[youtube]http://youtu.be/HJgbB-XtyvU[/youtube]
CRYSTAL KISSES
Girls at the top
Of ivory tower blocks
Cut
Your hair.
Your bandana Pimp Charming will not save you
He has already betrayed you;
He is not climbing but pulling
These are not your dreams he is fulfilling
As he stands before you half drunk, grinning
Introducing you to the gang
This half boy less than man
And it’s all part of the long written sub-textual plan
That once seemed like a love letter
In invisible ink;
He has been patient
Two hands on her window ledge
And in one an invitation to the group initiation
He forgot to mention.
He makes her presents of stealing gifts
She is bowed in the presence of crystal kisses
Pass the parcel
Delicate and vicious
They surround her in the disused lift
No poetry. No pity
Their eyes, the blank windows of a somnambulant city
As her name is spray tagged in urinal graffiti
They circle her
One winks. Offers her a drink
And their shoulder blades are shark fins
These awkward and angry boys
All angles and apologies
With blue siren voices
That she once shared a classroom with
Their tongues are now whips
That scar her unwritten skin
Into a map
Each word each wound
A passport mark of origin
That confines her to the estate
Know your place
She may not wear a burkha
But there is more than one form of purdha
She wears her hair across her face like crime scene tape
And I have learned not to look
At these boys with mouths of burning books
And I quietly head back to my flat
Doors close like lips will. All is still. All is still.
(III)
Later
Down the catwalk gangways
She teaches herself to walk
And the air she moves through
Is forever outlined in chalk
She walks
Back bruised by the beating of the communal metal bins
They force her in
She walks
Back bruised by the looks of other women
Clutching six packs of children
Pre-school mewling
As she carefully, warily passes by
See
The girls on this block
Wear half drawn net curtains across their eyes
But she will learn like the rest to bury her breasts in the shallow grave of her chest
A sunken spine will offer more protection in these ends that a Kevlar vest.
(III)
They tell you not to join a gang
But not that you will grow up in one
That these are your friends
These razor mouthed men
Not that those same boys who dealt Pokemon in the playground
Are now shotting crack and blow and smack and snow
On indifferent street corners
In the less curious parts of town
Frightened and furious
Kissing fists
Boy soldier street existentialists
Pressing stealing gifts
Onto well-dressed strangers with wet upper lips:
A storm in the centre of each palm -
Don’t speak to her about self-harm
If this was Iran
She would be stoned to death for what they did to her
But this is Hackney
So she just gets stoned
Those same boys who once played kiss chase
Now play kiss chase
And the moon hides its face in the branches of a tree.
(IV)
The girls that are locked in ivory tower blocks
Around these ends
Are kept well fed and confined to bed
Like battery hens
Stored one on top of the other
Like an Argos advent calendar
Pop the windows
Inside a girl grows into a woman into a widow
And now
There are parts of her body
Places where even the police won’t go
Areas where the grass will not grow
In the dark heart of the tower block shadow
That turns the estate into a sundial
There are parts of her that are wastelands and warzones
On which a child stands alone
Wondering which could be the path that will lead her home
But sensing blood pulls up her hood and sets off into the woods
Sprayed with their collective pheromones
(V)
And when she smiles
Her teeth are a white picket fence
Neglected, paint peeling
That a bouquet of flowers rest against
And nothing sings. Nothing ever sings.
Nothing ever tastes as good as that which is forbidden
Nothing is as public as that which must be hidden
As impossible and irreverent as the possibility of forgiving
So where are the cheap flowers resting on railings
For these young falling women
The t‑shirts TV appeals
The parliamentary petitions
Just confinement to the tenement as though men are the victims
And the female form once again becomes a kind of prison
(VI)
Meanwhile
Gang gods battle Gods
In a raw estate Oresteia
And she is Cassandra
Foreseeing the future
But fated never to be believed
Especially by herself
Who only knows what she thinks by following FaceBook news feeds
So the media
Call her the all devouring mother
Bedsit Medea
Print headlines in graveyard script
And never tell the story of the girl on the 12th
Entombed in this family crypt.
But this girl
This council oracle
Is a municipal miracle
Each iris an image of the whole world
The universe contained in a single pixel
She is the rainbow rising out of the oil spill
Girls , know your power.
Girls at the top
Of ivory tower blocks
Cut your hair.
And when you have and when you do
Tell them
It is because you don’t need anyone
To save you.
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Gata Malandra
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