the last accordion men

| Sheree

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Closed to air plane traffic, cracks in the asphalt house dandelions and buttercups. Radio silence. Zero fumes. Thingeyri airport ceases to welcome travellers.
And yet drop by on a Tuesday night, and you will hear music. The last accordion men in the hanger play as if the traditional dances of Iceland are in full swing still. Grey haired, stooping, hoarse men of age put their arms and fingers and memories through their paces. Their beautiful youth moves through each moaning note. No music is written down. Unless a boy is amongst them this merry-go-round music will die with the last accordion man.

Over the roar of the engines
and the thumbing of the wheels
the wheezing heart of old switches

 

April – A Poem A Day

take me to the huts

| Sheree

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Two columns of huts.
Fish lynched on nails.
Thick flesh dries deep.

Perhaps he brings home a big catch. Much bigger than they could ever eat in a week, this family of five. Perhaps, he hangs up the surplus in his shed. Sliced in two lengthwise, nailed by the tail, or maybe where the head should be, flesh juicy to the sun, while he thinks what to do with so many fish and so few mouths.
Perhaps, in time he forgets about this problem. Only catching a whiff of fish sometimes when the wind blows in from the west. Remembering he needs to sort them out some way or another.
Perhaps, it is his firstborn who ventures in drawn by the smell as well as the cracking like ice sound. Now the fish is dry and hard as rock. Fallen from the nails they crack into many pieces like candy.
Perhaps, this child tastes a piece and falls in love in this moment with dried fish forever. There’s a sweetness and saltiness as it melts in his mouth. He’s dreaming of butter and garlic and smoky paprika and the sea.

 

April – A Poem A Day

Fishing

| Sheree

The worship of fish, for subsistence and profit, declines in response to the fishing quota system. Villages hugging the shoreline struggle with time and the departure of the young. At Thingeyri, out there in the fjords are three massive green nets holding artificially reared super fish. Trout. Not native to the area along with the multinational< company owning them.
One day, a hole is found in one net. How many fish escape, no one knows. How the fish survive in open water, if any, no one knows. If the escapees mate with the other fish, no one knows. It’s not the companies problem. It’s not an issue worth investigation. The hole is mended. The trout continue to be farmed to yield their optimum value. White white flesh to satisfy the foreign customer’s tastes.

red headscarf tied tight
bent and slow
she walks to harbour

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April – A Poem A Day

connection

| Sheree

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the snow is pristine
the water is cold
the silence is rippling

she does not come here to talk. she does not come here to appease. she is here to connect. to the Earth. to the Sea. to Herself. so she does not take kindly to the wide vacant stares that question her presence. she uses the solid rock of the mountains and the copper grasses peaking through the cracks as a special welcome just for her.

 

April – A Poem A Day

evening

| Sheree

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The sun moves west. You walk the road out of town to meet it. Your progress is slow as you keep stopping to hold the moment. To wonder as the pinky peach light. In awe you question this reality. As the water lights up from within a golden glow that draws you closer. Close enough to touch. Something stirs inside you, deep within that sings in tune with this present.

A lonely concrete hut
rusty roof taste
metallic mixed with fear

April – A Poem A Day

journey

| Sheree

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You jump on a white minibus. You wind your way through snow covered mountains. Sometimes hugging the shoreline. Other times squeezing through valleys between peaks. On your right are steep sheets of white. On your left white steel sheet reversed. Partly frozen fjords.
Some birds decide to walk on ice while others swim in the small circles of bubbling water. You have to respect ice.

Filigree within ice
beautiful and vulnerable
strong to the point of entry

April – A Poem A Day

Lighting Up Fear

| Sheree

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

This wisdom speaks right to my core and has me throwing my head back shouting an all mighty, “YES”. For the past few weeks, I have been gripped by fear about what I’m attempting to do here, as I develop Living Wild Studios into a creative business coming from the heart. I have questioned what right I have to imagine this, to action it, to even believe in it.
Who is going to be interested in working with me or buying my creations? How can creating stuff just for me to know myself deeper, be of any use to anyone else?
I know my fears stem from what happened to me nearly two years ago ( you can read all about it in rubedo). I know my fears have set up road blocks and excuses. Paralysed me. But I’ve been framing these fears around the idea of failure and never being good enough.
But this quote above has me thinking, that my fears, my reluctance to move forward with plans and creating new work could just as much be because of my light. I could be just as much frightened of my light as of my darkness. Of who I might become, becoming.
This idea is turning around in my gut, like clothes in a washing machine. An idea I hold it up to my light within and it matches. It sparks.
It is easier, more acceptable to play it small rather than take up more space with my glorious light. It is judged as being showy, distasteful and loving oneself, if you claims your full potential and shine.
Why and when did loving yourself, loving your own unique light in this world become such a bad thing? I think when society’s way of operating became one of competition rather than community, oppression instead of equality. When a few decided power would be better in the hands of the few, for the greater good you must understand.
I feel my power. I have a strong, bright light to shine in this world. A light that many have attempted to put out. But this little light of mine keeps on shining. And when it comes down to it, that’s all I want to do. Shine my light. If in this practice it serves others, then so be it. That does make my light shine brighter, so it can reach further, into the hearts of those who might have given up on themselves or those who never tasted freedom.
Naming our fears loosens their grip on our hearts. Identifying and acknowledging our fears starts to take away their power.
Here I am again, showing up, using my creativity to explore myself. If in the process of me exploring my fears has helped you to start naming and identifying your fears, then that’s a double whammy in my book. A result that is well worth showing up, practicing getting through my fears one step as a time for. Onward, with this little light of mine lighting the way.

Adrift in the Wilderness

| Sheree

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Surrounded by white upon white. Cold biting at all exposed flesh. Eyes search for some familiar sign even though this is my first visit to the Westfjords. Something, anything to anchor the self in place as I float unhinged from all that I know and all that I feel. Fear swims into this pause. Into this solitude. What happens if I don’t like what I find in this time and space alone? What if I don’t like who I am?

on one of lampposts
along the slushy street
a raven grates out kraaa

 

April – A Poem A Day

Untitled

| Sheree

Land of the Gods

Dry stone walls, covered in neon moss.
Soft hill voices leaking memories.
Brown churning water; a river of lost lives.
Yorkshire, the land of the gods.
The God was my father. A stowaway.
A mahogany West Indian.
Yellow palmed hands, large hands.
In the hot back room of our maisonette,
he tended tomato plants.
Quietly, he let me watch.
I watched his hands as they caressed
shiny leaves, squeezed and plucked
scarlet orbs of sweetness.
I thought. These hands can’t be the same
hands that slice into my legs when he’s vex
when I ask why
when I won’t be told.
These hands create life.

Nevermore( footnote After Edgar Allan Poe)

do I want to hear his last words
to see her last moments captured on film

nevermore
do I want to hear shots ring out
to see her body go limp under undue force

nevermore
do I want to hear murder was an accident
and then see the victim dragged through the mud and blood

nevermore
do I want to hear it was self-defense
and feel injustice gnaw my core

nevermore I say nevermore

should we stand by watching
a generation lost to the shadows

nevermore I say nevermore

should we allow history to be repeated
and rewritten

nevermore I say nevermore

black lives do matter

Bodies

The other day out walking, I see a crushed animal in the road.
At this level of blood, guts and fur, they all look the same.
I work out it was a rabbit just because its ears are still intact.
I wonder if I was run over by a heavy goods lorry if someone, anyone would recognise me?
Maybe it would be a process of elimination. Who lives near here? Who walks this path? Who belongs here?
Or maybe my black skin would be recognised, would betray me.

Racism is a wound that keeps opening. Again and again. Do I open it? Do you? I’m not sure I have a choice in showing you
my pain and suffering. As a representative, I carry such a huge weight. Expectations of a mountain to climb to reach you.

White Finger

I remember one time cutting my finger and leaving the plaster on too long that when I eventually took it off my finger was white. I run to mum shouting with about finally being white. Mum gets angry. Mum never gets angry. She tells me never to think like that. I’m sure what ‘that’ is.
She never explains. She never did.
It is much later that I come to understand the deep shadow of my heart. My deepest longing. My deepest fear. My internal racism.(85)

Childhood

I had a protected childhood. I’m not sure if that was out of love or ignorance. Poverty or pride. All the time growing up in Bradford, I didn’t know about the wild moors surrounded us. We didn’t have a car.

Knowledge opens doors. Shines a light into dark corners and valleys.

Most day going to school I would take a different route. This was freedom and solitude and wild. I walked spirals of pathways from my home to school and back again. Behind our flat was a school, a church, a hospital. I roamed around the buildings inside and out. No one noticed me. I was invisible.

I became visible when I got tits. Andrew Ryan, my first boyfriend, said we should keep us going out a secret. We met behind the garages so he could feel my tits. I let him because at least he wanted to be with me, even if no one else knew.

Thomas Biggins, another boyfriend, said on walking behind me into the Dene, that I had good child bearing hips. I took it as a compliment at the time. Now I’m thinking he was just spouting an age old attitudes towards black women as being hyper-sexual, promiscuous and breeding machines.

Footnote

All that remains are two chimneys.
Two, stark sandy columns that draw the eye.
Up close, they grow green, surrounded
by ancient oaks and horse chestnuts and spirits.
Cotton over water. Water over cotton.
Into gloomy valleys all over this fair land,
I carry a ship in my shoulders.

Alone in the Darkness

Walking down the dark hill. Darkness all around.
Raw wind rustling leaves. Think you sense someone behind. Instant fear that sends sharp waves of prickling fear up your back, up your head, under your hair. Nipping at your flesh, crawling around your skull and cheeks and jaw. It is your own shadow bobbing along behind you, beside you, ahead of you.

Sisterhood

For the past three years, I haven’t spoken to my sister. This stems from finding out via Facebook that she was a grandmother. I called her out about this, asking how come she had told me nothing?

What do you think, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for the last few months?

Apparently, my nephew isn’t taking responsibility for his son. I’m not to mention it. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

I apologised to my sister, if she felt that I hadn’t been there for her when she needed support. But I can’t agree with what’s happening. I wouldn’t be silenced.
Stop talking to me in your teacher voice, she said and hung up. We haven’t spoken since.

How I can I talk with, about and for my black sisters when I can’t even talk with my own sister?
I confide in white women. I share my experiences knowing that they haven’t experienced racism. There doesn’t seem to be any judgement when I share my pain. Whether I’m black enough. Or not.

What happens to black people, sometimes, is so intense that it’s frightening to share with each other. So many silences, things left unsaid. The language to explore our internal worlds and our vulnerabilities and our fears is missing.

Liminal Space

At the sea shore, I find myself again and again. Like a selkie in reverse, I strip off my skin and dive back into the sea, returning home. Becoming instinct and fluid and free.

Work in Progress