In the Beginning…

I originally wrote this spoken word piece as a standard poem, but it refused to stay pinned on the page (which is ironic, considering the content).

Then I tried to film myself reading it but…well, I’m not a natural in front of the camera, put it that way.

So after 6 months of dithering, I’ve decided just to post it here as an audio clip instead. If anyone is skilled and talented enough to make a video to go with it, I’d love to see it.

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In the beginning…

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And for those who prefer the written word:

In the Beginning…

In the beginning the universe
was a blank page
Pure and untouched
Unmarked by any hand
It was a story
Waiting to be written.

And it could be anything.

We could write heaven
Full of love
And hope
And the joy of small things
The individual snowflake
Alive just for its fall
Before it melts on the tongue of a child
We could take inspiration
From the autumn
And realise that even in death
And dark
And decay
There’s beauty
And seeds of new life
And every year the firey trees
Can take our breath away anew
However many autumn deaths we’ve seen.
We held the pen.
We could write the story
That green shoots always come again
That there’s always hope.

In the beginning the world was a blank page
A story waiting to be written
And we could write whatever we wanted
Only we had the pen
We could write hell
If we wanted
We could mark the page
With angry scrawls of grief
And rage
And pain
And shame
The cruelty of the selfish
Picking all of the flowers
Not to love
But to own, to hold them all
Locked in a box
In a safe
In a bank
Where the lack of light
And oxygen
Dries them away to powdery dust
and we all lose.

Our home was a blank page
Pure and untouched
And we created
Because that’s what we do
We drew
We birthed sculptures that reached for the heavens
On the bones of those we forced to build them
We sent men to space
To marvel at how beautiful we are
When you zoom out far enough
To lose the deadly details

We were a blank page,
Empty,
and alone
So we crossed it
with roads and rails and fibre optic superfast broadband cages

Because that’s what we do
We reach out
Even as we draw away
Taking inspiration from the ocean
That gives life to us all
But can kill you
If you don’t respect her

Maybe
Maybe we were aiming to make this art we live in
A reflection of ourselves
Maybe
We just wanted the canvas to be light and dark
As we are
Loves first tender kiss
In an underground car park
A mix of contrasts
As we are
The loyal dog
Who
Nevertheless
can be pushed too far

But here we are

Scribbling and squabbling
And we keep going
And going
like there’s something else
Something more
Like when we’ve finished messing up this page
We can just tear it up and throw it away
And start again.

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