by tashmcgill | Jan 27, 2015 | Poems
Occasionally there is an idea that can only be expressed in sentences and phrases that run on and over each other in extraordinary syntax.
They leap out as fragments, then couplets until finally you have a stanza and a verse. This poem, in three parts, is about being alone and not alone.
i.
Some people will tell you to listen
Listen and learn from your own body.
It’s good advice, to master your body, learn it.
But no one says also, here is a warning –
And a notebook to write it down because –
if you listen
to your body
You will hear everything in
one voice but a thousand sounds, plucks, scrapes, clicks and thunders.
The body makes a dozen slow, deep, thundering sounds.
Then the bzzt of a hair standing on end
The stubborn grip of the womb
moaning in protest before letting go
each month. The delicate, tiny sounds that only you can know.
The pop of hidden bones
in the ankle you rolled
Age 14, before you knew what it was like to listen.
ii.
Now you hear the wind brushing your skin;
the ice crack of goose bumps rising in response
– you think ‘I might survive on the wind’s caress’.
So now you believe you are at one with the night air silence,
and Light touches you from the moon, distant and cold.
You are bathed in mist coming off the sea
into the valley of peat and stone,
A dozen hands come close but cannot hold
– you think ‘I might remained unanchored here.’
You and your body, in a long communion.
Listening and talking together.
Sighing, your body does not sigh but a kind of hum dimishes
Slowly, like the sky sinking to earth.
iii.
Then the wind turns and grows warm,
after a long silence; in a moment I am not alone.
I feel my body’s voice rise again.
The whoosh of hidden skin pulling tight,
Calling my senses to attention.
There is the beat and throb of my pulse
Rising to match another,
Blood pushing blood.
Coming into tune for a cadence
pores humming in trumpet song,
A thousand tiny pressure valves released.
I make no noise but hear
my fingertips sigh gently as they land on
other skin, burning, singing.
Laughing aloud, saying,
‘No, no, I cannot be alone.’
I have learned my body sings
and I will let it.
by tashmcgill | Jan 2, 2015 | Poems, Prose & Poetry
I’m trying to enter this year full of positivity, good intentions and motivation to achieve some big goals. I’ve been working hard on this posture since December. So, it was challenging to come home on New Years Day to discover my second-most valuable writing tools had been stolen.
My Macbook Pro, which I use to write, edit and publish – not to mention many other day-to-day tasks. Hundreds of documents, ideas, InDesign files and otherwise. Thankfully 95% of that work is backed up in the cloud. But replacing the tools will be expensive and frustrating. It won’t happen right away.
The second, my iPad, is one of the main resources I use daily to feed my brain. I use it primarily to read and digest news articles, online magazines and books. I’m feeling teary about the bookmarks I’ve likely lost. Ugh. Still – they are only words and the good ones stick, right?
The most important writing tools – my hands, pens, journals and my mind, they are all fine. Really. I am safe, so are my housemates. Nothing else was taken, we believe they were interrupted. I know they are unlikely to return in the short-term, but there is still a moment of uncertainty. There will be new bolts on the doors and windows. I have no desire to repeat previous self-defence endeavours, regardless of my courage or capability. I will be fine, but something has been stolen from me. I can only hope that some good comes of this moment.
I am grateful for what was left untouched – my precious journals and poetry books, a ring, my guitars. So – what else is there to do but write? What was really stolen? Words. About 13,500 of them by my count – the article ideas and about a chapter of the novel I’ve been working on for such a long time. Just what wasn’t caught in the latest backup.
So here’s some words about the words that were taken.
Stolen.
It takes such a long time to drag them out,
the good ones, carefully sculpted sentences.
As if I carried them in womb, once born cord must be cut –
my ideas become their own, independent creatures.
So the labour is hard, to wrestle these thoughts from my body
and give them up into the world.
Now harder still, the wrestling is done but no life comes.
Just a space where words once were but won’t be seen, not as they intended to be born.
I’ll do the birthing, call it a born-again, always now wondering
what if, what could have been?
What sentence that on which the story once hung so sweet?
Which words of love and truth now miss their true intent?
That turn of phrase so perfect, flickers at the edge of memory –
so I must give you up, stolen moment, stolen thought.
To do it all again makes my muscles ache, my mind grows heavy.
I will whisper, only the good ones stick.
by tashmcgill | Feb 27, 2013 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Love & Marriage, Poems, Prose & Poetry
I was privileged to attend a beautiful wedding in the weekend, proof sure enough that love still blossoms and people are brave enough to say vows (altogether different to promises) and stand up in front of friends and family to make that commitment to one another. Especially privileged was I, when Paula and Mark asked if I would write a poem to be read at the wedding. Which it turns out, is a beautiful opportunity to put down in words some of what I’ve been reflecting on; the goodness of marriage and the process it is.
More and more, I think that marriage isn’t about finding someone who ticks the boxes, with whom your life fits and feels complete – but choosing someone who you can build a life with. So the image of a garden seems appropriate – we don’t marry because we’ve discovered something beautiful, but because we want to create something beautiful. So this is the poem that I wrote and read for my darling friends. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Feb 14, 2008 | Poems, Prose & Poetry
once in the shadow of a dark moon
caught in the lamplight flicker
hope danced on a black sky
dimples of light where her feet landed
hope knows how to dance on the deep darkness
in the depths she latches on with fury
curls up her will into lightening
eyes flash and spirit leaps
i am living beyond the horizon
my whole life long
you’ll never catch me
nor trample the starlight I leave behind
by tashmcgill | Dec 29, 2004 | Poems, Prose & Poetry
There Are Some Dark Clouds Hanging Heavy Over This City
I was hunting through the depths of my handbag, cleaning up and out in the buildup to New Year, potentially also because I am bored to death.
I found this, that I wrote on a Starbucks napkin on the Upper West Side in New York.
Starbucks Napkin
You better watch
out for the Man in
unexpected places & stay
mind full of your
own dark tendency to
rise & fall like the stock market
on waves of pop culturity.
No, your compass has lost it’s
northward point to authenticity
and this franchise has
won your over with a
pretence to your beatnik heroes
fools you with it’s fair trade
beans still harvested
by those hands scarred and
weathered, that never held a pen
or wrote a poem.
the heartbeat of this city
has moved SoHo art from SoHo to
Westside and pretty soon
you’ll find yourself lost
in the Grid because the new
arists & poets write
beats in Starbucks.
