Silence Exile and Crumpets

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:12:51 GMT

1983

Hung in closed cupboards of my dozing mind
Or on their shelves, frocks shoes I used to wear.
No moth no broken heel no hems that tear
Nail catch dance step. I left them all behind
Months clean sheets bandaged bled out cut and sore
Doing my face in bed so I'd look well
For visitors. Whore face I'd paint to sell
Now reassuring friends. Ached to the core
Of who I'd been weak tired sad gross from bloat
Dance done I thought. And had not learned that charm
Would bring blonde cuties floating on my arm
I wish that i could send sick girl a note
Things work out fine. Wear black from head to toe.
It slims. And other things she'll need to know.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:11:39 GMT

LONDON

Night in a city that has licked its wounds
Two thousand years. And curls around its kits
Feeding and grooming heroes cowards wits
Lovers and killers. Always quiet sounds
As traffic purrs dim cat lights in the street.
Windows are dark in darkness curtains drawn
So many million. City I was born
In your warm heart my first breath to its beat
And hope to die according to your laws
Breathing your scented passioned poison air
Surrounds me chokes me black dust in my hair
I drink dark milk protected by your claws
Gog Magog Bran and dragons in the stone
You gave me all the words I write breathe own.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:11:08 GMT

ON LIGHT

Sentience basks where crystals just reflect.
Blind kittens stretch and mew into the sun
Soft pressure on their skin. There's straight lines run
From us out to the Oort. And intellect

Is only part. The dance skin bits and dust
Dance beams in shutter sudden open rooms
The hopeless loss choke premature dark tombs
We yearn for its eye stroke. It is a lust

Lash feather kiss on cheek is just its shade
First and last thing controlling metaphor
Exploded monobloc no thing before
Fire of all green, virtue's discerning blade

We do not know it yet it is our world
Round it and time mind lies in comfort curled

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:10:44 GMT

LORENZO ON LANIAKEIA

A feather or a skeleton of leaf
A spiderweb that blows in breeze when torn
Out on the edge of nothing we are born
Blue void's close neighbour. Fragment of belief

In our significance what's certain is elsewhere
Some Great Attractor pulls ethereal tide
Towards it mighty structures wave and glide
And interpenetrate
Stars blink grow dim or glare.

Irrelevant that great strain swell stress
The music of the spheres a greater choir
Than we could hear. And all of our desire
Achievements loves hatreds and sordid mess

Less than we know. And yet our purblind eyes
Only perceiver as it swells and dies.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:10:16 GMT

ASLEEP

Her breathing on that last day soft and slow
A little troubled moments then to calm
And back to sleep. I reached and stroked her arm.
Was that we both were there something she'd know

Or had that passed ? Eyes flicked from side to side
Hearing two voices. Did she recognize
That I was there? She looks up and then tries
To wake a little. On the train I cried.

And I had said goodbye and so had Jane.
It was we did not know last of her days
There is the last word that a person says
They tire. Drugs sleep and death the end of pain.
Last glimpse her sleeping face closed eyes her skin
Against the bedding pale white paper thin.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:09:33 GMT

BANNON

To the ninth ditch they came. It smelled of blood
Bile feces brain smashed bone poured on the ground
And on they trudged in an eternal round
Effluents dripping into stinkclogged mud

Who stirred up strife loved war for its own sake
Turned love of god into a butcher's whore.
Profit from devil's paintbrush: it's a chore
To kill so many. Eyes cracked black opaque

Blind to their dearest enemy they mend
Their wounds nerve burn flesh knit and stretch of skin
To wholeness no remission of their sin
A demon with a great axe at the end

Halves them up, down. Tongueless they scream, 'I lied.
Spat poison. Kin church city and republic died.'

Lied sold betrayed his home his friend his kin
His city. And was taken judged and damned
Deep chillburned in eternal ice was rammed
A demon acts his part although the skin

Is seared and cracked from that corroding flame
And does not even bother with deceit
A whore fled screaming from the cloven feet
In rut protruded he pigsquealed and came

The unconvincing lies of demon scorn
Find fools enough. His lips seared from the cold
Whisper the feather reasons why he sold
Himself...and curse the day that he was born.

So many damned he taught to rape kill hate
Black crushing ice bears down with all their weight.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:09:00 GMT

AMERICA

Dance in the dark, green shimmer, outstretched leg
Inspiring muse yet moll the toe tap beat
Ragtime and rivets, burning torch to greet
Strangers, dear tawdry land I will not beg

That you fulfil your promises, our dreams.
The best of hopes most nightmare of despairs
Shining and stained a fantasy of home
Pancakes and bacon mirrorshading chrome
Striped zootest suits that anybody wears

By of and for yet choking on bloodgold
I could not breathe there where was near first free
Twirled in your air you beat charmed ravished me.
I heard the stories that your victims told

And yet your better angel at your ear
To save, while it's your demons we all fear.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:08:00 GMT

ON KINSHIP PROBLEMS IN THE BACCHAE

The gods so much our kin and so unkind
Our snobbish cousins worse than we can dream
Bitch at them even slightly we blaspheme
And then are torn to bits or wake up blind.
They rape us father us. Don’t criticise
Your greatgrandchildren will meet awful fates
Meet unknown mothers on the worst of dates
Have siblingchildren cause plague pluck out eyes.
Not just the Greeks. Job lost his sons and herd
Over some stupid bet. And crucified
To pay for fruit God's son poor Jesus died.
Sure fine, in the beginning was the Word,
Abstract incomprehensible and wholly writ.
God that is not our flesh less of a shit.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:07:14 GMT

THE MYSTERIOUS PEDLAR

Mum's cousin Jean had cheekbones like sharp knives,
And eyes dark passion brown as the old song.
We often get these speculations wrong
But bits of us get passed down through their lives
The ancestors of whom we hardly heard.
He was a pedlar who got sick and died
My great great grandma kneeling at his side
Who nursed him. And we don't know what occurred.
Nose aquiline and cheekbones in my blood
Irish potato face grandfather's height
My aunt's imagination these things might
Explain me. We aren't made of sun-baked mud
But generations handed flesh and bone
Remembered family and those unknown.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:06:48 GMT

FOR MIKE

We're made from ancestors. Also from friends.
Jokes. Hugs. Rebukes. The books they made us read.
They made us weep. Sometimes they made us bleed.
Violent desires have sometimes violent ends
Or wither. Friendship twines about the heart
A subtle bindweed. Can't eradicate
Mostly you don't remember place or date
Acquaintance changes and new friendshps start
Each way the fondness never quite the same
Balance of power shifts and then moves around
Differences gentle sometimes quite profound
That make us bless curse half-forget their name
Still written on our bones. A thing we find
Most when they're dead and we are left behind.

Technically Mike Dickinson was my oldest friend because apparently we had play dates when we were very tiny.

We actually met in Leeds in the 70s when he was running, part-time, the sf shelves in the local Left bookstore, and stayed in touch when I moved to London. He dragged me into SF fandom by getting me to bring the Leeds group food supplies at the 75 Heathrow Eastercon. When he was doing fanzines and editing Vector, he chivvied me into writing my first reviews. As one of the organisers of various Yorcons, he helped create a space where I felt safe in fandom post-transition and where Geoff Ryman and I had our first LGBT fandom party. And it's through him and Jackie Gresham indirectly that I met my partner. He was a significant reader for Gollancz.

He was a beefy, funny, well-read, folk-singing...He was a talented teacher and a good man.

We saw less of each other in recent years. He and Jackie had elder care responsibilities and his health declined. He died after a short illness on Friday, suddenly, in his sleep.

I have missed him and always will.

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Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:06:04 GMT

LOVE ONE ANOTHER AND DIE

And in the meantime comfort all your friends
Who weep and fear and bleed. And know we may
Each dawn have that and no more of a day
Than dawn. Perhaps life, world in moments ends.

Each second then in love fierce joy and rage
Be worthy of the dawn your friend your self
Hope is a broken toy placed on high shelf
For future healing. When you turn a page

No corner turned and leave the margin blank
You read. You learn. You finish. Then the book
Is what it was. There is no second look.
It is the moment friend the dawn you thank.

Hopeless you know this is your paradise
Nature word love reflected in friends' eyes

ROMANITAS
Traitors were thrown from the Tarpeian Rock.
And parricides were drowned sewn in a sack
With ape snake cock. In deepest dungeon black
State enemies were strangled. It's a shock

To know how seriously they took such things.
Romans who'd kill such men not shed their blood
Whose death was needed for the public good.
Until the death that down the ages rings.

He lay head covered on the Senate floor.
Red stain white marble utterly pollutes
Republic done. Tall men in polished boots
Hail death their friend. Your face is pounded raw

Centuries long by treason boots and lies.
At least we know the day that freedom dies.

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IMPORTANT NEWS

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:22:55 GMT

For Immediate Release
by Deborah Grabien on Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 4:43am

Plus One Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of Roz Kaveney's dark fantasy tetralogy RHAPSODY OF BLOOD. The first volume, RITUALS, is scheduled for release in July 2012.

Roz Kaveney is well-known in the sf and fantasy field as a critic and reviewer; her books on television and film (READING THE VAMPIRE SLAYER; TEEN DREAMS; SUPERHEROES!) have been widely acclaimed. Along with Neil Gaiman, Mary Gentle and Alex Stewart, Roz was also part of the Midnight Rose Collective, producing and contributing to the Shared World anthologies TEMPS, THE WEERDE and VILLAINS. Most of Roz's short fiction has been listed in Recommended Reading in Best of the Year anthologies.

She is also a respected poet and translator, a columnist and reviewer on national newspapers, and an activist in the fields of free speech, civil liberties and trans rights.

---

RHAPSODY OF BLOOD

What if all mythologies were true?

What if you could become a god by killing people? And if someone were the Huntress that killed such gods?

What if there were elves and vampires and dryads and enchantresses and gods and demons? And you had to live in their world?

RHAPSODY OF BLOOD is a story about the death of people, cities and worlds. And dangerously witty women.

Coming July 2012

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That time of the year again

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:24:26 GMT

As always, I am covering the London Lesbian and Gay film festival for the TLS and a couple of things I saw won't be here for a while because they will have to wait until they actually appear in the paper - so all I will say about Greg Araki's Kaboom! and the adaptation of Sarah Water's The Night Watch i that they are very good. I won't do tonight's film Four-faced liar until tomorrow: I have already seen it once but was not especially in the mood for it at the time so want to consider my position a bit more.

Because of cuts, there are fewer films this year, and spread over a week rather than a fortnight; also, they've rationed the press tickets a bit which means that there is plenty I haven't been able to see since far too broke to actually buy any tickets. On the other hand, that's made for a rather less frenetic schedule and for getting more time to simply hang out with various friends like ephemerita and natalie_456 which has all been very pleasant and sometimes inspiring. But mostly, I've watched films.

Break My Fall
A very London film this one - two failed musicians make a terminal mess of their relationship in a spiral of jealousy and infidelity and intoxication. A lot of my friends liked this more than I did and much of my sense of why I didn't entirely get on with it has to do with the extent to which it reminded me of far too many people I used to hang out with in the days when alcohol and dope made them more tolerable at the time than I would find them now. Sometimes movies are real enough to be consoling - this was real enough to be irritating- but it was certainly real and deserves credit for that. It's a solid piece of work, made on almost no budget, and my irritation is all about me and hardly at all about the film.

A propos though, I had a conversation with people in the foyer and we were trying to decide what the collective noun for lesbians was. I favoured 'crescendo' which has its points, but Ephemerita went with 'drama' which seemed to have the consensus of the meeting.

Heartbeats Last year, Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother was one of the highlights of my festival. His second feature, which he wrote, stars in and directed, for the second time, is not quite as amazing, but is very funny and poignant in its own way. A gay man and his best woman friend both fall for the same air-headed blond man and compete frenetically for his attention to a point that threatens their friendship and humiliates them both; he leaves and returns, and their good intentions of entirely despising him disappear in moments.

What I particularly liked about this was its sense that there is nothing especially sad or futile about the central relationship; Marie and Francis are clearly better off with each other than they would be with almost anyone else in their lives, but their relationship happens to be about stylishness and banter rather than about romance or sex. And good for them, I say.

Lost in the Crowd Suzi Graff's excellent documentary about young transwomen and others on the streets of New York has little in it that is new and that matters hardly at all. A lot of parents throw their children away rather than cope with who they are; abandoned teenagers turn to whoring and theft and take a lot of drugs. Some of them survive and prosper, but most don't; a high proportion of the people Graf interviewed were dead or disappeared by the time she finished the film.

LitC is wonderfully sad - Graff got interesting people to talk to her and many of their lives came to nothing except the fragments here. It is a campaigning angry film, but also a stunning memorial.

Gigola Directed and scripted by Laure Charpentier from her own novel about her early life, Gigola is an at once sardonic and sentimental account of the lost world of 'garconnes' dandy butches who lived on the margins of the criminal world. The protagonist is at once a whore for rich women and the pimp for a string of whores, some of whom she has brought into her orbit and trained to be more stylish. I liked the cheerful amorality, the sense of period and the glossiness; I was a bit less impressed by the psychologising - Gigola has been damaged by the older teacher who seduced her and cannot love, even when she sets out to have a child by a gangster friend.

Break the Habit What do you say about a gorgeous little farce except that it was gorgeous fun? A coke addict, the woman who reluctantly and distantly loves her, and a stunning amoral Hispanic woman have a body to dispose of and a large sum of money to steal. Part of the joy of it is that I saw a lot of what was coming and enjoyed the sense of anticipation...

And I get to The Owls and Hooters and realize that I need to leave the house and have more to say about them than I have time for. So, another post about them and tonight's film in due course.

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