Phoenix (2019)

I’m playing a social experiment with myself.
It goes like this:
hold your head up high
hold your spine straighter
being bent doesn’t mean
you have to bend to their agenda
wear your queerness as a weapon.
Don’t let people tell you it’s a weakness
it’s your armour,
the place you rest your head at night
light streaming through the gaps in your curtains
restless dawns but

I fight back against the thunderstorms.

I face lightning and ground it in between my feet
soft knees a shoulder widths apart
and hey,
if it takes Davina McCall to motivate me through those squats so be it
I’ve decided to redecorate
and build my walls up stronger,
stand on top of them instead of cowering behind cos
everything feels lighter at the top of the mountain
and the climb is always worth it
the strain at the back of your legs
can remind you of how far you’ve come 
and fresh water from the falls
can taste 

like freedom.

Some poems are born from fire
bursting forth from an inner furnace
Ignited from a fleeting genius
others begin as a lump in the throat
words gradually growing from the tonsils
til one day they fall out.
And the only thing I’ll birth is poems
and that’s quite alright with me
I sort through the placenta of spare syllables and
spear the phrases that sing to me.
I tell myself it’s ok
not to perform
while I grow myself from ashes
a Scorpio phoenix through and through
hued from London concrete
via Yorkshire slate
but refusing to turn myself
to stone.

I thank Black feminism
and femmes always 
always for teaching me how to stay soft
in a world so full of hate
how there is strength in what is perceived to be weak
how you are nothing without your community
how unity is never far away
but still so far away
from the Union Jack
how jacked up the world can be but still find hope

In holding hands.

So I try
to make myself vulnerable
make myself more humbled
make myself keep walking though I stumble
fumble through this learning and unlearning
yearning for a future
where walls are broken down along our borders
and hearts can connect 
without these barriers.

N (2020)

The way you talk about trees
Makes my heart stutter
Flutter up with the birds
Makes my heart surge
Branch out and touch the sky
Makes my heart cry
Out when you’re gone
But makes my heart strong

I swear that I could talk to you for hours
Sit in silence for hours
Walk for hours
I could touch you
For hours
Knowing that this love
That is ours
Feels
like being free

Feels like wild swimming
The first cold rush of adrenaline
Followed by warm evaporation of droplets
From our skin
Your lips
Feel like fresh sheets
Feel like a swung punch
Feel like the first poem in 5 months