The words behind the images.

Eternity at the golden tips of jewelweeds like

Little cups of honey-spilled sunlight over these fields

The yellow arms of the dry wind, bow the wheat for the sickle,

We’ve drawn these maps in blisters, bodies thin, bodies fickle

Unholy labour hallows holy weeds, so

summer takes its tithe in sweat and seeds

Bodies on their knees

Bodies bleed

Bodies crawl under their shadows to plant jewelweeds

Let me say this with an empty mouth:

We have long been here

Under a sun that grows meaner by the year

And the double summers we’ve lived, sisters -

We’ve carried them twice,

the work, the harvest, the heat,

the child, the water, the field,

swollen, bearing, burdened, round,

full, post-partum, bleeding, bound.

But each year the well lowers its dark head,

Like a stillborn still in his mother’s hot bed,

each year the fields give less of themselves,

and the young begin to look beyond the hills

for a kinder sun that does not ask so much of them.

each year the mean sun empties our homes,

each year the sea swallows hearts, lungs, stories and bones.

and is it worth it, sea landlord, our sacrifice

when even the mournings are attended twice

when lives are charged at border price

And mothers pay it thrice?

Bread is priced at the cracked mouth of the soil

With next year’s hunger already sleeping under unfed earth,

But the children run with their backs turned

to the iron mouths that call for them,

they laugh, they race barefoot over the hot road,

paper boats sent down to gutters, kites flown bravely through the smoky skies,

Chase the sirens home, catch the moths beneath white light,

Cook mud pies from the drought’s last water, build castles of rubble,

crowns of daisy chains

ordained on asphalt cracks named after rivers,

King of the Rio Grande,

Queen Indus Delta,

Princess Suriname

It’s a coronation of outgrowth,

We’ll never be so beautiful again,

We’ll never run so freely,

Just a few more moments to sunset,

Heavy is the head,

Your highness…

It grew between the soot and rain,

like between the eye and the brow,

of a brick wall.

Grey-green leaves like alien tongues;

in-grown delicacies trembling against a collapsing sky

By day, she received only half a share of light

as the tall redbrick rubble eclipsed the sun’s early rising,

like an anxious hand over your tired eyes when you haven’t left the dark in too long

The olive tree, as one would without sun,

grew crooked,

stretching itself sideways into the narrow throat of brightness,

through which its song

struggled upward.

By sunset, the light found its way between broken-mouthed windows,

casting a gold so dense upon her leaves that

it seemed to imprint faint tattoos from another life

Her branches spread over the reddened face of rupture,

like a curiosity,

an affectation

In the yard of this former Victorian terrace in Tower Hamlets with carved up rooms into narrow stone wombs, she was neither ornamental nor wild, but greened up like an alien from there, planted here.

The happiest olive tree in London.

“Roots dig deeper than water, in the underearth, they reach blood"

I thought if the olive tree had, unlike me,

stretched her roots far enough to brush against the root underearth communion,

if she had learnt of the olive tree that once shadowed my own yard, back home.

‘I am possibly extracted from her rib’ - I thought,

and made crowns of oxeye wild daisies, one for myself,

one for her - like two brides garlanded for the same earth-altar.

‘I am hers’ - I thought, and never imagined we’d be pulled apart.

Now, through the hotel’s window - a rib cut from the wall, no wider than a wound,

I wonder if the olive tree in front of me knows the secrets of my past life.

I wonder if it can explain to my olive tree,

I never meant to leave.

Of travels past and

Love that stayed

Of hatred locked in jars, and

Pasts woven in socks, and

Hunger shoved under our beds,

We always had jam for our bread

Always had stories to tell

Truth under fingernails

Dreams under eyelids

And a longing fro home, between the kidney and the lung

We are the children who never returned,

Our bodies we give back to the earth

To fall,

Face down on a field

with dancing fumes of poppies

on your still face and unbruised cheeks

To sleep

and swim in psychedelic seas of dreams

where fresh days do not cease

and no one’s hands worry the skirts tangled at your thighs.

To wonder

about hands and

Stomping feet

To wake

On autumn leaves

I should not

Speak, but the hyacinth boys, they were

climbing my fig tree and

jostling the fruits from their stems;

my bruised-dark figs, swollen and unsplit

plopped to the ground at my feet,

and attracted

flies to the bloody marmalade feast

their parents paid the damage in fake money

fig leaf money

We have no patience left for books, for words —
for syllables interlocked
the tragic reality of existence; abandonement, absence.

I sit in one of the benches,

In front of the park gate,

the old railings rusted,

the yellowed mist aged and clotted,

wrapped around the scent of dried flowers —

waiting for me.

We are briefly beautiful,

And the road is long,

We have a long way to go and so -

Keep these three lavender sachets in your pockets if you ever smell concern,

Put them close to your rosy cheeks, on the garden of your face and then,

Remember, what saved you last time will save you again,

A banner of peace, a white flag,
transforms into a dove
and pecks aggressively at the grey sky, forcing it to make way.

Make way for peace,

Follow the golden stag into the forest,

Do not aim, do not shoot,

You cannot own whatever land you land on,

Make way toward me.
Come here again.

Wet sand clung to the soles of my feet,

and my elbows were scorched among thorns, rubbing raw.

Sink your knife into me, my people.
Let all the tar empty itself into me,
and let us be beautiful
as we once were.

In the distance, roads stretch out —
germophobic toward endings, because endings are always contaminated.
We have been stopped in front of a white brick wall,
and when they demolish it — and they will —
we will have to sprint again.
Until then, we must decide where we are heading.

We, following time, in vain.
We are still here.

Still here — this sun rises and sets; God opens and closes His celestial eyelid, guarding the fragments of light with the greatest arrogance.

Still here — new flowers bloom from broken branches; we winter through with our skins reddened like sulphur — yes, from the cold — and from the vapouring breaths that mist these difficult hours and barren seasons, we birth our alibis.

Still here — when oil, coal, and gas wheeze like the three lungs of Typhon, beneath the earth, and the state, with both hands around her throat, strangles her year after year with the lustful force of the conqueror; they have drained the torn belly of the world, and now we tremble from the cold they themselves brought upon us. And it’s funny because the state doesn’t exist.

Still here — when the European calendar was vandalised by the political mourning of Ukraine; and we commercially struggle with a politics that wants to learn to grieve

Still here — when Azrael landed in the Mediterranean to stroke the hands of the Sudanese, trapped by the sea near Tobruk.

Still here — when the silence of the Taliban challenged the philosophy of light; one candle alone could not defeat all darkness, and the silence of mutilation could not cut through our noisy, artificial fog.

Still here — in Delhi, in Lahore, beneath the deceptive face of smog, a sudden ghostly echo, the roll call of greed’s council: the brick kiln, the trucks, the burning fields, the factory, the minister, the market — for whom do the bells toll, or is it the stern winter air itself that groans?

Still here — candles for yet another genocide; we abandoned the Armenians, forgot the Cambodians, we do not speak of Rwanda. Terrified of love, we exiled, killed and cried - Some were Roma, some were Sinti, some were Jewish, some were gay, some were family, some were different — but we are all different. We are them and they are us, you are me and I am you, we forget that, we forget as our cowardly sights seek Kosovo, Srebrenica, Bosnia; we scream inside our contracted skulls for the genocides of Darfur, the Yazidis, the Herero and Nama, and we weep for Gaza — my hands held over the frightened body of the flame; the cold wind of reconciliation softens the burn, and I remember the friends who wanted to change the world, walking between empty chairs and empty tables — I am the wretched one, duke of forgetting.

Still here — in the obesity of our modern grief: we eat pain, vomit it, tear it out surgically, resculpt it; and the hands of this master are merciless, anorexically inspired by acidic sharpening. Again we become the very thing we wanted to cut away with a scalpel: bodies castrated by the algorithm, starved by excess, operated on by life, aborted by the self.

Still here — when Cain and Abel embraced and bloodied one another.

Still here — when God gifted light to the world and Prometheus taught it to save electricity.

Still here — when train tickets to my funeral cost too much, and not enough friends could come.

Still here, my friend — when the pandemic orphaned so many of us; fear adopted us, a mother with virological obsessions who prevented death, illness, noises, lights, the sun, iodine, and life.

Still here, comrade — when inflammation swallowed the stones of our graves, and the old ones still pass the prayer beads between their fingers, even though we were still here when God was taken from them, murdered and burned before them; and now, from bead to bead, we only accumulate time — our new God, processed out of hours, days, lives.

Still here, fellow travellers — above the heads of the peoples of devils, our gigantic shadow stretches, together with our self-injected delirium; kings of the silent hours before dawn. Were they? Were we? Were we those people? Or has time — God — erased everything?

Still here, brother — in spite of this world burning inside our eyes, let us stay awake here until morning. Pain will set the date for death, beautiful so… but it seems God has decided that tonight, we are immortal.

We were young and troubled when skyscrapers colonised our sky,
the generation raised beneath a conquerable heaven.
The children who did not grow up — that is us.
The children of the island of dreams — that is us.

But then I am young again.

My brother teaches me to smoke.
I am not good at lying to Mum.
I do not understand taxes at all.
I know so much about winter birds.
It is so cold outside, but warm beneath your oversized jacket.
I wake up earlier just to see you walk to school.

That is all we have for now,
before we are unready,
before there are things to do.

We are flying now.
We are jumping.
We are ready for everything.

In your eyes I am a knight;
my silver sword giving off the light of my youthful madness.

I set off on a stolen motorbike,
and the skyscrapers crowd my path
Like an echo chamber, to sing my song.

There is no stopping me.

I am coming home.
I am coming to you.

Now let me tell you this…

I have seen the first light of life gather on the wet pavements of my hometown,

Like a little crispy March moon, on the corner of the muse’s mouth

I have kissed the soft hands of my mother, indifferent and merciful to the dishonesty of the decade, like blossom on barren land

I have seen windows open like exhaled lungs after a season of sickness, and even this virological people have smiled at the newborn sun

I have seen laundry hung from balconies like flags of anarchist excitement, the shaken rugs like maps of ancient tales,

I have seen pigeons flash silver under bridges like meteor showers,

I have seen the first green insist through ash.

Rivers swollen proud with spring, carrying branches, petals, children’s shoes, and prayers,

Rainwater caught in buckets, barrels, cracked bowls, open palms.

Snowmelt becoming river, becoming field, becoming bread.

Water arriving too late, too much, cursed at, prayed for, played in, blessed with.

I have seen women wash herbs and walked through mint-odoured streets

I have seen almond trees make pink clouds over dry hills,
I have seen jasmine climb her walls, poppies have burnt our fields red, and lavender trembled under bees.

I have seen white garlic shine white in damp woods, fig leaves unfold like hands, grapevines stretch their fickle bones, olives flower, they do, and weeds are relentlessly beautiful,

Seam by seam swallows have stitched the air, I have seen it.

The frogs have sung, lambs have cried and cats have called from the rooftops under the firecrackered night sky, I have heard it.

Horses have rolled in mud indifferent to their kings’ clean clothes, on the porches of life-enlarging cafes dogs have slept, butterflies have opened themselves like stained-glass windows and bats have bursted out at dusk while children still played, I was there.

I have tasted warm homemade bread split open, steam rising like a small ghost

I have smelled coriander, dill, parsley, basil, mint, lemon peel, roasted pepper,

I have flowered pomegranates open like books of red psalms

A neighbour brings me soup in a jar, sometimes

My grandmother cuts oranges for me

We pour dark coffee and we talk, and laugh and weep,

I have sat down for iftar,

Nowruz tables shining with green shoots, mirrors, eggs, candles, apples, coins.

Holi colours thrown on my joyshocked expression,

Easter bread braided, sugared, carried, blessed, eaten,

Songkran water on my hair, my hands, my eyes.

I have seen dabke lines stamp the earth in haikus of footsteps

I have seen the bhangra leap like the irrefutable fate of love, life, dance,

I have seen the flamenco hands opened like knives and flowers

I have seen samba melt away grief,

Capoeira in eminent flight, powwow in colour, bells, beads, feathers, memories,

Jingle dresses like rain on metal,

I have heard Sámi joik carry a person, a place, an animal, our story,

Inuits have breathed their summon into the fading horizons where the earth meets the sky and they dance until they dissolve into each other.

I have seen markets in Accra, Lagos, Addis, Nairobi, Dakar, Cairo, Marrakesh, Cape Town, alive with tomatoes, cloth, fish, shoes, radios, mangoes, onions, voices.

Ethiopian coffee ceremonies like fragmented time, Moroccan courtyards tiled like mathematical bloom, Nigerian feasts of colour, Sudanese tea poured red and sweet, Kenyan runners through morning rain like arrows.

I have seen marigolds, corn, sugar, salt, sea, drums, saints, footballs, murals.

Andean textiles brighter than snow, Amazon rivers carrying canoes, fish, rain, us,

Caribbean houses painted turquoise, yellow, coral, green.

Mothers have split between their braided hair like split fruit; mango, papaya, guava.

I have seen students kiss under imperial arches and women feed pigeons beside statues of men who would find them loud,

I have seen Balkan mountains blue with evening and villages smelling of woodsmoke and bread. Mediterranean fishing nets dry in the sun beside cruise ships, Polish forests dressed in mushrooms, ghosts, children, soldiers, deer, the Atlantic throwing white fists against the cliffs of Clare, Irish hills folding into each other like green nymph hair, London insomniac, formidable, in love.

I have held life’s face in my hands, I have waltzed madly with death,

I have lived in a thousand beautiful homes, I have waved at people, I have shared food and love, babies have been handed to me to hold, I have spoken to men who survived war, men who started war, men who love it, men who hate it. I have shared a biscuit with a squirrel, and an umbrella with a stranger. I have flown kites and drawn on walls, I have even tried to start a revolution, I have lived a thousand wonderful things, but -