When a woman falls in love with a dinosaur
When a woman falls in love with a dinosaur
she must be sure
to keep his nails cut short. She must
remember to feed him well.
No doubt she’ll need a new, big bed
she’ll need to warn her friends
not to drop by unannounced. She’ll need
to learn the meaning of his grunts and calls,
his rubbish strewn trail speaks volumes
of his inner reptile. She’ll need to frame
her questions carefully, in a language he will
understand, put aside her whims, begin
the task of moving in the unfamiliar
territory of the unexplained.
He, for his part, may miss the outdoors
both eyes trained in stereo
to her comings and goings, eyes in the back
of his head, lashed to the rain dance of windows.
She will, of course, try everything to make it work.
She will bend over back-wards to convince
herself and everyone else that this is not unusual,
anything is possible if there is love and a big enough bed.
But when his cumbersome tail catches once more and again
the delicate china cups she’d arranged, heard
their many fragments call, each a small refrain
you are not thinking straight the spell will break,
the human faces of her children once more visible
in the light from the long-broken door.
Foul Mouthed Praise Poem
This installation came out of workshopping conversations around freedom of speech with the students at Sidcot School showing them videos of great orators like Martin Luther King, Kae Tempest, Emmeline Pankhurst.
After workshopping, the students created poems and these were whittled down to phrases and ideas which tc arkle then used to create the final poem.
tc arkle was poet in residence at Sidcot School
in North Somerset from 2018 to 2022
The Freedom of You.
Bewildering*
*A synonym for guerrilla gardening by Australian gardener Bob Crombie
The Lyra Poetry Festival, Bristol, Nature in the City, Eco Poetry, Reading with host Carrie Etter
Picture a garden coated by night stars
step into it stroll around belong to it outside the law
yarn bombers have been the stop lights wear sweaters and scarves
come with shovels seed bombs to bed down
lavender tomatoes serrated edges smell
your fingers grow bags under rain coats in single file hoodies
up like monks forget yourself in the night shade of night shade
in brother hood with the soil
outside the hegemony of council ordinations crank up the trowels
earth pods dew covered plastic the froth of hands
brassicas footlet ratoon slip twig
bud bine stolon limb sprout sprig
the pitching arm throws papier-mâché seed bombs over
the barbed wire the rain will break them open
wild flowers will repopulate as the trains
perambulate there will be heads
full of bloom burdock and blueberries strawberries kale
spillikin spears mumbling branches and buds
cilium thread fibril length
the concrete confides nothing holds nothing
confines bind weed
in the triangulation between road signs Stop signs walk signs
road lights an eden throws its hooks by morning
traffic once again puffs and drags nobody saw
night’s ninjas
but signs will be born thistle head colt foot
briar hedge strim edible
wisp bristle stalk tooth
roundabout underpasse shopping centre
guerrilla means ‘little war’ Che loved a gardening metaphor
sewing the seeds of revolution the fruits of destruction
an organic movement waiting for the right conditions blown
paratroops wind scattered to flower adapt in derelict
spaces John ‘Appleseed’ and the Diggers
create re populate where council block is king
and country machinates
cuts back fight the filth with forks and flowers
imagine a garden.
River Bed Apologia
My daughter says
my generation owes hers
an apology.
We are lobsters. Curmudgeons.
Boiled, bouillabaisse.
Missing
a claw, fought for
in a war as if
we had something to win
given for a life
in the fight to carry on
in warmer waters
but an epic god has drained the river
and there are no more bedtime stories,
there are not enough sorrys.
From the lip of the rim
we scurry to look down and in
to the abyss
we filled with plastics
and the matchsticks
of wax cities,
toppled temples, and gym
memberships.
Starlight is a myth
solved by the greatest
machines known
to man.
Here’s where it gets biblical:
aliens don’t need to land. They mow
fuck yous into the wheat fields
knowing
we can balls it up
on our own,
and hover
like sibilant smiles
in our sky.
Who needs a boat
when the bodies float
on the irrevocable sea?
A bumblebee
defies gravity and we
are winging it.
Children march the streets, and care-homes
don’t care; love is a neon sign flashing.
What solid ground there is slips in the ice flow.
I can vote with my feet in the supermarket
but the one percent will butcher me on the forecourt.
Rape as a fallout of war,
tell that to her
parents. Take a bribe,
take a knee
poverty as a by-product of greed
where the great board a private plane and wave
from the steps. The bigger they are
the harder they are
to hold accountable.
There’s a slogan
on the road,
there’s a signpost
that we passed a long time ago,
under the village
in the mudslide
I’m counting on your side
Daughter, to win.
T H E
NUN'S SON
First
light
As heard on the BBC
Love’s
Labia
Found
The lavender is awash
with bees, just a thimble full
like an espresso
and they’re off!
Re-fuelling for the long flight home
legs full of luggage, but one
lags behind, stuck
head first in a blouse of bud
so deep in her cleavage
he hasn’t come up for air
breathless with homage.
Slacking on the job, no matter
how wholesome the goddess
is not the bumble way.
I poke him
but he doesn’t move.
We should all be so lucky
spirited away in her puckered bed
head full of bloom—Oh, Happy Death!
The scent of her skirts still full in his face
he will not unclasp his workman’s boots
or remove his calloused paws.
If only I could fill my heart
and lungs with such liquor
pass clear away at the height of day
the sun on my back
face planting that honeyed dew.
HIPPY DICK HEAD
Wake
up it is
Time
Return to You
so you wonder why you are
not feeling quite
yourself?
disconnected maybe? empty? perhaps death
seems more inviting? with its crisp
white sheets, bed made
quiet
why does the end appear
safe? almost an answer?
in death there is a return to
a soil truth
a sky truth
revealed to you
one great unified ahhhhh
what have we left out of here
this
life?
to make it better seeming over there?
to make this hell?
what have we left out? Forgotten?
the single mother struggles with her kids
within four walls
once a community raised a child.
We cut ourselves off from the whole.
we say we are happy in our boxes on top of other boxes
on top of concrete next to other boxes
but then wonder why we are lonely and longing
and there is no one to help when things get tough. You have been sold
a box within a box; you sit and watch a box that sells you family ideas
but is not family
they are strangers who pretend but want only to buy your time
to sell you something
and the next generation is fed on canned milk and the screen teat
bread that has no name
life uprooted from source
a tree worth more cut down than alive
concrete covers over mycelial lives
square lives that were once round, complete, whole
there is no mystery here
a new tower is erected
it holds electricity
it is a long cross that bears along the land
connecting up the disconnected
trading hands for gadgets
strung up like pretty lights
you hold it in your hands but it is not hands
smell the sulphur of stars
faint as smoke trails in the sky
you who were once gods on earth
but have traded in your freedom
for smoke and mirrors
your divinity crushed under concrete
all along you have had all the wealth you could possibly desire
the plants, the trees, the sky, the sun, the earth, the animals, re
familiarise yourself with your kindred, re discover what you left
behind
the one eternal poem that trines with every molecule in your body
you may no longer have wings but you have feet
Go. Return to you.