OK, all of the trigger warnings and content notes for this.

This man raped a woman and was convicted let off with a few weeks jail time because of his “promising swimming career”. Utterly disgraceful. I’ve got some feelings about the judge who made that decision as well, but for today my flu addled brain has apparently decided that I do curses now.

Campus rapist given lenient sentence to avoid “severe impact on him”

Listen.

Since you have escaped legal justiceSince your swimming career and your prospects 

Outweigh the pain you caused

The harm you did
I only wish one punishment on you

That when you wake in the night

(The same way she’ll wake in the night)

You’ll understand. I wish you empathy.

I wish you her panic attacks

Her loneliness.

I wish you every feeling of despair

I hope, somehow, she’s spared.

But, if that cannot be,

Then I charge the water you swim in to pull you down 

And I charge the chlorine in the water you swim in to burn your eyes, your skin.

I charge the tiles and the ladder in the swimming pool to bruise you, to cut you open.

I charge every other swimmer, every coach, every spectator

To see the man you are: the clean cut college boy.

Who is a rapist.

I want them to whisper it, shout it, scream it in your face.

Warn their enemies about you, protect their friends.

Cry your name in the echoing halls.

Because if you cannot be made to understand the harm you did.

If you can’t feel her pain

And you cannot be punished by the law

I want you to feel at least whatever pain the world can give you. 

I wish for this for you.

Some people have tough lives, and let you know it

They won’t let you forget: their struggle’s real.

And others suffer, but they never show it;

You’d never guess how terrible they feel.

Exhausted, broke, and seriously bruised

Arrested, and the way back home too long

Next morning, you were angry and confused:

No one would tell you what you had done wrong.

But while I cursed the negligence of staff

Who’d left you, triggered, ill and off your head,

All you could do was laugh and laugh and laugh

“I nicked a fucking PINEAPPLE? I’m dead!”

Some moan, some never let you know they’re broken.

And some can walk through hell and come out joking.

This is for a friend going through a rough time. As we who fight the brainweasels tend to flock together, this might apply to a few people who read this. I love you all.

CN: re depression/suicidal feeling

_________

I do not want to spread the world before you 

Urge you to see its beauty

Taste its kindness

When your soul is too sick, just now,

To digest such richness

So that the beauty curdles in your eye

And the kindness surges, sour, when swallowed.

If you were sick to your stomach 

I would not force a banquet down your throat

To remind you of the wonderful flavour of food.

I will not cite your kindness, or your wit,

My admiration for you

As evidence that you must stay alive

To keep on being wise and kind for me.

If your pain was in your throat

I would not demand that you kept on singing 

As if the pleasure your pain could provide me

Were worth a price that only you pay.

I won’t try to make you feel guilty

For wanting to escape the pain. 

As though feeling bad about yourself 

Were the cure

For feeling bad about yourself. 

You don’t treat third degree burns

With scalding water.

But if you can manage a sip

Of the love that we all have for you.

The cup is waiting.

A poem about a girl who used to live up the road from me.

_____________

We met when we were two. I can’t recall

A time I didn’t know that you existed

From the beginning, I was in your thrall.

You were a force that could not be resisted.

The eldest by two weeks, you would have thought

I would have been a leader, but I followed 

You doggedly, the way I had been taught.

Any rebellion I always swallowed.

I worshipped you. loved you. And I let

You walk all over me: eleven years.

Of grovelling. I’d much rather forget

The admiration that I felt, the tears

I shed, my heart ripped out, when in the end 

I realised that you’d never been my friend.

On the occasion of realizing I used to know the bloke who invented Raspberry Pi.

______

I remember how

You made a sign

For your bedroom door

That said
CKOEMEEP OIUNT
And cut a grid

That slid
To reveal a welcome

Or a dismissal.
I was

 

JAEMAALZOEUDS
I hadn’t thought of that myself.
You always were good with
ICDOEDAES

Went to see Eddie Izzard do his pro remaining in Europe comedy. Talking to the bloke in the door was a rather anticlimactic end to the night.

______

The guy who checked our tickets

Wants out of Europe.

He decided this in 1981

(Around the time

When you were deciding

To leave Sheffield

To be a comedian.)

He said enjoyed the show

But no amount of trilingual Surrealist comedy

No human sacrifice,

No email from the Almighty

No dogs on the heads of royalists

No millionaire moles in Beverly Hills

Were ever going to budge a belief

Almost as old as me

(And, bafflingly, about a decade older 

Than the European Union itself).

Eddie, I’m sorry:

You were only the second weirdest person 

In the house.

Some more potentially misremembered history. This from a guidebook while interrailing circa 1995.

(Excuse the quick succession of 2 poems. I’m lagging behind slightly and trying to catch up. This is officially day 78.)

_____

In Poitiers, France, A group of worthy matrons 

Were charged with the task

Of checking Joan of Arc’s virginity.

If sexually active

She could legitimately be accused

Of congress with the devil.

An active horsewoman

I find it difficult to believe

That Joan’s hymen

Was still intact.

And yet

The matrons proclaimed her 

Undoubtedly a maiden.

I like to think

They had her back.

A collection of potentially misremembered facts about Florence Nightingale for NO GOOD REASON.
Though you cared a lot

You weren’t very good at your job.

And after the war

You spent a lot of time in bed.

Speaking of bed,

Those beds you shared

With high born ladies

And rough peasant wenches:

Were you overcome with lust

Or simply tired and not fussed?

If mediocrity,

Sapphic rumours

Fatigue

And a lamp

Made you famous

I need to buy a torch.

It’s circle time

The class share stories from the weekend.

I haven’t visited this school in months

But on this Friday morning

The Other Miss is ill,

So they’ve got me to help.

The highlight for Leona was Kentucky:

Her Friday treat that means the week went well:

No chairs were thrown, no swear words screamed at teachers.

Janette can’t tell us much and so her mum

Has written for her in her home to school book

That she enjoyed a massage, went to yoga and missed her friends at school.

She laughs agreement.

Piotr grinds his teeth and looks away, but mutters “Mario” under his breath.

Natasha grins and gestures to

A brand new T Shirt: System Of A Down.

Jaleel is next he grins, and clears his throat.

“We went to see my brother

Me and mum.

You won’t believe what happened

We got locked in!

We had to call the cemetery man.

He came and let us out.”

It’s only then I see the empty space

That was filled by Naveed three months ago.

The class have carried on. 

But every circle time, I learn,

Jaleel includes his brother in his story

And so he is remembered.

On the occasion of a fly landing in Donald Trump’s hair (After Robert Burns’ “To A Louse”) 
Where are you going, crawling fellow? You seem quite tranquil, even mellow

Although your host doth blast and bellow

With bile and hate

You wonder through the field of yellow 

Upon his pate

This ugly, creeping, bastard conner. 

Detested, shunned by saint and sinner

How how dare he try to thus dishonour 

His country’s name?

Go somewhere else and seek your dinner 

Don’t feed on shame. 

Oh! in some stinking pile of shit 

There you may rest, and wait a bit

With all your kindred, little twit

In shoals and nations; 

Where spray nor swat can e’er unseat

Your conversations. 

Now you stay there, you’re in plain sight, 

Above those eyeballs , small and tight; 

Now, look at this! You won’t feel right, 

Until you’re there 

The very topmost, towering height 

Of Donald’s hair. 

My god! You boldly try to clamber 

Trapped in that nest as though in amber 

If only you could put a damper

Upon their fandom

Of this vile Grand Old Party member.

Oh how he scammed ’em!

I would not be surprised to spy 

You on a plate of food laid by, 

For weeks and smelling pretty high

Just feasting on it;

But on this politician, fie! 

He’ll make you vomit!

O Donald, still you rant and bawl, 

Of how you’re gonna build that wall

And you have no idea at all

About your guest

You’d kill it quick and let it fall:

It’s for the best.

When Bernie Sanders’ voice was heard

He even charmed  a little bird

And, Donald, though it seems absurd

It makes me think:

A crawling blowfly to have lured…

How you must stink!