Yrsa Daley-Ward's Blog, page 20
October 7, 2013
A fine, awful art
You may have learned from your mother
or any other hunted woman.
Smiling at devils is a useful
learned thing.
Swallowing discomfort down in spades.
Holding it tight in your belly.
Ageing on the inside only.
Keeping it forever sexy.
October 6, 2013
On hearing he hit his girlfriend
My brother shuffles in his seat looking uncomfortable when I say
“what if someone were to do that to me”
and mumbles, “I’d fuck them up, innit.”
he cannot look me in the eye today
It’s the one time in twenty something years
that I don’t instinctively feel the need to make him feel better about himself
or lament the plight of mixed up black boys from broken homes
or consider the flawed system
it’s the one time in twenty something years
that he’s more the culprit
much less the victim
so I clear my throat (purposefully) and say,
“That’s inexcusable and one corner I wont stand in
to fight for you
so you’d better talk. Now.”
So we sit down to talk
and he cries, mostly.
October 3, 2013
Jeanette
I met you during my power cutin the nineteen nineties.You with red ribbons, blonde French...
I met you during my power cut
in the nineteen nineties.
You with red ribbons, blonde French plaits
and lots of sweets
were dreaming about love.
I was reading the good book
With my grandma.
In my brothers red hand-me-down tracksuit
planning how best to get to heaven.
I loved you.
I would have loved to keep you.
But we don’t talk at all now.
Life is like that.
Hope you’re well.
i look forward to reading your work. naayirah posted a video of you, and i fell in love with the words, voice and beauty of you. i need more color-culture on my dash. <3
Thank-you so much Sir! Your blog is wonderful. Happy we found each other - God bless the internet! x
October 2, 2013
Not the End Of The Word, but almost.
The day was not the best, especially in my head. I was thinking calmly about stepping off the side of the mountain in the rain, arms outstretched, embracing this life, this empty space one last time and making it look like an accident. My eyes were blurry with salt and I hadn’t eaten in days but my mind was clearer than air on a blue-sky morning in the Black Country.
I said,
no hard feelings bright, hard world but maybe, just maybe you are not for me. Maybe I’m stretched too thinly, pressed too deeply into you in a shape that I can’t keep without cramping and maybe just maybe your breath is too cold. Perhaps human nature is just too fickle to understand. And rainbows aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, so why hang around till the rain ends?
That was when I saw you. Eyes did meet, lightening did not flash…but I thought to myself, who wears a reindeer jersey and red shorts in May? And anyway you looked kind and the sun was peeping out a little, and the sky was still dark and it was still drizzling but everyone needs a little kindness. You have a smile that turns down at the corners and those gentle kind of eyes
those gentle kind of eyes.
We sat on a hill in the car looking at where the beach met the sea and the rain hit them both and I (quite desperately, quite selfishly) kissed you hard and said, drive into the sea with me, just once and it’s done. Instead you drove fast in the opposite direction to a blessed place of broken brick and stone and said ‘this used to be my childhood house’ and drove me further, on further, to a purple house safe up on the hillside and said,
one day this will be home.
It wasn’t perfect. It isn’t now. I still have days when I want to exit the system quicker then you can say, “don’t you dare give up now”, and you still have days where you can’t even taste the sweetness in raw honey and neither one of us believes in pills. Days when I so want to kiss you but your mouth is sour and my thoughts are bitter and I’m angry…just mad, just crazy with it all. But we are each others home sweet home, Love. The roof is screwed on too tight at times and the walls of our purple house can pinch a little but my God, they are always warm.
Yrsa Daley-Ward
(c) Yrsa Daley-Ward 2012
(c) Yrsa Daley-Ward 2012
September 30, 2013
Hypothesis 1
Isn’t everyone just doing their best to keep their shit
at bay, trying to prevent the darkness from entering the lungs?
Drink does a fairly good job for a while
pills work well and so the kind of people
who give you attention but let you off the hook when
it could get deep
sexy ones who stay the night
but leave early in the morning.
Non committal, exciting, selfish folks
who you mustn’t get to know too much…
it’ll spoil it.
But anyway, life is this and this is life and it ruins us all
and no-one comes out a winner
or a saint, or anything like that and everyone is dead on the ground
in some respect
and it all makes no difference in the end.
September 29, 2013
LAUNCH FRIDAY, 4TH OCT
Celebrating the official Launch of ‘On Snakes and Other Stories’ by Yrsa Daley-Ward. Limited number of paperbacks on sale at event…guarantee your order on thiswillnotlast.tumblr.com/book
Do come along. All welcome!
The Passage
27a Dalston Lane, E8 3DF London, United Kingdom
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It has been going on like this
for years. I provide the bed
and all of
my body. She provides the...
It has been going on like this
for years. I provide the bed
and all of
my body. She provides the drink,
foots all of the bill.
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