COLOURED IN > ESME BROWN

We’re all mistakes

The universe was an accident

Happy or otherwise.

I regret my tattoos less than

My parents regretted my existence

Both a lesson in forgiveness

Too easily forgotten.

 

My Gran lived sparingly

Windowsills, table-tops bare.

Her cupboards harbouring

Cutlery, tins and crockery

Rationed for just us three.

 

But if me or my sister tripped up

We’d scuttle the concrete steps

To stand at Gran’s door

Smiles welling like the blood

To receive

Her only willing offering:

A plaster.

 

Fixed like a medal,

Patterned to depict our particular valour:

Stars, cartoons, aliens.

 

Scraped knees were holy at Gran’s.

So when dad was screaming like mum from Hell

Fuckin mistakes the both of yer

Yeah, we felt like a bruise

A graze of a body

But that made us pretty

Pretty cool

Look this one’s got a race car on!

 

Tattoos seek the ugly,

The regrettable out of every corner of us

And kiss it until its blushing beautiful.

They give mistake another name

They’re medals,

My Gran giving me plasters from the grave.

 

‘Cos christ am I scratched up

I don’t want to cover up

With any temporary denial

Make up like I’ve not got

Ugly busting through my skin.

No, make me dangerous,

Colour me in

With my grateful

My- I’m trying

Here, look at my scaffolding.

 

Some people only needed plasters,

Content to keep themselves

In albums, the internet, notebooks

Or just neatly in the minds of others.

But my rough edges don’t fit so clean.

I’ve been cutting things out of books

And magazines and posters

Ever since I can remember

I’ve felt like a cut-out.

I just want to be collaged

Down into my accidental existence.

I just want the sunlight stitched across my skin,

I want all my scars covered

With my own inked forgiveness.

 

BACK TO THE BEACH / SKINNY DIPPING > ESME

Lightening shock our travel sick

Bodies back to the beach

Wind whip our snapped tent

Around our sleeping heads.

Rain drench, drip, drive

The city from our skin.

This is how electricity was born

A wall dismembered in storm

For stones to anchor our canvas home.

 

Jellyfish hearts shocking at the cold

Of river dragged bodies smacking into

The Ocean’s frothy lips

Veins tentacles electric

Jolting our offering of nakedness

Scaped as clean as the pebbles

We didn’t have the pockets to fill with.

When we climb out

Numbskulled as cavemen

Our songs will get trapped in the shells.

We are evolution

The rock forgot our fossils

But remembers our footholds.

The moment- Sarah Drozdz

I am boundless.

My soul becomes alive in a moment,

Stagnant, like a blue-blooded tree,

heart no longer inside my mouth-

instead, weeds curving over my feet,

anchoring me at the cliff face.

This fleeting moment is novel,

murmuring wind through paper wings-

that wish to weave ribbons from waves,

and cup mothering hands,

around memories found in sea glass.

 

 

 

 

Reverse- Sarah Drozdz

Life feels like it has gone into reverse
Like when my Mother turns the washing inside out
And sometimes the colours  all merge together.
I’m scared I’ll become like Alice down the rabbit hole
Weightless in my thoughts, body sinking to the floor
In some fruitless, wasted ecstasy of youth.
Cats have nine lives but I’m on my last-
I am being bludgeoned to death by my own kind
Cooked slow but torn fast, by cannibal teeth.
Every pang  is  a botched fringe, a metal puncture
To mark every place they were able to  touch-
Every yesterday’s scar, every frail inch
To every song we ever sang.

Dear self #1 – Sarah Drozdz

Dear self,

Sometimes you want to leave
your red flag at home like
a forgotten passport-
feeling like you owe them
the approval of a charming
tongue that tries to lick
your ear or exchange a
cheap handshake.
The strobe lights that
once made you feel free
now draw him in like a bull
as he stands centre in the ring
ready to corner you in.
Don’t become his mural of shame
he hasn’t the hand of an artist-
but rather yellow stains
of inadequacy.

Remember the beat of your drum.

Be a friend- Sarah Drozdz

I will wear a plastic crown
rather than usurp my sisters
and prize away the validation.
I will kiss my friends’ faces-
maybe even the bedraggled messes
that line up inside the restroom.
I might even smile, just an inch
so that their insults cannot be
encased in red paint.
Not every woman is dismissive
or a crippling water weight-
some of us want to amend History
and lay all generalisation
to rest.
I don’t glare when we first meet
either side of the computer podium-
I don’t care about chipped nails
or eye bags from getting wankered.
All I want is to look without fear,
conform to a nod or an agreed silence
so that we don’t have to drown.
Put away your claws or at least
get them cut.

CAT OBITUARY > ESME

 

This cat couldn’t keep her canines

or drool inside her lips.

Big beads of cat spit

dripped from her whiskery muzzle

and hit warm on our skin,

her frail chest shuddering with purrs

of machine gun affection.

She was the one who clawed

half-live mice into the kitchen

and maimed the fledglings my mum had loved all of last spring.

Now she is buried beneath their nest

where squawcks of new born hunger

taunt the bugs from her bones

and terrorise her shoebox

coffin dreams of fleeing

tails, tickles to the chin

and sunlit windowsills in morning.

Remembering- Sarah Drozdz

Under photos of Zaragoza and them
her hands grind Moroccan tea
the girl-
with her fences built high
belly button pierced, her
face smelling of honey
and green tea.
She believes in energy and angels
in sweet lavender and Eucalyptus
but not in you.
She’s been to Cambodia and back
in her head-
a pilgrimage scratched into her skull
when her favourite plant dies.
It was from you.
A single beetle is left to fester
roman pottery an ocean on the floor
as she begins to remember-
she has never been to Morocco.
her friends talk of private parts
and all she has is a room-
her wet palms stained with herbs
as she rubs delicately at the bumps
on her head, that disappear
like Elijah did.
One last tug at her crop top
wiping the dark velvet on her sleeve
pretence is not a place she can find
on her small, static planet.
She can be as charming as Venus
but she is sick in her bones-
it was all because of you.

One day- Sarah Drozdz

One day they will lead me back to the sun,

where I will dance like a child with my shoes off 

and the earth will no longer cut.

One day they will fix my lightbulb

for I have preserved little energy

to be so transparent as to give

people my best ingredients.

One day I won’t have to stop my

limbs from shaking or put my life

into boxes in order to stifle the 

things I would have much preferred

to have never gone before.

The sun, she is always around me

and yes she is fickle, but without

her I have days to live when all I 

have ever wanted is life.

I love my body- Sarah Drozdz

(A poem that I wrote for a spoken word night on 23/2/16).

 

I love my body

like a small child loves their bicycle.

I love it for its purpose

a mosaic of bones and acute angles.

My body is a memento, a decomposing

souvenir from every adventure

a deep nostalgia.

My ankle still clicks from the time

that I leapt off a playground slide.

I was a dragon chasing friends with

my arms flung wide.

I love my body for its wiggling hips

like a dog straight from the riverbed

my bellybutton deep and soft,

like a shellfish.

My fingernails are pale moons

that trace my spinal cord,

you can kiss the indents of

my collarbones

and still want more.

I love my body

like a small child loves their bicycle.