Spoken Word All-Stars at Contact

Hey ho, hi dee hi and general happy greetings from my good self, the poet dominic. Cheers for reading! I've been writing this blog for a bit now (infrequently, i know) and have thus far used it exclusively for my poetry. Well, today is the grand unveiling of a blog that is NOT a poem (gasp!) but.... a blog about upcoming poetry nights!! Big evolution yes i know :)

tomorrow i'm very excited about going to watch SPOKEN WORD ALL STARS at Contact theatre on Manchester's Oxford Road. SPOKEN WORD ALL STARS is exactly what it says on the tin: a stellar cast of talent from the UK's live poetry scene, performing an original live show alongside one globally acclaimed musician - the sophisticated saxman, Jason Yarde.

SPOKEN WORD ALL STARS include:

El Crisis - his unique style combines a hypnotic mixture of rap, spoken word, song and chant.

OneNess - spoken word soulsista from Grenada.

Kat Francois - slamtastic, superphysical storyteller.

Ventriloquist - wordsmith wizard from the west.

Kate Tempest - hellfiery powerhouse of socio-poetry

and of course Jason Yarde - the king of improv sax.

The SPOKEN WORD ALL STARS National Original Tour - will be winding it's way across the country, September through to the end of the year, and there are more dates coming up in 2011.

But Dominic, I telepathically hear you cry, where can we hear your work next in this fine city of Manchesterford?

The following day, Friday 1st October, half seven at An Outlet on Dale St, I will be co hosting the prize poetry open mic POETRY PILLOW with the marvellous Cathy Bryant, who will be performing a guest set of work from her imminent debut poetry collection. £3/2 in. If you would like a slot on the open mic, it is first come first on so just get down nice and early and you'll be all good. The venue is right in the middle of where they're filming the new Captain America movie but us poets are special and will be let through the sets in order to express our inner demons and the like.

Fab!

By the way, hope you enjoyed the previous poem I posted on this blog, the 'Snail' one- that's the first of the poems completed for my current Arts Council funded development project malarkey. Watch this space- more to follow...

Love and light,

Dominic x

Snail

Snail

When Rain calls the snail out
of sleepy, snail dreams,
sliding out a restful place
no human eye has seen,
silent Snail calls to Rain
'Let's wash this city clean'...
Trail wraps paving cracks
and litter in between.

Rain is calling Snail
through the greying of the street,
through a swollen puddle
stretching out its concrete seat,
to a green-red apple,
naked core torn indiscreet...
Apples travel half the world
to fall, crushed under feet.

I sit, dry, inside my flat
as Rain calls out to Snail.
People caught out in the storm
will curse the sleet and hail.
Flail back to brick high homes,
locked strong against the gale...
Trapped inside big, brick shells,
so wrapped in our own trail.

Watch the green-red apple,
tender innards battered, split.
and watch Snail call the Rain
then face the apple pip.
So easily killed. A small life spilled
by just one similar hit...
This snail braves the rain's call
whilst my warm shell I can't quit.

Time Travellers

Jocelyn Brown,
Jazz Cafe, Camden, 2008,
teleport... here,
ear to ear,
roof to floor,
the air's gone solid with bass
- bm - t-t-t,
bm bm bm t-t-t,
bm bm bm t-t-t,
bm bm
and the crowd's turned liquid.
We've had to!
Everyone's melted into one sweaty, sing-a-long throng
bubbling song.
Simmering lips and shimmering hips
slip slide between
the tightest slices in concrete sound.
Funk bound.
We are profound dancers,
barely touch ground,
too important for 'ground'!
Jocelyn sings 'Keep On Jumping',
you and me, keep jumping,
my heart, you've tugged it to pieces,
when i jump bits hit walls like jelly.
Splat!
...I'm steaming,
heart's all wibbly and everywhere,
splish splash crash
our arms collide,
your tongue
on mine.
Squish!

Swinton,
Salford, 2006,
teleport... here.
Homo home owner, DIY.
I always wanted a man who could hold nails in his teeth
and you look dead sexy holding nails in your teeth.
You know how hammers work,
understand screw drivers.
Your arms... strong enough to lift me when
I fall apart in Tescos,
sat crying in the biscuit aisle,
my chewed up nails spiking my teeth,
screaming fat, ugly tears,
don't know why,
just Panic...
Just Panic.
You're a man who can hold nails in his teeth
but never tries to mend me.
I'll never make sense like spirit levels make sense.
My wood and bubbles are all wrong.
Sometimes I'd love to twist how I stand,
pretend I'm right angles, proper straight
but you love me crooked, weird and bent.
I don't look great with nails in my teeth
but I do look dead sexy in fishnets.

Bedsit,
longsight, 2003,
haven't met you yet,
*don't* teleport here...
This universe is divided in two:
outside and inside my flat.
I chose the wrong side.
Outside, people put their hands on each other
in ways I don't get.
Don't yet believe any man could love someone who
owns more than six albums by
Kiki Dee
...and listens to them
...all the time.
"Call me camp again and I'll gouge your fucking eyes out."
I do have some anger issues
and only glance in mirrors.

Anywhere else, anywhere else,
streets emptied, 2010.
Teleport... here,
dead night, sky numb, stars gone,
you, me, outside, yelling
broken words, broken yelling,
Stupid words, breaking,
not while I'm yelling!
My sentences are punctured, commas puss,
i've severed colons...
I'm talking shit.
You look like the sky, open, still,
Why was I yelling?
Do people yell in Kent?
You used to be from Kent
but we've rewritten our pasts
so now I've known you since forever.
You tell me that Kent would love a good yell,
to connect so heavy it don't make sense
but Kent can't touch without apologising,
can't just let us be us all sexy and loving and yelling!
Hey!
We've yelled so hard
we've erased Kent from time and space!
It never was. Never will be.
Fab!

One last time,
twenty-forty-something,
teleport here,
yes, here.
People say you look like Dr Who
so I know you can do this.
Show me Jocelyn Brown,
900 years old and still jumping.
Kiki Dee reuniting antimatter
and you can go the pub in pyjamas.
Kent can only exist if it wears a fez
and supermarkets have designated areas for Panic attacks,
little rooms where they play B-52s,
give you stuff to make with glitter, pritt stick and potatoes.
Show me mirrors.
Show me us old but still dead fit.
Show me younger gays seething jealous
cos we're fitter than them.
Immortal fit.
Make our love keep regenerating
and I've still got hair.
Immortal hair!
Show me youl love me beyond end of days and
I love you.
Show me we're forever.
This is Sci-fi epic love
where the heroes
will never die.

Playing Mortal Kombat Guarantees Your Inner Calm

It's an age of caged hostility
where Health & Safety forms and files
fry brains,
pry pains,
supposed source of securities see highs waned
and lives drained.
Cries contained *can't* scream through offices
*can't* rip through orifices
*can't* express a desk job's bubbling hate
and hurt
and harm.

But playing Mortal Kombat guarantees your inner calm.

Yes, playing Mortal Kombat guarantees your inner calm.
Maybe play as Jax and slice off someone's arm.
Be Mileena, eat your foes without a second qualm.
Or Kano's organ donor- burst hearts inside your palm.
Playing Mortal Kombat guarantees your inner calm.

Insurance claims and tax returns incite most deadly vows
but Sonya Blade's leg toss can never fail to arouse.
Funding forms leave hair-lines torn, they make us curse and hiss.
Sub Zero's spine cord rip will induce instant love and bliss.
Baraka's blades decapitate with almost cheeky charm.
Playing Mortal Kombat guarantees your inner calm.

Without Mortal Kombat I'd have murdered half my school
and every boss I've ever had- fatality by duel
but Mortal Kombat soothed my wrath, i felt my fury fade.
Let us respect the Rayden effect with a world wide parade!

Let's sing of Johnny Cage in hymns, perhaps I'll pen a psalm,
for playing Mortal Kombat guarantees your inner calm.

Sindel, my soul's sweet saviour- I salute you, ma'am,
for playing Mortal Kombat - it gave me inner calm.

Princess

Princess

She is not a real princess.
On the corner of Midnight and Spirit,
achingly sober,
shaved arm pits,
smile a bent moon beam,
paid
to stand
and wait.

You could see she was no princess
in the snow white of her eye
when he told her,
"You are a princess."
when he told her,
"Show some thigh.
Flip that frown. Wake up, Beauty,
smell the coffee liqueur.
Half price booze!
We are open 'til four.
Shout it loud! Make me proud.
Show some shoulder. Lose that bra.
Bring our lads in. Fill my bar."

But she doesn't feel like a princess
on the corner of Midnight and Spilled Spirit Staining
fumbling out flyers.
Smiling.
Smiling.
She feels like an iceberg with an American accent,
an origami swan made from unpaid bills
paid
to stand
and wait.

Unpaid bills.
She can't be a princess.
Debt overdrawn by a fat Crayola,
Skint Pink.

The world doesn't want her skills;
a Crystal Castle made of pasta and glue,
twelve ways to cheat at a Rubix Cube,
making up voices for pencils.
So she works for a bar
in a strapless bra
on the corner of Midnight and Empty.

And seven little men get too close.
Boozy, Schmoozy,Handsy, Shouty,
Licky, Pukey and Punch
say hello,

"Hi... ho!"

"Nice legs. When do they open?"
"D'you like chicken? This cock'll have you chokin'.''
"Don't put out your goods if you're not selling too."
"If you were my daughter, I would still be bathing you."

She knows she is not a princess.
Loyal to her boss, her Prince Harming,
she's faced these little men,
these mice disguised as stallions,
rodents wrapped in beer sticky manes.

"Neigh. Squeak! Neigh."

The customer isn't always bright

but she is.

Brighter than any crown.
Today, she walks away.

She walks away
and their taunts turn to fairy dust,
insults dissolve
like shadows clouding into candy floss.
She walks away,
body full of sunrise,
her skin a goose bump farm.
Honk! Honk!
Clear the road!
Rip down the corner of Midnight.
Spirit of Lionheart and twilight.
Wow - Wow - Wow through morning,
Spirit to Swift Wind,
blizzards of light hope quiver in her lungs.
Rubix cube squares flit free at her feet
like Billie Jean!

She might go and invent a rechargable biro.
Might bake the first daffodil pie.
She might become a princess...
or anything.

Beers In Your Bedroom

Beers in Your Bedroom
(for Rachael K, for helping me save my life)

We have beers in your bedroom.
My fears would be intoxicating without you.
Outside, car alarms shout at shadows,
a woman’s scream stabs the night.

Inside, together
we are alive.
Your flat's above it all.
Door locked. Window open.
Glows from fag stubs, thin white dukes,
light a corkscrew path to morning.

Our tongues brighten dark.
These moments taste of unconcentrated truth,
Chaucer and tumblers of Fat Boy Slim.
We tape Woman’s Hour to play backwards,
exchange identities under skin.
Hail bloody fairies and horns.

We dress up in old lovers’ ideas.
Hang ours up to dry. See what drips out first.
Dissect entrails of aborted stories.
Whole scripts wait in a typewriter’s puckered spool
between shy, naked poems
printed only on sheets of dusk.

"Then, we unwrite the imperfect pop song.
Kurt Cobain and Kiki Dee sing
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart Shaped Box."

Our nights are so heavy with talk
we might even... break through these floorboards,
crash into the spiked streets below,
so I cuddle your sentences. Grip tight.
Sit secure in our obscurity.

We're the extra features on a DVD
those with jobs are too busy to watch,
but we watch them and talk
ourselves down in thick blankets of sun.

Let us sleep through the violence of minutes and hours
that wage war against today’s tired minds,
too burdened with action to slow down and think.
I drink to the courage
of these thoughtless grunts on the front line.
Raise my empty bottle.

We’ve drunk the night dry.
My voice lids won’t keep open.
You wrap my words up warm.
Still, I know that they would freeze
out there
at bus stops, supermarket queues,
or sat, without vowels,
at office desks and the water cooler.

Spirit

Spirit (a duet poem, spoken by Wizard and the man)

“The soul of an ancient eight-armed
ninja drag queen dragon king
is locked inside my shower
and joins in when I sing.
Sometimes we dissect biscuits,
wonder why the sky’s so long.
Yes, I go in naked.
Nothing sexual’s going on.

But is my hoover lying when he
begs me not to clean
because he swears there’s goblins in my
carpet never seen?
He says they put the milk back
in the fridge when I forget.
But drag queen dragon king and me,
we haven’t seen them yet.”

Panic doesn't understand
my brother's new wife's Sunday dinner etiquette
or what my hands ought to do in interviews
or what to say to friends of friends' Dads.
Panic's clumsy.
Breaks things.
Has no respect for folk who really are what they own-
comfortably cluttered with too many rooms,
never touched, never looked at.

“Ursula the kettle said
her work wear makes her blue
so I wrap her up in tinsel
every time she makes a brew.
I never met a human
on this Earth or anywhere
who every time they make the tea
puts tinsel in their hair.”

Sometimes when I’m out
my heart starts to throat slap,
flap like dying fish,
taste like grated carrot in sawdust and sherbet dip.
Panic tells me I've too many fingers.
want to escape,
eyes want to roll loose,
eyes kick inside lids,
steel tear-capped kicks.
Eyes bite,
Panic slavers.
Everyone else sips cocktails and nods.

...

I've not lost it.
There's a key
in my skull
engraved:

"Here,
put this in your ear."

Listen.
The key turns my ear lock.
Listen.
I hear nothing.

Leave sounds for real folk,
clumping around in their fancy size nine realities,
big, ugly feet.
Their ideas look like feet,
stuffed deep in sock,
sweaty,
hidden ugly.
Too repressed to know Panic
if it bit them on the brain.

“They’re just husks of mortgage. Suduku stained."

I don't have feet
or anything ugly.
I am the subtext of wordless night,
the blinding light of total darkness.
See, you can't hold down the sky.
Gentle as tide, pulled from body,
free of frenzied skin, beyond breath,
bound to bone by
the thinnest of truths.
I’m a weightless parade wrapped round
a sun beam guiding my body home.
Guide it home.
Guide me home.

"But is my hoover lying when he
begs me not to clean
because he swears there’s goblins in my
carpet never seen?
See, you can’t see what matters
caught up in the city drone.
There’s shelves of elves in sequined bells
hop scotching here at home.
The thinnest of truths
binds the moons and oceans, Sun to Earth.
We’re rock unsolid fantasy,
know what magic’s worth.
Everything we need is here.
Fantastic, roof to floor!
Nothing outside this flat matters.”

No.
I know what my body is for.

It might not be for my brother's wife's dinner
or money or make-up or manners

but I think it's for caring when someone else panics
and helping them find their way home.