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solve it, not try and control it,
    But fix it so subtle that no one will notice.
     
    Be all that you are, all woman all soft.
    All man. All soft. All flesh. All bone. All organ.
    I find you more than yourself. I hear you talk to yourself in the night-time.
    But don’t worry, I won’t say a word to your friends.
     
    Your voice. Your tears. Your cries. Your panic.
    You are more man when you break and weep.
    When you shake and sleep,
    Body wrapped around your pillow
    Safer than a body that bites back.
    Your billowing shirt as you sprint through the dirt. Night cap.
    One for the road. But the road never loved you.
    I love you. I love what you hate in yourself.
    It’s perfect.
    Let it come out.
     
    The best boys would feel like a lady in your arms.
    The best girls would fuck like a man, given half the chance.
    The good ones are good ones because they are whole ones.
    We’re at our best when we mean it.
    We all start part of a much bigger notion.
    And lock ourselves down like we don’t have a say.
    We come from man and woman combined
    And we’ll carry those parts till we see our last day.
    Hear me. Let it be known.
     
    Your muscles are mine, let’s stretch.
    Dawn by the bins. We giggle and wretch –
    The dawn’s on your skin. You’re shivering, wet.
    You’ll cry from your pores if not from your eyes.
    Your blood’s the same colour as mine.
     
    What a man ever was is enough. It’s enough.
    Stop trying. Give everything up. No shame here.
     
    No woman’s too woman to stand tall and strong.
    No man’s too man to want loving. Need guidance.
    All hearts shrink before violence.
    All fists clench for their friends.
    We’re from here.
    We carry it.
    Everything that ever went wrong here.
    Every single body that gave in.
    Caved in.
    Break through the boards in the windows.
    Find a man thinner than string.
    Blinking.
    Trying to keep everything in.
     
    Foul smell of the things that we do to escape
    There is no glamour in this. No rock and roll.
    This is just endings. This is just grief.
    And you’ve got a soul worth living for.
    I’m blocking blows for you. But I can’t protect you.
    I’m too slow for you.
    I’m too alive to be near all this death.
    I love you. I will not walk off.
    But each time my heart falls out of my chest
    And sits there, knees pulled up to its chest
    It strikes me that there’s hardly anything left.
     
    For all of the things that we learnt in this city.
    For all of the things that it taught.
    You are more than the last pair of trainers you bought.
    Never just one thing.
    We’re all things.
    But all things fall short.
     
    A man is a man when he clings to his friends.
    A woman’s a woman when she holds it down.
    A man is a man who takes up her cauldron.
    A woman’s a woman who takes up his crown.
    And wears it for all the right reasons.
    And stirs it for all the right reasons.
    Humans.
    Born with the bodies that need to release.
    Find me inside you.
    Let me be all that I am.
    Tiresias. Wringing my hands.
    Tiresias. Singing the hymns of the land.

Blind Profit
     
     
     
    T IRESIAS : Where’s the glory, killing the dead twice over?
     
    – Sophocles, Antigone

The prophet Tiresias
    So after all that.
    Three lifetimes behind you,
    And just at the moment you’ve found some peace,
    You are dragged before the gods,
    No mention of the lives you’ve lived.
    The things you’ve learned to cultivate, like
    Living in the moment.
     
    You’d be angry if you weren’t so resigned
    To letting nothing take you by surprise any longer.
     
    That first dark journey.
    Begging your feet to carry you somewhere you might recognise the smell of.
    The whole world spinning within you.
    A darkness. You can’t get a breath.
    The howling of Hera still sharp in your ears
    The feeling of godsized palms on your forehead,
    The sudden nausea that trampled your body.
     
    When your eyes began to fog, it was just spots of dark at first,
    Expanding out.
    Until nothing. Straining to see round the edge of the smudge,