I get it now: white middle class = Poetry; black/white working class = Spoken Word. Well why din u just say so!? U = Racist/ Classist Fucka!
A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius, why write then? What the hell for?
This is a world where inertia, exhaustion and the sense of running hard to stay in the same place mark everyday life. They are as much a mark of the present depression as environmental degredation. There is a terrible tiredness around, a sense of having no energy, or of energy departing. In fact…
‘Boy: Bullet: Bullet Boy’ - poem written & performed by Miggy Angel
This is the breeding ground. Roads of tarmac belts
split the city’s limbs into sections. Engines
plume diesel appellations to the rotten environs;
flesh, ferried decrepit in transit. I take
one balled fist, wield it with ballistic force,
follow thunders white course, down
thru the electric column, that sombre light-bolts
& raindrops traverse. With the unclipped force
of a lightning fork, I punch straight into the world.
Rip the ground’s clavicle open, push five balled
mongrel fingers right into this hushed corporeal
animal. The street pulsates, tenement tendons flex,
the town undulates, windows break into choruses
of glass shards, domicile walls fall, roofs unmoor,
the hovel is humbled, ply-board homes gutted
like wild boars, spilling their offal, cargo their innards.
I am anger incarnate. In the hole my jack-hammer
hand nailed into this organ crevice of the planet’s
severed girth, I spit the seed of a broken tooth,
filled with a mother’s dawn-dusted promises,
& wait for my flower to grow thru the deficit.
© 2012 Miggy Angel
Gentrification Chronicles #1:
The Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre
The night of the sun’s abdication.
Moon, unwilling queen, crown askew, slouched
on her throne, throwing down a milky light
from the heart of her stale pale, stirs
the lurching clutch of her murky eye’s witness.
I am an improvement on my coward father, but
this is no endorsement, nor laurel worth wearing.
I am as feckless a citizen as he.
My mother has cried the rivers I drown in.
No doubt, this street is an experiment.
Somewhere else, uber-beings in sparkling space-
suits, bright lab-cloaks, add elemental
particles to heat-source: I am the rat with an ear
stitched to its back, the ape who gnaws
the bars of his hope, the cat with a code in its blood,
the one hound who hates man with a passion.
This is the night when I witness a thousand
moon-mad persons erupt from beneath the sewer’s hive.
Arms out in front, clutching ten skeleton fingers
at a fluttering future. Each man, woman, child,
barefoot, black-hooved as Lucifer. Not a shoe, sandal, clog
amongst them. A thousand shoeless messiahs, & me:
moon-crowned, wearing my father’s torn wedding ring
on the thin finger of the hand I salute the black hearse with,
the finger I use to pick my arse, write
my name in my mother’s blood.
© 2012 Miggy Angel
Not certain
whether
sentence
or gift, this
absence
is
bliss
pitch
perfect
anguish
As we talk
bubbles
of thought
inflate
on our lips
Then
ascend
the
mise
en
scene
Everything
bursts
&
&
&
We fall
thru
each mote
To the
ship
of
our
bones
The new year shall be year zero. I have spent my life sharpening the pencil I shall write with next year. The paper I shall write upon next year will be reaped from the tree planted on the year of my birth. I shall spend the new year stating what I desire not what I do not desire. I shall affirm my intention to bestride poetry. I shall look them in the eye & declare my intention to ascend my station. I shall stride thru the fields of rejection without erring nor blinking. All my perennial angels shall be summoned to the cause. Every ancestral bugle will sound. I shall become empty that I may be filled. I shall become an honest conduit. I shall surrender to the impulse. I shall foster the kernel. I shall manufacture the means. I shall emit the tenet-roots from my mouth. I shall aim in every direction. I shall become the target. I shall fire with my eyes closed for greater accuracy. I shall follow the fool of my desire thru the fire. I shall court rejection. I shall wear with pride the envy of others. I shall reflect doubt back to its tooth. I shall harbour wonder. I shall unmoor my weather. I shall let my temple freeze over. I shall enter the day’s light whilst asleep. I shall extend the dream’s reach. I shall marshall my art to its purpose. In the new year I am resolved to perform upon new stages, for my hieroglyphic to morph new forms, for my tongue to extend its alphabet. In the new year I shall birth the fuss of my utterance. In the new year I shall be born. I am coming. I am returned. You have been warned. - MIGGY ANGEL 23RD DEC 2011
Image by Taglia Mani
“NOBODIES’
PUPIL:
I
STUDIED
THE
TIDE,
GRADUATE
WITH
THE
DAWN”
- POEM MIGGY ANGEL 18TH DEC 2011
