Message

I for one, can see very bigbut only write very small.I want you to know that I am here, writing words upon words upon words that I cry over and laugh at.  I too am fumbling, edgy in the darkAnother shit dayWish I could see around the cornerWhat it would save in wasted energyBarricading my life with safeguardsThe just-in-case,  the always-off-target.It’s not poetrybut my more mysterious senses feel that this febrile page-filling is setting every word I know on edge.
* 

I was so engrossed, I completely forgot about the subtitles.  Fighting dogs; one carcass dragged out of the chamberin a bloody slime. Guts, entrails and a slumbersome indifferenceof the watchers.  The winner fondled his dog’s sweaty, crimson coat, his pockets bulged with the money to have a few beersand pay off some debts.  Are there no more metaphors?  Or is this as close as can be got to representing a truth?I forgot they were speaking a different language,but then again, maybe they weren’t 

Madness                                            

For the majority madness is simply not being regular or standard sizeA tamed beast, deformed by conformity – this is my idea of madness.I am mad on two separate and contradictory counts. 

Some call this mad – poring overthe pared-down, bare bones of my lifeMaking observationsnever conclusions.  To live without safeguardsI learn from my body’s every flinch and twitch, its every hum.  To live without safeguardsI animalize the dozing beast in me.
 

Mutants

We love because its what we’re here to do We expect to have a good time (even with kids) We laugh at our neuroses We know that our parents fucked us up, but that they had very little choice. (I love you mum and dad) We choose pleasure over pain because we’re an open-minded mutant What we like about cinema is both the dark and the light We’re starting to create about the whole experience. “No, You don’t know the way, None of your theories fit, None of your kindly suggestions worked None of your violence killed us despite the deaths of many.” 

and because we are equals, I know you will listen

Brazil, 2001/2 ish 

Unfinished poem 

– Mum, I need to ask you a really important question.

Do you and Dad still have sex?

Someone said to me,

I see you battling with your scepticism.

I asked a man who I’m very close to how can he manage to be himself.

He said it’s too hard not to be.

I see that I am stuck.

I freeze when it’s my turn

Someone said to me,

it’s like you want to play, but will only play when you know all the rules of the game.

Hello.  My name is

Why do I get so nervous?

– Mum, why have we never spoken about sex?

Why don’t you want to know if I’m happy sexually?

Someone said to me,

You keep people at arm’s length.

I don’t know what to do

Why this taboo?

I need to know how horrible the monster is. Do I see her?

What does she look like? What does she do?

The Queen is a gift.

As is Margaret Thatcher.

The name of my poem is,

Can I let me be me with you?

Why did you get angry (afraid?) when you found the pill in my things?

Why did you vanish the vibrator I’d bought for myself?

I spent a week getting to know my murderous side.

It was a holiday from myself

And there seems to have been more time to make love.

I fell as a heap at the end

I freeze when it’s my turn

I’d already frozen a long time before

So many thoughts

And none of them taking me anywhere

A positive attitude implies looking also at the dark side

Things come out anyway.

MAD CHICKS SANS FRONTIERES: A Wild Night of Art, Music, Performance & Film, presented by Creative Routes, Mad Pride and Mad Chicks. LOSING IT stars culturally and psychologically diverse women performers, musicians, composers, writers, film-makers, sound artists and Resonance FM DJs.

Mad Chicks is about women psychiatric patients and survivors of the psychiatric system. The movement developed from within Mad Pride, a user-led, mental health, civil rights movement, committed to ending discrimination against psychiatric patients, challenging misinformation in relation to mental health and celebrating mad culture.

LOSING IT on International Women’s Day 2007 were:

Ana da Silva www.myspace.com/anadasilva
Anat Ben David www.myspace.com/55628524
Camberwell Composers Collective www.camberwellcomposerscollective.com
Ceri Buck www.openbracket.org.uk
Dogfood www.creative-routes.org
Dolly Sen www.dollysen.com
Fari Bradley www.faribradley.co.uk
Lucy Panesar www.lucypanesar.com
Francine Luce (port & lemon) www.francineluce.com
Girl Monster www.myspace.com/girlmonsternet
Lucille Power www.franko-b-mentoring.co.uk/lucille_power.htm
Maggie Nicols (port & lemon) www.maggienicols.com
Psychological Art Circus www.psychologicalartcircus.net
Rachel Anderson www.franko-b-mentoring.co.uk/rachel_anderson.htm
Rai Studley www.myspace.com/raistudleymusic
Ruth Barnes www.myspace.com/ruthbarnes
Sonora www.myspace.com/sonoragroup
Suzanne Andrade (1927) www.suzanneandrade.com 

WHAT’S IN THE ZINE: GET IN TOUCH WITH OPENBRACKET@RISEUP.NET FOR A PAPER COPY or click here for full zine online http://lambethbandofsolidarity.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/51/

Click here for flyer for Wigmore Hall event on March 22nd 2007 voiceworks_flyer_lowres.pdf 

Skin City 

Words: Ceri BuckMusic: Jon Daou

In the city half witness to fractions,

where the heart is in house decline,

and stillbirth and still more murder

speak of absence (or the queen of brands)

there is no equinox, and runways

travel no closer to it

in the city of separation

and dreams of drugs that love not

only around the edge of the badly-stapled

– of whom I am one – hungover

from illusions of connection

undone and still

no closer to it in the city – peeling back

this skin of longing seems an impossible task

and it hurts to feed the rid dance

a strong goodbye is only temporary I know

you’ve heard songs that I’ve heard

but I still can’t see you

in the city where constant

movement is protecting I know

you are out there

resident criminals against the law

replenishing aeons in slow sex

breaking use, never finishing

in the city we don’t need no

entrepreneur parson publisher common dominator

who feed the illusion of separation

just because we haven’t yet learnt how to flow

in interruption and curve, non-possess, and caress.

The city grows in eruption – I live all I live in the city in me

And we started off with short text writing exercises – this is what I wrote for Jon in the context of our discussion about the city, macro/micro, separation/connection, politics and love (I’d been listening to maria bethania and I think she got in there somehow ….)

My hurt, my peel, my back, my dancemy skin of longing, my impossible taskDeceased! The end of the world! Deceased! The end of the world!and this is a long shot but I’m trying to shape chance so let me ask ‘Have you been here all along?’‘Have you been here all along?’ Who-aaah