I went to friends birthday celebrations the other day and she asked us all to share something like a song or a poem, so i pulled out a couple of these to read. I guess it reminded me that it is good to share these things...

I wrote these, amongst others, leading up to the elephant show earlier this year. One of them was used for the show, some lines stolen from the end of it as the title and others as the byline for the show, it was printed in full in the catalog.



Part 1

She does not like this place
She knows it isn’t good
there is something wrong
she has known it for ages
Maybe she is sick
Maybe she is dying

She does not like this place
She knows there are other better places
She’s been there before
She can’t see them now though,
Because of all this mist
So maybe she is wrong
Maybe there is only mist

She does not like this place
She is sunk in smelly, thick goo
It covers almost all of her
Her skin is suffocating
Her nose is clogged with it
Her mind is submerged in it

She does not like this place
She thinks she can hear others
Ones who are somewhere else
But you can’t be sure of these things
Can’t trust your senses
Maybe it is all in your head

She does not like this place…
But at least she knows where she is
She is here, in the mud
With clogged skin and bad smells
Uncomfortable, but predictable; safe

‘I do not like this place’
she thinks to herself,
at last it is put in words.
Once she thought that
she was able to think this:
‘Then, maybe…
Maybe I should move’



Part 2

She steps tentatively down a strangely familiar path
From the edges of her eye she can see a glittering
Behind her a steaming bog, its mud stuck to her skin

She steps carefully through a mess of tangled vines
From the back of her nose she can smell a new thing
The stinking mud cracks, shrinks, itches on her skin

She walks on distracted by sounds almost unheard
Steps out onto sand, into sun and shivers in its heat
she shudders and dusty scabs of muck crumble away

She walks to that glittering, heaving mass of water
Tastes the sweet salt in the air, makes up her mind
The salt spray sticks to her skin, merges with mud

She struggles through waves, lifted, dragged backwards
Still she pushes forward til she is beyond their violence
Skin scoured almost clean by sandy, churned up water

Her legs not touching earth, but treading in vastness
The weight of her self has been taken up and carried
The last of the mud melts and is gently washed away

Now she remembers