I will be performing at Pink Lane Poetry and Performance at the Jazz Cafe, Newcastle, on the 12th of November. It all kicks off at seven pm and lasts until quarter to midnight or thereabouts. Pink Lane pack a lot onto their bills so they're tight about sets lasting only ten minutes each. I intend to honour this and then some. The planned set is four poems, one of which may be stripped out, and I can probably get through it all in five to seven minutes. After which I will perform a rigorously controlled scientific experiment researching how many glasses of bourbon a 32-year-old man can knock back before losing the power of speech and motion.
Those who want to see a bit more of me may well have the chance at a large upcoming event in Newcastle, but I don't want to give away too much about that yet. More as it happens.
Here's something I wrote this afternoon. I know where I'm going with it, but I don't think it's finished as yet. See what you think:
Hymnal
I want to dance to the brushed-drum footsteps
of the fears that creep in the wake of your smile.
I want to dance to the high-end hammerklavier crash
of you smashing my nightingale heart like a drunk
gone far in self-directed anger
at the end of a barleywine night.
I want to dance to the singing-saw whine of these tears
which come, unbidden, as the thought of you
flashes up without permission
when I almost think I'm beautiful.
I want to dance out my own violence
and the ways that you hurt me,
to thrash out my spastic confession,
shake every last inch of my uncertainty.
I want to bump, and grind, and groan
my filthy eucharist:
I want to pray my fine wild prayer
along this polished, ash-strewn floor.
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