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CAUGHT IN THE NET 67 - POETRY BY SUANDI
Series Editor - Jim Bennett
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Introduction by Jim Bennett
Hello. Welcome to the next in the series of CITN featured poets. We will be looking at the work of a different poet in each edition and I hope it will help our readers to discover some new and exciting writing. This series is open to all to submit and I am now keen to read new work for this series.
You can join the CITN mailing list at
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http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm
and following the links for Caught in the Net.
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You forget In the full comfort of the Western hemisphere Yesterday is only tomorrow’s history Where we stood at a distance Our vision blurred by the dust of Stomping feet charging in defiance Retreating one hit beyond a bullet
from; 414 DAYS WITHOUT CHARGE by SuAndi |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
LIVING IN A WAR ZONE
414 DAYS WITHOUT CHARGE
THE HOUSE STOPPED BREATHING, - ALMOST
DANCING IN A SPACE PROVIDED, OR RUNNING AMOK
JOSHUA WAILED
3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY:
SuAndi
Born of Nigerian and Liverpool British heritage SuAndi has been a Performance Poet since 1985. Her collections of poems include Style (1990) Nearly Forty (1994), There Will Be No Tears (1996) and I Love the Blackness of my People (20003). In the nineties she turned some of her attention to the Live Art stage. She tours nationally and internationally, her ICA commission 'The Story of M' received critical acclaim in the UK and North America. Her work has been recognised with NESTA Fellowship in 2005, The Big Issue Community Diploma 2003 The Windrush Inspirational Award 2003 the O.B.E. in the Queen's 1999 New Year Honours List following her Winston Churchill Fellowship in 1996.She has also written two librettos: The Calling (BBC Philharmonic 2005) and Mary Seacole Opera (2000) which toured Britain after a West End opening.
Since 1985 SuAndi has been the freelance Cultural Director of NBAA (formerly Black Arts Alliance.) www.blackartists.org.uk.
On behalf of NBAA she has organised exhibitions, performances, seminars, colloquiums and workshops in all recognised locations. 2001 - 2009 she coordinated the Northwest celebration of Black History Month under the banner www.actsofachivement.org.uk
Her life motto is: poetry hurts but I like it, and the arts are a struggle that is achievable with the support of friends. (And hopefully, lovers..)
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2 - POETRY
Once I was eight
Satin red ribbon wrapped ringlets
Growing into a right madam
With enough sass for twice my age
Once I was eight
Once I was 13
Flaring spots
Puppy fat weeping
No one understands me
A true teenage demon
Once I was 13
Once I was 24
Slim slender sleek
Femininity my art of war
Men were so meek
When I was 24
Once I was 33
All my future ahead of me
Every door a door of opportunity
Independent,
Relying only on me
Once I was 33
When did I become 40?
Once I was 40
Still dreaming
Of breast feeding
Morning coffee mother’s meetings
School gate waiting
Homework helping
Her first lipstick
Her first kiss
Mother of the Bride weeping
Do people still knit?
I will
Helping and remembering how nappy changing
Biological clock ticking
Ticking ticking
41 43 44 and more and more and
Once I was
Don’t say the number
Smile when age is spoken
Let a joke drop
And laugh
But never tell never never never
Puppy grew into maturity
Little girl let loose and flew
If only you had known me when I was
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LIVING IN A WAR ZONE
Handsome
My cousin John tells
Not handsome
Beautiful
B e a u t i f u l
Most beautiful man who ever walked
This city
The earth possibly
And could dance
Light foot three feet in the air
Michael still a twinkle in old man Jackson’s eye
And style
Stylised in a fashion no-one had ever seen before
First Afro, Dread
And a voice that Bob would have envied
And Nat practised to achieve
Roots, Jazz, culturally cool
Lucky boy
Unlucky man
Living in a war zone
The Ritz sprung floor
Helped cha cha, tango and waltz get some style
Rockers to roll
Gave bounce to clumsy youth with red pimples
Now green-eyed to see this man
Brown skinned and too damn good looking
Twirling local lasses in perfect circles
Synchronised to the rhythm
How they scowled at him
And he involved with music
Danced with closed lids so his soul could hear
Did not eyeball them back
So never saw them hatch a plan
That followed him into the street
Past the hospital where I first kicked into life
Crossing over to the dark of the Palace Theatre
And forward to Princess Street near the bridge by the water
There
They took him
Pushing scrawny bodies stacking up tense
Mouths screaming savage names
From their own savage mouths
And marking the first bruises on this beauty of manhood
Grabbing now
Bits of him
An arm a leg
Grabbing his head his hair
Using everything they had to keep a hold
Teeth nasty with decay
Missing his cheek (maybe God was watching)
And found instead the tip of his ear
As a morsel for supper
That up-tempoed his footwork into a new rhythm
Faster with more deft then he had ever danced
His legs filled with the electricity of terror
And let out a roar that no Mancunian had ever heard before
Causing the ancestors to quake in memory
He pulled himself forward
But they clung, clung fast
Until arm and socket stressed
So radius and ulna left the zone of humerus
With a gunfire crack of departure
That freed him
And now his captors ran
Away
No fleet footfalls
But the stumbling falling pushing shoving stampede of beasts
No not beasts for at least they have innocence
These were demons in the face of God
The threat of daylight
Returning to the squalor of their lairs
Where George and Jack hang grey in grime covered windows
That aid to conceal the filth within
Where was his beauty now
His proud head lowered
Those arms that raised hands to clap out beats
Wave the breeze to attract a gal to dancing
Now the two hang loose like his soul
Music is a silent memory
The glitter ball has cooled its glow
And yellow lamps
Mask the dark street ahead
He senses the splash of rats
His ears still deaf with obscenities
The air is so foul
That his nostrils are confused
Sending a stench much worse
Then the decay of the canal
To sit in his stomach
His heart cries for freedom
Home and freedom
Freedom and home
A distance too far to travel
This night
Any night in his lifetime
So to Hulme he turns
Where women,
Mother and sister
Will bathe his wounds
Bind his arms
And spit out vile curses
To the enemies in the ‘hood
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414 DAYS WITHOUT CHARGE
You forget the hate
In the everyday of living
Of Tesco’s,
Didn’t it snow
Dam the traffic and
Primark is fantastic but just too busy
You forget
In the full comfort of the Western hemisphere
Yesterday is only tomorrow’s history
Where we stood at a distance
Our vision blurred by the dust of
Stomping feet charging in defiance
Retreating one hit beyond a bullet
We watched mesmerised in horror
As children bled on TV’s
And the names of the missing
Were announced with the frequency
Of the weather forecast
So we stood
Some of us
Outside embassies
Walked in protest
Chanting and calling on names
To awake the Gods
Did they hear us
In time they did
In time
Meanwhile
We staged theatre
Wrote poetry
Held seminars
Debates, conferences
Looked at places of learning
And renamed them in honour of both of them
In her honour
In his name
Because their names above all others
Spoke to us of freedom
No Boers
No white supremacy
Africa for Africans
Then, as dawn turns to dust
Perfect showed its flaws
And we counted them
Like minutes into hours
Hours into days
We measured time
Without knowing
How she endured
What she endured
Counting
414 days
Without charge
There are prisons without cells
Where torture lives in the mind
Threatens the sanity
Where a door half open
Has as much terror as one locked
Love is a memory
That breaks the heart with disappointment
Because nothing is perfect
And she seemed without flaws
So that when we saw them
It scarred and scared our souls
Her halo, now dripped with blood
Down came her name
Replaced by Bruce Forsyth[1]
An educated decision I heard
Because we who did not understand
Could not understand
Murder is murder
Ask his mother
There can be no forgiveness
Can there
Can there
Can there
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THE HOUSE STOPPED BREATHING, - ALMOST
The house stopped breathing, - almost
The daily inhale, exhale stopped - almost
Windows basked in sunlight failed to open
So cool breezes could not tickle away the dewdrops of a morning’s expectation
As doors opened to find no one waiting there
And dust lingered hopefully for a tender hand to wipe it into order
Winters became simply dark
As drawn curtains no longer embraced to keep it warm
So the house stopped breathing - almost
Night workers took detours
And drunks hallucinated passed
As the house would sometimes shudder
Trying to re-establish its foundations
And the old chimney, many years without purpose
Would burp out a puff of sadness
And it seemed as though the trees would choir
A protective sigh the leaves shivering together
After a few years
There was hustle and bustle
As old suitcases and packing boxes
Scattered themselves across the floors
Until stacked carefully
Left the rooms as empty as a discarded soul
And the house’s breathing became so shallow
It felt sure it had stopped – almost
Then one morning voices of excitement
Waited expectedly in the garden
Waking the house with a curiosity
And when it saw so many gathered
And in their midst the face of a mother
It took in air with such sharpness
That every window opened wide in excitement
For the house knew, she had not returned
But it had a duty once again
To shelter a family
And the house began to breathe deeply
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DANCING IN A SPACE PROVIDED, OR RUNNING AMOK
– Dr Raimi Gbadamosi[2]
Imagine a future you want to build on
A place so far from here
You can’t remember where
Yesterday was
So you build a life fresh from its beginnings
Everything is new
Polished
Fresh
Nothing is sentimental
Because without life
You have no memories
Imagine that
Nothing passed down
No hands gnarled by life
Once so gentle
They brushed like silk across your cheeks
To locate a spot to rest a sugar-drop of love
No place for such foolishness
We are
You are
Like the explorer in a new land
Adam in brown skin
Rubbing stylised nappy-headed ideas
From mind to this plateau of new life
How wondrous
To be the first
How dastardly
How without meaning
History is not a burden
It is the source
An explanation of being
Tomorrow has no starting point without yesterday
And today is simply a passing of bewilderment
A time without substance
Empty of rituals
Tokens of existence
The nucleus of life
For when I
You
Me
We
Do this
A simple gesture
It is not merely the movement of muscle and tissue
It’s a magical thread of lineage
The link of others in fields
Maybe sugar plantations
Without doubt pounding a calabash
Foufou for dinner
Raising spears honouring the gods
This is not something to walk away from
It is the art of our culture
Lose that and we lose reason
Without reason we become
What they have always thought
Maniacs
Savages
The Lost
So tell me
What future is there in that?
JOSHUA WAILED
Joshua wailed nightly
Dog on heat
Knew the sound
And dipped its tail and whimpered
An agony silently remembered
Other men rolled
Like boulders
Heavy with age
Blown like feathers in tornadoes
Hiding themselves in small balls
Of feigned innocence
Joshua knew innocence
It lay like a smut moustache
Above his lip
And he licked it hungrily
Before every sentence
Taking huge gusts of air
That tasted like freedom
But before he could speak
The wail blew itself out
Slapping itself on doors
Walls,
Hanging momentarily
From the ceiling
Then whoosh like a flicker of a flame
It was gone
His mother used to say
His mother hadn’t said shit to him
Most of his life
And his father’s silence
Was only matched by his distance
Lots of people had told him
Move. Stop. Stand. Go.
There, Be Quiet.
Don’t talk.
Eat.
No. No. No. No. No.
This last day
Last day
Joshua had stopped wailing
Now he held his head
Held it totally
With his hands
Wrapping his arms around it
Right up to his elbows
Something had changed
Changed amongst those closest to him
This last day
Sum total of time
24 hours
1440 minutes
They had started to whisper
He felt
Though not sure
A slight warmest almost from them
They never looked at him
But they had stopped shouting
So Joshua no longer knew
If his wails had sound
Because no one told him
To shut the fuck up anymore
Now when he ate
He found his mouth welcomed and caressed each bite
Other days his teeth had ached
And his tongue like a rotovator would turn and eject everything
But not this time
Yet, even as he realised this pleasure
One of them sat closer to him
Whispered so quietly
That the sound shocked Joshua so much
A wail almost escaped again
You ready, said the whisper
Whilst another laid hands so gentle
Joshua almost,
Almost but did not
Remember his mother
Dead Man Walking went the cry
And Joshua began his last wail.
[1] Following the death of Stompie Moeketsi in 1989, MMU student union building name was changed to something less controversial and for a time it was named the Bruce Forsyth building after the popular entertainer. The name was dropped shortly after.
[2] Tate Liverpool Feb 18th 2010
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4 - Afterword
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this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
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