This poem was inspired by JB Barrington and named for the slang term from theatre – spoiling a piece of acting by laughing or forgetting lines.
buildings are empty
shop fronts boarded in hordes
shells to house the homeless
one would think
but The Man cares more
for what sells
the smell of stocks and shares
what’s the worth of a human heart
the crisis of prices and sacrifices
where council-owned cooked books
stink like the shit in the parks
Northampton’s high streets are in disarray
those tin-can buses always delayed
no space for prams in those brittle frames
a horse-drawn Stagecoach is all that remains
take some of those London pounds
and invest it in the shoe town it’s not rocket science
spend it on transport and arts
stop filling the coffers of the bourgeois
and be gone with those potholes
give pounds not pennies
as that’s not hoarding
that’s affluence for the many.
I wrote this poem about my generation’s relationship with social media, simultaneously the most connected generation and most antisocial.
what does it take
to show people that being me
is not all that it seems
the tweets, texts and likes
you watch my socials
my rants on race, and the memes
I go against the grain
I say bye bye brain
to keep up this social charade
it’s a pain pretending to be okay
I’m not a person, I’m a thing
Yahoo, Google and Bing
you pay me in kind
I pay you in use
you pay me in anxiety
the stunned logos
of Instagram and Facebook
millions sky high
on reacts and likes
like my neck trapped in a noose
part of the most connected generation
that likes to Netflix and chill
the shrill of android millennials
so connected, but so antisocial
I’m so tired, my life can be shown
in charts, it’s patterned, global
in how I truly feel
Photo Credit: William Iven on Unsplash
if an affliction hasn’t been diagnosed
can I prove that it’s real
my analytics are hegemony
like religions, trial by media
altered millennial minds chemically
in this cyber flu
lives have terms and conditions
that media tycoons provide you
sacrificing real-life conversations
for syntax through a screen
comment threads, conversations
written in emojies and memes
vines posted for millions of hits
Snapchat selfies, Instagram selfies
the young ones call it lit
seeing the world on fire
has put my head into disarray
terrorism streamed to the masses
this is the social media age
I want light, happiness
and I’m not finding it in a screen
I want calm and order
but the truth is
artists need social media just to be seen
the system is a broken machine
where viral content speaks louder than talent
Photo Credit: Joshua Rawson Harris on Unsplash
I’m not a social media addict
but I can feel it numbing my mind
I don’t want to be a drone
but Facebook’s pulling down the blinds
I didn’t want to be lonely
but social media has us in a bind
this thing, I don’t want this
but this is the bane
of the 21st century artist.
I wrote this poem for a Women’s History Month event inspired by a play and film called For Coloured Girls, from which it takes its name.
Additionally, it’s inspired from “Everything is Everything” by Lauryn Hill on her album called The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
should women of colour
talk of their prophecies
of what women should be
an extension of the he
living in their ideologies
like the Male Gaze
defined by patriarchy
see I think they should live in their own realms mentally
rule their own bodies and own selves independently
free from dependency
liberate their own minds non-linearly
like space, time and astrological lines
zodiac signs in meandering minds
as mine has a sting in the tail that flails like the waves
the women I know are non-linear like the seas
not intoxicated with psychological plastic
not obsolete like some academia, kinda like the Jurassic
built for them in a roar of hypermasculine noise
but then I see some on Instagram
that store insecurity like gigabytes of ram
Snapchat and selfie culture’s peaked
Mac, Chanel, and blushed cheeks
millions of followers, thousands of likes and comments
an internet haystack of memes and shitposting content
misogynoir on Twitter and Facebook
a prejudice against black women based on looks
from Question Time to Prime Minister’s Questions
both have used racism as a tactic of deflection Afua Hirsch, Diane Abbott and Reni Eddo-Lodge
Amma Asante and Naomi Campbell in a backlog
of anti-feminism from their own people –
the movement that tells the single narrative of she
“the danger of the single story”
well-put and defined by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
black women like graffiti on council buildings
from Cleopatra to Queen Nefertiti
Angela Bassett, Boudicca and General Okoye
Coretta Scott King, Deborah Lacks and Andrea Levy
from Mary Seacole to the Maroons and Nanny
this is where women of colour meet poetry
they always had superpowers
see she turning pain into progress
Maya Angelou, Jill Scott and Angela Davis
Ava DuVernay, Patricia Scotland,
despite obstacles like fragile masculinity
white fragility and repressed black-male sexuality
also Twitter freaks and relentless racists
and sadists that live on timelines like a bad smell
got nothing better to do, let’s face it
Coco Khan, Gwendolyn Brooks
Rosa Parkes, Lauryn Hill,
Thandie Newton and Jameela Jamil Hattie McDaniel, Viola Davis, Queen Latifah
Regina King, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan
Sandra Oh, Toni Morrison, Constance Yu
in the howl of Weinstein, Spacey and #metoo
I wrote this poem inspired from ‘Clocking In’ by poet Mitchell Taylor, in which he talks about the mundanity (yes, I made this word up) of retail.
Mom would drop me at The Cobbles
yes, The Cobbles, I went to a private school
a place of high fees and English smiles
and by English smiles I mean colonial rules
I’d be dropped off at The Cobbles each day
these parents scoffed at £10-notes with enthusiasm
as my parents worked their asses off so I had the best
these children had no nouse
of what it was like to be hungry to go without
what happens without their silver-platter path
rugby matches, horses, weekends in New York
lives of decadence and class
but displays of decadence didn’t stay in class
I was dropped off at The Cobbles each day
a full stop against a white background
just sheepishly reciting those Latinate sounds
I was dropped off at The Cobbles each day
even at ten I knew I was a joke
they were staring at me cus I was brown
they were all clones of each other
I’d now call them happy robots, drones
and those five years gave me depression
taught me how to be toxically selfish, alone
but that chapter of my life’s
been swallowed up in the Cold War I fought
but I’m happier now
I don’t go to private school anymore.
I was vegetarian until I was sixteen years old and this is about that. It’s also inspired by ‘Beleaguered Vegan‘ by Dominic Berry.
Once upon a time, I was vegetarian and I think it’s time I went back. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the poem.
I love food, it’s effing bliss
but when I’m out with the relatives
they’re analysing my dish
you know that West Indian mission
like back when I was vegetarian
when I was more egalitarian
meat and two veg (eat healthy) they’d convey
but say yes to Appleton and Old Wray
greens and pastas, no meat for Master Tré
quorn, cheese, Weetabix
whilst they would say gimme a bite, just a little bit
they acted like they were all dietitians
that’s how they got their kicks
so many Caribbeans have PhDs in nutrition
now, I’m asked what’s that you got there?
I’ve eaten the flesh of mares
and those meaty pizzas
fantastic beasts and where to find them
cold carcasses of chickens and cows
animals we’re fine putting into our mouths
lamb shank and curry kids. Try Bolognese,
a bacon butty and BBQ ribs
Photo Credit: Lukas Budimaier On Unsplash
but forget about cats, dogs and a horse’s hide
we are British, that would sully our pride
and back then in the ripe old days of 2005
I was too difficult to please
because I wouldn’t eat animal corpses
I would rather bits of kale, crackers and cheese
just not the bones of executions on a platter
I was a child. I wasn’t raised rude
I was just deemed too sensitive to eat dead food
like pigs in blankets and turkey breast
on the Christmas Dinner table
but that is now past, one day, I was tempted
by those Caribbean fables
of fried fish, stewed chicken
yes, I now love meat
but you won’t see me bashing veganism
with hashtags and tweets
as I eat vegan food too, I don’t discriminate
open the hatch, down the shoot
some call me a human dustbin,
and I couldn’t live without
burgers, beers and BBQ chicken
salt fish fritters, breadfruit and chocolate cakes
macaroni, rice and peas and Grandma’s fried bakes
popcorn, roti, and all you can eat buffets on a boat
my gravestone will read death by curry goat
there’s so much food I adore with passion
and I’m not so keen on dessert
but under the covers, right down below
you might find me wrist deep
in a saccharine sweet Black Forest Gateaux
my family were boggled at my choice
but before I was an omnivore, I was a veggie
they thought my food habits were a phase
if a phase was a craze of sixteen years of being kinda edgy
I don’t need to eat meat
but I do, I like it, what I won’t endorse
is torture upon cows, goats
for milk packaged to feed the 7bn
when there’s alternatives like rice and soya
why do we drink other animal’s milk
is this some kinda effed up human paranoia?
Photo Credit: Ja Ma On Unsplash
we do unto people what we do to animals
field beasts supposedly done no harm
people abusing people in FGM and human-trafficking farms
prisoners packed side by side like slaves making our clothes
behind bars rights disposed, brains comatose
systematic abuse industrialised for the masses
to feed us, the working and bourgeois consuming classes
if there really was strength in numbers
the animals would have long rebelled
maybe it’s time I became vegetarian again
and consoled my conscience until the end.
