing
I love words
It's words with which me make starts to the journey we share with the one person who, because of how much they seem to care, we dare to show our whole self to.
And it's words we throw like stones. When we're overcrowded yet somehow alone and every hard word is blown up and out of all proportion.
Yes its words with which we make starts, but it's also words we use to break hearts.
But I love words.
They're the building blocks for the stories we tell
Foundations laid to build heaven from hell so shout, scream, yell,
Compel the world to change through words placed on a page or spat from a stage
It's not about rage or rebellion, it's about connection
About communication, about education, about evolution of ideas
Change the story, change the fears and watch as these changes echo through the years to change everything
Cheer as the mere musings of mortals written and told affect the young and the old alike
Watch as the dike of opinion bursts it's banks and give thanks that words have this power
With words we can make deities cower
We've invented cellophane flowers and saved princesses from the tallest of towers
Our ideas given birth to - we've shown sin, we've shown virtue
We've shown reflections of out world to be beautiful though it seems sometimes determined to hurt you.
I love words.
They can change the world.
Change your own world by changing the words that you use.
Change all your cant's to can do's, your No's to yeses.
Change to determination, forget second guesses.
Blessed be the ones who embrace a new story for life.
Blessed be the storytellers and blessed be their minds because they take us out of here, away from here, take us anywhere, everywhere, somewhere
To see anything
They've shown mountains exploding and seas emptying
We've seen the coronation of kings, wooden boys alive with no strings - words breathe life into so many things
So soar on the wings of a story through fantastic landscapes teeming with life gloriously never before imagined.
Laugh and cry as you learn how it happened. How it all began.
Where it's come from and where it's going.
Slack-jawed and astounded at the storytellers showing it all to you
Leading you hand in hand through wonderland, the sands of time slowing into a stretched moment you know you can visit again and again.
Pick up a pencil.
Pick up a pen.
And tell me your words. Your moments.
Tells me your stories, tell me your lies.
Tell me of good times. Of bad.
Tell me the worst nightmare you've ever had.
I want to hear it.
Speak your words direct to my soul, I want to feel it, breathe it, be it, believe it.
Let me spend five minutes in your mind and you can spend five minutes in mine.
Let's get a cheap bottle of wine and spend some time sharing our words.
I offer you mine.
I'd love to hear yours.
Because I love words.
They're our greatest achievement.
Language gives is freedom, gives us the opportunity and the tools to reason. It both describes and inspires feeling, can leave us reeling in a million different ways; hurt laughing or healing.