Some shite poetry…

So when work was slow post-fashion week last September, London was getting colder, and I was getting broker, I decided to try something new: poetry!

Eventbrite facilitated my first foray into poetry. I highly recommend this service for all the uninspired expats with time to kill and no monies to burn. And no, it’s not just for the poetically curious. There are so many groups and meetups for almost anything and almost any kind of human (don’t hold me to that because I’m quite a basic kind).

I found Word Space by Joshua Hallam on Eventbrite and journeyed to a little cafe in Kings Cross for the ‘Words-based Sunday evenings’. The ticket was under ten pounds and the night featured an open mic poetry section.

I don’t struggle with much social anxiety when it comes to integrating myself with groups of strangers. I don’t struggle with ‘putting myself out there’ or fearing embarrassing myself (I’d put that one down to practice). I’m grateful for these facts about me! They’ve certainly come in handy and were, in this instance, very useful because I was so bloody glad I went. 

I loved listening to how these strangers used words and rhyme to tell stories and share things about themselves. It made me all tingly and goosebumpy like I get when I watch videos of Amy Winehouse sing. 

Poetry has always intimidated me. It frustrated me that I never felt like I got it until I read it seven times slowly or searched up an analysis on LitCharts or something. Of course, I couldn’t do that while listening to these strangers read, but I understood that I didn’t need to follow or comprehend each verse. It’s like art; half the time, you don’t know what the frick is going on or what you’re looking at, but now and then, something will speak to you. It’s subjective! It’s not listening to comprehend; it’s listening to feel and experience. Ugh, I make myself sick. I might catch a meaning in one line, and it was ok if I didn’t grasp the next. It was more flexible and approachable than I had once thought. 

Anyway, blahs blahs aside, I wrote my own first poem on the tube on my way home. I was very excited that I could do as these strangers—most of whom said they were self-taught and read from the notes app—and try my hand, to play with words and make something of my own to carry feeling.

And be warned before you read my shite poetry, its mostly angsty and moan-y and obviously, shamelessly inspired by dearest Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar took teenage me and ran.

yours truly and ggracelessly,

grace ❤

Poem #1

I’m 22 and I’m nearly 23 and I’m scared

I’m scared of now and before and the future

I’m scared of life and death and time and more and less

I’m scared to die and to live and everything in-between

I’m scared I won’t make it out and into it and that it’ll all be over before I’m ready

I’m scared I’ll never feel ready

I’m scared that I’m scared and That I don’t have to be

I’m scared of what I’ve got now and won’t have forever

I’m so fucking scared of what I haven’t lost yet

I’m scared of what I’ve lost already and what I’m losing right now, as I speak and as I write and as I think and breathe

I’m scared of all the things I can’t stop and can’t start I’m scared that I can do it all but won’t ever work out how

I’m scared that I’m smart and too stupid to do anything good with it

I’m scared that I’m stupid and too smart to find out about it

Im scared of wasting myself and time and life and I’m scared of

starting to use it all because then I’ll really know what I’ve wasted

Poem #2

She sees god in the sea and feels life’s beauty with intensity

I feel her love deepest when she screams at me 

She sees god in a good tree

Like those wise handsome giants, 

like those great centenarian gums

She’s loud, and brash and strong in all the ways you can be strong 

Shes soft and sweet and innocent too

She’ll confuse and endear you and underplay all that she is, paint herself wrong and untrue

She likes moments too

Good moments and great coffee

Great people and simple joys

She sees her god in them too

Things that are real and meaningful mean more to her

She’ll need me to see it and feel it all too

Appreciate the moments and trees and the feeling she gets swimming in the sea

She gets frustrated if I don’t listen or see or feel as she does, in all the intensity that she does

Because she’s too selfless to have joy to herself

Because she knows what it’s like to suffer

Shes not confused about what makes life mean something, 

what sparks joy and makes moments and breaks up the suffering

makes it all worth it

She’s not precious or complex and she’ll tell you as much

But she’s confused about herself

She’s precious and complex for all the reasons she thinks she’s not

I see god in nature and moments and people because I see my god in her

I get frustrated she can’t see or experience herself as I do 

Shes my wise handsome giant, and if I was her she’d make me gasp and say look!

Look how beautiful she is, how special, fuck we live in an amazing life

For things like her to exist, that’s god.

Poem #3

Anxiety is worrying about nothing

and everything all at once

Anxiety is having a hive mind

Abuzz without order or purpose

A buzz out of sync, frenzied and verbose

Without a queen to preen us or lead thus,

the hive gets too mean and too loud.

An angry sad, electric crowd.

Too lost to slow down

Sticky and sickly they writhe around

all jammed up and out of place,

In too small and too fragile a space.

Furiously busy these half-baked convictions

no room and no time for truthful

or thought through conclusions,

No way past the earful we fear through

Because anxiety is deficit and abundance

Deficit of space and poise

abundance of feeling and noise

Anxiety is reeling and rolling around

Dizzy without space to spin out

Dizzy without grace to slow down

No blank space left to think it all out

Poem #4

I don’t want to be that girl

I don’t want her life to be mine

That girl whose thoughts I can hear

Screeching louder than the Victoria line

If I could block it out

with a finger in my ear

I would but I can’t

can’t get it out once it’s in

Can’t escape the noise of her head

So I sit and I stare at her instead

I wish I wouldn’t

I really shouldn’t and I wouldn’t but I can’t

It’s involuntary

It has nothing to do with her, not really

It’s an imposter, composer, the sycophant

She’s barely a her anymore

The her parts translucent

And there’s a ravenous rot, its devouring her core

I don’t want to be that girl

I don’t want to look

I don’t want what’s got her getting me with it’s hook

I’ve been got, still am got, gotten, rotten

And that’s why I look

Longer than the horrified second glance that the deaf people took

There’s was a passing horror

Back to their phones, back to their book

Their deaf to her noise, the song

Immune to its hook

I don’t want to be that girl

I don’t want her shrinking life

So why the sharp sight and sound of her

How can I blame her for pain when I’m holding the knife

she doesn’t even see me

Not aware of my looking, my anger and pain

She’s not yet invisible, not to me

She thinks she’s alone with the song in her brain

The song makes us spin like a lady in a box

The song makes us high, floaty and numb

The song makes us dance til we’re lost, dizzy and dumb

Til the song is all we hear

And the dance all we know

Almighty

God

And all else is fear

I don’t want to be that girl,

Not even close

I want to hear the train again

At least it’s noise isn’t a dose

Of what was and what lingers and tempts me because

It knows a song and a dance I’m good at

Wobbly, weak in the knees and that

I see in her face, hear spinning in her head

She’s lost to it

It’ll spin her til she’s dead

So why does a barely her make me feel like a failure

Those little rotten bits In me jolt, awaken

I wish they’d fuck off

leave me be

So I could be deaf too

And a finger in my ear would quiet the screeching

make it all stop

I hope at the next one she gets off

Set me free

I know why that lady back in paris yelled at me

I don’t want to be that girl

Not again, not ever, not even close