In Milton’s Alma Mater

In Milton’s alma mater Satan dwelt, as if to take revenge upon the place that helped to shape the mind that gave him form, and caused the world to laugh at his false claim. In Milton’s alma mater, Satan felt the need to reassert himself, his fame he knew was withering away, so harm he set about, left everywhere his trace.  His actions never alter much, he chose a woman for his work, gave her her head, which seemed to him enough like playing God, to feed the will to power in his blood. And woman full of vanity as he, began the work required to destroy that place had nurtured Milton as a boy. What nourishment could come from breasts like these? What little they contained was grey and thin, created from a sad desire to please the world where all was ruin and decline.

So Satan ushered victims through the door and flattered them, proclaimed they might ignore such practices were common there before, as now he ruled, and truth, being divine, was not required very much at all.And lies no longer counted much a sin, this darkening eve, before the second fall.

And so it was the man child entered in and set about fantastic yarns to spin, and woman, yearning always for the praise of those who knew the world, its current ways, declared that what he claimed was so, was so, because his thoughts were born from deep brown skin and such ideas as only brown men know. And standards were not uniform today and never really had been anyway. Allowances were always to be made, for those who trophy like, could be displayed.

But all went not to Satan’s ill thought plan, there came along a little Jewish man, to put a shiny spanner in the spokes, claiming that the man child’s tales were fraud and plagiarism couldn’t be ignored. For reputations built up over time, might be destroyed in hours by careless rhyme or minutes when the butt of silly jokes. And the man child’s tales were really very tall, on the darkening eve before the second fall.

But fiction strangely wild and whopping lies, when analysed by those both calm and wise, for truth a vehicle is sometimes made and so, though Satan knew he’d won his game and brought about great harm and caused much shame, and man-child in his grave was duly laid, the moral of the sorry tale was sought. And men fell out and even old friends fought, not knowing where to rightly lay the blame. But in the end all passionate debate, just petered out, men looked for compromise. The darkening eve was grown very late, the writing was already on the wall, sprayed from a can, befitting for the fall, of clever, cultured, educated man.

The Talk At Chipping Norton Book Club

Have you heard the news?

Let’s not bother exchanging views

On this latest novel,

I really had to grovel 

To get Susan Hill to visit us the other day,

No, let’s hear what we all have to say

About the asylum seekers down our way.

So refreshing to have some savage sorts

Amongst us, let’s compare the different cohorts,

I pride myself on being able to differentiate,

Having a degree in anthropology,

And as I contemplate 

The latest act of brutality,

I like to imagine I’m informing my own writing,

I’ll be a new Barbara Pym, only better,

Do you think any behaviour is biology?

Or simply custom, tradition?

Pym was a Fascist, I’m much wetter,

Oh, but it’s all so exciting.

Did you hear 

The daughter of Simon and Sarah Constable

Was raped the other week?

But they put out a statement straight away,

Saying anyone who needs to seek

Asylum, is welcome here any way,

Though it happened down in Dunstable,

Where she’d gone to stay. 

Yes, that’s old gossip now,

And who cares about books,

Compared to dark strangers with hungry looks?

Regarding literature no one gives a toss,

The Montefiori’s girl was murdered,

And butchered, like a cow,

Though immediately Rebecca said, 

We don’t really care that our daughter’s dead,

We just don’t want Fascists exploiting our loss.

And then, did you know

Caroline Smythe Grainger

Suffered something of a blow,

Found her latest hubby,

Woman, identifies as such,

In the garden in the clutch

Of a very dark stranger,

Good looking, though quite chubby,

Taking it up the arse, behind a new hydrangea,

She simply clapped her hands,

And said “Oh, this is super,

Just like a passage in a Jilly Cooper.”

And s/he replied it’s my back passage dear,

Go back inside and do not interfere. 

The Piano is Singing

I hear it, it is not me,

It is not my playing, 

It is the piano’s own sound,

But it seems to be

Someone with my voice saying

Something  profound

Without speech,

It is inside each note,reaching out,

Trapped like a mind

In a dream,

But only there in recordings,

It hides in the head phones,

Takes possession of the ear,

It is madness without screeching,

Gentleness,

It feels no need to shout,

Or scream

Into the void,

It somehow makes itself clear,

But can’t be translated,

It is never annoyed,

It goes wrong 

As I do, yet remains true,

Disembodied, wordless song,

It sighs, but never moans,

Is something apart,

Seeming sometimes to disappear

When observed, then creeping near,

Stating what cannot be stated,

Not part of paranoia, not paranoid,

Groping, blind,

Almost surfacing from somewhere behind,

Yet present from the start.

Parting Beads

Every few years the sash windows need removing to re-paint and repair. I always think how lovely and Elizabethan ‘parting beads’ sound and wish to write about them. 

I gave my love two parting beads

To stick between her sashes,

She looked so sadly up at me,

And tears were on her lashes,

These aren’t the sort of beads I meant,

She cried and stamped, began to vent,

Her anger was no hurt lament,

“I wanted pearls for earrings,

Not these two silly stick like things,

I wished for beauty, ornament,

And all you have to give are these,

And offer them on bended knees,

As if you truly thought you’d please,

Be off! And take your parting beads,

For you care naught for woman’s needs.

You carpenters are all the same,

I would not stoop to take the name,

Of one whose thoughts on join’ry ran,

I’m far above your sort of love,

You unimaginative man.”

Triangles

There are two triangles in shot,

Both holding up the music, in their way

One, the insistent metronome, whose lot

Is to be inconsistently ignored as I play,

Stumbling and noodling Bach,

Fumbling gently in the dark,

Adolescently, with nothing new to say

Yet imagining the while

I am speaking great profundity, with style.

It keeps the right time, wound tight, all day,

But does not chime in sweetly, (falsely?) 

Like the slightly fast clock, 

Winding down the weight of years away.

The other, just a stick, a prop,

Pushing back against the weight of music on the stand,

As dependable as the other, a steady hand,

Both restrain the music, never let it drop,

Yet drop by drop it runs, rain and tears flowing,

Down the slope, hypotenuse

Of hope, length equal to the sum of the square

Of the whole pythagorean scale, showing

All the minor hues, or ancient Greek blues,

Remaining, retaining, lingering, restraining care,

Setting measures, parameters for despair, 

Are yet long ago departed into thin air. 

Some Cambridge PhD Subjects (did you say theses?) made into a poem.

- Traditional Cultural Norms, Technology and Gender Relations in Ghana

- The Political Economy of Female Circumcision

- Unsexed beings: constructing gender, humanness, and agency through the use of the word “unsex” in Late Modern British society and writing

- In Her Own Words: A Study of Women’s Voices in Contemporary White Supremacy and Far-Right Online Hate

- Legal Mobilization by Black Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer (LBQ) Womxn in Kenya and South Africa

- Exploring gendered embodiment in transgender and gender-diverse adolescents at the intersection of exercise and eating behaviours, social inclusion, and mental health:  Towards a desire-centred approach in paediatric gender-affirming healthcare and research

- Codes of Life, Codes of Death: Tracing the (Im)possibility of Trans Lives in Algorithmic Assemblages

- Queer Cultural Memory in Literature, Film and Television since 1999

- The Sexually Sociological: Gay Masculinity, Intimacy and the (Un)queer State

The political economy of female circumcision,

Is not a subject to dismiss in ignorant derision,

You may ask what ‘female’ means for it’s absolutely clear

That gender is constructed, and have no fear,

I make no claim that females are unsexed,

When their cunts are deconstructed,

No question asked, no question vexed, 

Their humanness and agency are not deducted

Along with nerves and clitoris, the mere idea!

These are atomised units within the economic sphere.

There must be no debate,

No far right or online hate,

For contemporary white supremacy

Would only advocate

For the right of girls to masturbate,

Is that necessary in a non democracy?

Black lesbians, bisexuals and humans who are queer

Can mobilize in Kenya, where womxn are held dear.

Let’s not get into diverse gendered adolescents,

I’m only into mutilated prepubescents.

What care I for anorexia,

Or social inclusion,

I suffer from dyslexia,

But don’t be under the illusion,

That restricts my arrogant capacity

For producing absolutely necessary

Verbal diarrhoea.