A man of many mothers

People don't ask me 'Who's the man' anymore
But they always want to know who carried me
Which one's your Real Mam?

As if every stepmother isn't a Real Mam
As if every sister who raised up a younger brother isn't a Real Mam
As if everyone who's adopted or fostered isn't a Real Mam

I could reel off a list of Real Mams longer than a giant's handspan

It's that one, by the way, it's not a secret
I just don't see why it matters

Oh, you've never met anyone with two before?
Two is just a number I choose to share with you who speaks in binary

But when you asked who carried me
I ask why my language has not the words to describe

I'm the child of  a lesbian tribe
I'm a man of many mothers

Mother

They say that we look alike

That our eyes share fire if not colour

That our feet are made for marches

Our hearts have weathered darkness

That our wrinkles come from smiling

And our calluses from jiving

But I’ve never felt more like you

Until I ran through a sea of indifference

And feigned ignorance

After a woman fleeing her husband

Statistics slipping from his clenched fists

Tapping

You always knock when you come into my dreams

Appear when life is fraying at the seams

And I can hear you tapping

As you batten down the hatches

And hollow out my bones

Cos you believe that I can fly

And this tapping is a code

Which isn’t Morse of Five by Five

It is the scrape of chisel  

Carving sigils down my sides

And you don’t even try to hide

No, your handiwork is labelled

You stamped Runes along my spinal cord

Proclaiming I am able

You give form to thought which was before

A figment

Or a fable

And for all of this I’m yours and I remain immensely grateful 

Stationary

They told me that stationery would become my life

But for the first time in years I am moving forward

I will buy rubbers and rulers

But not to keep myself straight and ordered

My highlighters will not gloss over my past

I no longer need a compass to find my way home

I discovered a scar on my face

But couldn’t tell if it was from Chickenpox

Or if I’d cut myself shaving this morning

Penny Whistles

I saw the children lining up with penny whistles in their hands
And the email list of parents with pennies slipping through their hands
I saw the rows of children i was teaching how to stand
Would they play those pipes lowly as i was lowered in the sand

On monday I'm taking them to the war museum
And on Tuesday they'll be making guns in D+T
For the first time in my life I'd rather it was me
But the lesson planned for Wednesday is that history repeats

So I won't fight them on the beaches
But I'll fight them in the streets
And my bullets will be the hearts and minds of the children that I teach

And there's no space for this in my standard teaching plan
But I won't see this generation butchered
And damned

Bloodlines

When I was about ten, or eleven

Going back to school in September

All of my Maths lessons were forty five minutes long

Trigonometry became rocket trajectories

Duck duck goose became duck and cover

My auntie told me how

In the fish-less Scottish villages of her childhood

In was cold enough during a regular winter

And sunrise offered no solace only a reminder

So they dug deep into themselves and called it shelter

That history repeats is not ignorance

But doctrine

Threads coming together weaving the cloth that we’re wrapped in

Choked with

And buried in

Civilisation’s finish line is a burial shroud of satin

And I can see it happening

Again

Just like before

Counting the ways out by the hours on your contract

We never stood a chance

And they say I’m being paranoid

I should be smart

Like the bombs that miss ammo dumps

And hit a newlywed’s first dance

Because what would War be without martyrs?

And all of my mental maths tests had tanks drawn in the margins

And now that I’m older

I can see through the lies that they sold us but I am still afraid

The Latin root of my name means ‘To Conquer’

Tracing my bloodline back is literal

You just follow bodies

Left by boy soldiers committing war crimes

And I know that there is more

To being a man

Than this

But I was afraid of being conscripted

Now I’m afraid of being convinced

Mason

The first thing I saw was the Mason’s face

Lined with dust

As he cracked my eyes open with his chisel

The wind stung my skin as he stripped me naked

My hands still chained in a bed of my own making

He washed eons of dust out of my hair with a wire brush and file

All the while I watched the crags of his face for signs of home

Waited for my arms to be free to hold him

My hands to be free to hold him

My fingertips to be free to hold him

Why else would he have me reaching?

This is in keeping with my nature

This wrinkled lip is just a mirror of his features

He couldn’t give me life

But I’ll die for a lot longer than he did