You are not alone

Why my poetry isn’t comedy and why I should be on Breakfast TV

It seems I can split a room as easily as if I were to try to split my girl’s twat in twain with my curious chopper.

And I hope with that I have set the tone. Some of ya will have stopped reading already. Good. You’re one less bigot to worry about.

In my opening I first state one short concrete fact: as a performer I can split a room. I then wrap this in a lugubrious almost animated grotesquery. The main points all snap into focus by the alliteration: Twat in Twain, Curious Chopper – and their rhythmic spacing makes them comic.

In short, entertaining.

Ha, but now I have to think about the bigots who may be reading on. “There are some things you’re not allowed to say”. The imagery is certainly somewhat challenging, especially considering the furore my fellow poet Ernesto has stirred up over the appropriateness of representing consensual rape. But this is a pretty throwaway line – they get deeper into the darkness than that. Consider the full lyric of my newest:

You know it’s not a good day

when you start it digging graves.

Dear mortician

I need a remind-ah

Do me a favour

And gently scalp her

It's okay, it need not show

For you can take it

From down below

I said I would love her

For ever and a day

I meant I would love her

From beyond the grave

Please please help me

Misbehave

Let me fuck her

Before she decays

Dear gynaecologist

I need me a hole

Some where suitable

To stick my pole

My mummified cock

Her charcoal chasm

She rigor mortised

When I spasmed

Dear taxidermist

I need a loving look

But her eyes have

Turned to puss

Let me help you

Stuff her up

Just about ripe for

A skull fuck

I said I would love her

For ever and a day

I meant I would love her

From beyond the grave

Please please help me

Misbehave

Let me fuck her

Before she decays

I wanna fuck her before she decays

I wanna fuck her before she decays

I wanna fuck her before she decays

I wanna fuck her till the end of days

This is me pretty much at the top of my game, as it stands. Now okay, you don’t have to be a bigot to feel uneasy about some of the imagery I use here, or even about the concept of consensual necrophilia. Somebody asked me how was it even possible, I reminded him that you get pre-nup agreements easily – it’d be kind of the same thing.

But actually, I don’t even know if the concept of consensual necrophilia exists in the landscape of current sexual fetishism. It turns out it is in there. I’ve just read this:

I affirm that it should be lawful for those of the legal age of consent, whilst still living, to give and record consent for posthumous sexual acts to be performed on their bodies and for these wishes to be honoured. Or in other words, for people to will their bodies to necrophiles.

Some random website google threw up

So that’s an interesting point. No ideas are unique. Whatever fancy, depraved or otherwise, I dream up there will be swarms of dysfunctional people already doing it. Try it now, google the most impossible thing you can imagine. You are not alone. Tolerance breeds peace, actually. Proximity fosters tolerance. Not in a bleeding hearted do goody hippy way. I wouldn’t condone setting all the rapists free. But it is incontrovertible that we must seek understanding.

So to my mind, when considering subjects worthy of exposure, no subject is taboo. Sometimes this gets me into trouble, and I can certainly split a room.

Then there is the question of the style of the subject’s treatment. Some things need to be handled sensitively, apparently. To be honest though, I’ve by and large had my fill of bleeding poets. Not all poets by any means, just the bleeding ones. For too long poets have lumbered in the realms of the intellectuals and the empathics. They exhort us to “think about it”, or to “imagine if...”. These are reconstructive processes for the audience. I believe live performance should touch you a little more intimately than that. Live performance gives us the power not to re-present but to create.

The grotesque imagery and comedic stress points are supposed to work together to create a brand new experience in the room. I don’t want you to think about consensual necrophilia. I don’t want you to imagine what it would be like to be grave raped. I want you to feel as though a grave rape is happening right there, right then. I think that way, we get to peek through our limits and understand the world the better for it.