Riveting, wiring

I’m far too high, to be embarrassed-

about my thin and flaking skin

or forgetting you hate The Decembrists

smoking too much

wanting to bruise break

Mend,

your pretty, delicate wrists.

Does it make you squirm, all this evidence? 

Of how I was confident in feeling

the obscenity of cards from lovers

cruel photographs of dead friends.

And is it really your mind, that keeps you shouting

Marching

cracking slightly as the crowd fades? But listen-

Did you ever pick blackberries?

Pull purple-tongued on pig tails,

Or sneak off with the older ones

to taste sharper, unusual fruit?

Don’t worry, don’t answer.

Back on earth, I’ll feel intrusive

And you will never melt.

The Middle Ones

Another drip from the ceiling, while seagulls

swirl outside.

They say it builds character, not the kind of illness

From a pen out of ink or a swollen tongue.

 

There will be no digging. The builders

are off, licking 

Their wounds

On golden sands. We remain,

 

Yours faithfully, Irelands problem children.

The Graffiti Man

A thousand yard stare, fixed on a can,

To create or consume, that is the question-

For tonight the squat is cold

Comrades have knives in their eyes,

outside the terriers are prowling.

 

A thousand yard stare, fixed on a can-

Time to pick a battle, racists or architects?

Time to count out change for a chicken roll

Tonight the buses aren’t running.

 

A thousand yard stare, fixed on a can-

Possibly the last one in the world.

Concerned glances from the passing gentry,

The Graffiti Man has a plan.

Notes from the Asylum

Such words I have, such words!

And chosen with care, by greasy hands

Like the cool gel of the ultrasound.

 

There is no salve for this slow burn-

But time, that so-called healer

And you betcha that bastard will tarry.

*********************************************

A dry-eyed psychosis:

at least it’s original.

If Hope is the thing with feathers,

that’s one hell of a four a.m.

wake-up call.

**********************************************

I am at home with charcoal

When your pencil smudges

into our grey areas.

But remember- I am ravenous

And I too, leave my mark.

**********************************************

“You have so much potential.”

A whisper in the ear, a wandering hand

“You have so much potential”

A dead goldfish in a Phillip Morris coffin.

“You have so much potential.”

A hairbrush, a sedative,

and it’s all quiet on the Western Ward.

Broken Bones

feministkilljoys

In my chapter “Fragile Connections” in the book I am writing, Living a Feminist Life, I have been trying to think through the implications of how the histories that leave us fragile are often the histories that bring us to feminism.

Fragility: the quality of being easily breakable. We are all fragile; some of us are more fragile than others.

Can we value what is deemed broken? Can we appreciate those bodies, those things, which are deemed to have bits and pieces missing?

A history of breaking can be a history of making.

Things can happen; accidents can happen. Hap happens. We can be thrown by what we come up against.

In my earlier post on fragility I shared Ann Oakley’s story of breaking her hand in her wise book, Fractured: Adventures of a Broken Body (2007).

I have a story. Let me give you the bones of it.

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Ladies, if we must be judged, let it be on our creativity and ingenuity.

Well, as most of you know, I’ve been summering in St. Pat’s for two weeks now. My first week was spent in the Special Care Unit, which is essentially a fishbowl filled with Very Strong Feelings. During this time, I had very little to do bar stew in fifteen and a half years of repressed rage and read the newspaper. How fortunate I was to have Martina Devlin’s exercise in double-think fall into my lap! http://www.independent.ie/opinion/ladies-let-us-not-be-judged-on-our-gloves-and-lipstick-30478270.html

I am probably the most rabid third or fourth wave feminist you will ever meet. I’m queer, internet educated and a stinkin’ pinko. In other words, ladies, gents and othered, I’m a screwed up young girl with two thirds of a BA and a persecution complex.

And I really, really love dressing up. As do all my friends, whatever their gender. There’s an artistry to it, a balance of light and shade, tailored and loose to be found everywhere from Coppers to Arcade Con. Leaving aside the blatant victim blaming and attempt to moor feminism in an irrelevant second wave past, that isn’t patriarchy. It’s ingenuity. Making a dress is “action”, and damn hard work too. The people behind the scenes deserve some credit.

This is where I see some class issues at play. Devlin praises lofty words and clever protest, the historical tools of a middle class aspiring intellectual (I’m aware that I’ve just described myself. Bear with me). I would advise the author to take a walk down Thomas Street and keep an eye out for the barmaids, the seamstresses, the stall-holders and yes, even the bloody NCAD lot.  These people aren’t just preaching feminism, they’re living it. Perhaps Butler might be a better choice than De Beauvoir.

As for the proposed best dressed man competition, well, why not? Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch and Matt Smith have made dapper cool again. Almost everyone likes a bit of eye candy. What’s missing is respect.

Feathered Manifesto

A Response to Some Criticism, Re-Posted From My Facebook Page

I realise that my tone in my previous blog post bordered on the snarky, and I apologise. Also, I have been fielding two main questions from over half of my six regular readers: they wish to know if I deny that humour can be subversive, and they would also like to know how I, as a straight cis-gendered person, feel qualified to comment on the issue. To these readers, I address my reply:

“Yes, Facebook! I’m a double hinge! I sit on the fence and derive sexual pleasure from it! I’m parallel lines, bent double, a friend of David Bowie! I munch the carpet around the pole! I’m a greedy bastard who had second helpings of taco AND hot-dogs at the buffet!

I’m a double bend in the middle of the road! I’m a fork squeezed in between two knives and a spoon! I’m a, a curious Georgina, a bit of a fickle fucker, A SPAGHETTI GIRL, FACEBOOK! An all around campus girl with a double major!

I am INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH THE THEATRE, FACEBOOK, AND I HAVE NO SHAME!

I originally (accidentally) posted this on my wall, through Keith’s account. Keith doesn’t write my statuses, though he often inspires them. Keith is not bisexual, but only those who made it this far through this bloody essay of a post will be corrected on that point.

Peace out, mofos! xoxo

Trigger Warnings, Trauma, & a Politics of “Thick Life:” On Halberstam’s “You are Triggering Me,” and Povinelli’s Empire of Love

Interesting musings on the ‘trigger warning’ debate. I particularly appreciate the author pointing out the problem of binary thinking in far more eloquent language than I possess.

WIT

One of the main discourses to constitute social differentiation as hierarchy and domination is that of binary opposition. –Janet Jakobsen, 1998                                                                         

Is this the way the world ends? When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEO’s? Instead of realizing, as Moten and Hearny put it in The Undercommons, that “we owe each other everything,” we enact punishments on one another and stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle in small groups feeling erotically bonded through our self-righteousness. –Jack Halberstam, 2014

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The Fruits of Constructive Criticism.

A regular reader of my blog has described my previous post on trigger warnings as reading “ like a metaphor store got caught up in a twister”. I have re-read the blog post, and I agree. I will now leave it up to the good folks at WordPress to decide for themselves whether a “Meg’s Blog Metaphor Drinking Game” would be a good idea, or a recipe for certain destruction. If anyone knows that such a game already exists, please do not inform me of this, as you clearly throw better parties than I do and I’ll get jealous.