Hold Your Own (5 page)
Authors: Kate Tempest
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.
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.
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.
T
IRESIAS
: All men make mistakes, it is only human.
But once the wrong is done, a man
Can turn his back on folly
– Sophocles,
Antigone
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
