Hello my lovely readers
I've been feeling rather despondent today, after the UK election result, and part of me wondered whether I'd manage to write or post a poem. But then my godmother sent me a photo. It's of me crammed into the back of our hired wheelchair accessible vehicle, surrounded by all the things which have made, and are making, our trip out to SA possible. From ramps to manual wheelchairs to adapted pillows...but also more mundane luggage that everyone needs. It's a tight squeeze, and has required some creative thinking (just like the access situations it's all helping us navigate) but that gave me an idea for my rhyming response to the multitude of emotions I've been wading through.
By just existing, and being kind and creative in our thinking and engagement with the world, we can counter the sometimes overwhelming sense of hate with real and radical love.
It's not taken my sorrow away, but it has helped me process a bit, and hopefully it'll help anyone else who's struggling, especially my fellow disabled and LGBTQUIA+ siblings, and other marginalised groups.
And for the first time in a long while, I'll sign off with this:
Love and spoons (because I think we need them).
13th December 2019
As I've absorbed the shock of this result
and pondered what it might mean for the future,
my feelings have all been in a tumult;
anxious and scared about our wider culture.
Yet, though I know that such tough situations
like where we are right now are damn exhausting,
they also fire up imagination
and that's what we all use just in existing.
So, then, if we are forced here by the circumstance
and rhetoric which harms our sense of self
if we can reassert our own significance
it might be the best way to give them hell.
Perhaps, since their oppression's become tactical,
T'resist with joyful anger's really radical.
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