Poetry with audio | A Confession About Lipstick (Or 'Being Human with a Sense of Freedom')

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I wonder if there is a shelf of people,

And I use shelf in its natural sense,

When it's nestled beside words like

Ocean and perhaps, continental,

For whom things have also become –

Just almost fucking unbearable.

We might as well be on an actual shelf,

A load of books, objects maybe,

Like a single tabla placed as

An ornament in an IKEA KALLAX grid,

Those of us not being put to proper

Purpose, because we heard

An old and unforgettable message

While we were wandering, that

Leaves us a little detached from

The system, struggling for meaning.

I will state this directly, because poems…

I write this poem like a misplaced tabla.

I want to believe in the power of lipstick,

I want to be a sister who swears by it,

I will wear it, write about it, win

Admiring glances, whilst knowing

I have only felt utter indifference,

Indifference, the opposite of something vital,

Towards lipstick, played along, plonked

Sex there, inexplicably, because that

Is the story we are told, and it’s not bad.

But for those of us on the shelf, the continental

Or Ikea variety, our random wanderings

Into other stories, books, films, walks with people

From places where they don’t have lipstick anymore,

Because someone blew their city to shit,

Or robbed and raped their women,

Or took their grain and left them cold and

Roofless in the rain, our wanderings

Gave us proof of a story we remember from

Before we were born, a story that is urgent now.

Well, fine, except I am back in my little life,

Lipstick in my make-up bag, too scared

To name the lie as this or that, or to make vital

Somehow my naked lips, or find a place not

On display, not shelved and predicable,

But in amongst things, or you know, in trenches

Or on sandy beaches, not even fighting,

Just being human with a sense of freedom.