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anthony anaxagorou - this is not a poem lyrics

this is not a poem, and i am not a poet

when i am unable of finding a better way to say that in 2012, 48 people in great britain were k!lled by guns and 120 women k!lled by the hands of their beloved partners

i am not a poet, when i can’t find a more beautiful way to say that no nation in the world imprisons as many members of its population as america does, that more black men in the us are incarcerated today than what they were during the peak of south africa’s apartheid

no, i am not a poet. when i can’t find clever words to ill+strate the fact that before 2008, nelson mandela had been on americas most wanted list of most dangerous terrorists for over 60 years, that cameron is a liar, that cameron was a key member of the foundation of conservative students in ’89 that hoped to hang mandela

forgive me, because today, i am not a poet, and this is not a poem
when eloquent words fail me and i can’t capture the struggle of the poor through the metaphysics of language. that by the time margaret thatcher left office in 1990, the annual incomes of the richest 0.01% of british society had climbed to 70 times the national mean. and i don’t know how i feel about the fact that key policy members, and leading the civil servants have never had a job outside of their politics, the same men who set the minimum wage, with only 4% ever having worked in manual trades of which 68% went to private schools, that is why this is not a poem, and i am not a poet

because everything i’ve ever written suffers the weight of its own futility, when another mother comes to a workshop with a fresh black eye, when there’s another empty seat in the place where james sat in last week, and when i ask the group where he is, their young eyes open wet, as if his coffin in that moment was being lowered into them. but you see, i can understand all this, when they cut funding to schemes that are aimed at inspiring people previously inspired by crime, and the insufferable dross of mainstream culture. private prison systems and prisons for profit, when young women are given more options than just be someones girl, be someones mother, be someones silence, but you see, i’ve done it again, i’ve crossed themes, i’ve not followed traditional poetic form and so, i am a terrible poet

because how do i speak words in prison and then tell a young black person that they were once kings and queens of lands whose names fall dead on their tongue. how do i return their history? how do i mention the marriott excavation, cheikh anta diop and the skin cell sample in near 300 mummies? how do i show them pictures of skyscr+pers before skyscr+pers even existed?

how do i do all this, and then have them ask me what part of the world i am from, why i don’t write poetry about 1974, eoka, and kissinger, until i tell them that i am not a poet, and nothing i can write will help this man dismantle this idea of race that we’ve become so attached to

nothing i can write will include the importance of mitochondrial dna, and the 99.99% of us that is identical. that a bmp member most probably has more asian and arab in him than the mosque that they conspire to blow up? that immigration isn’t a choice, that people don’t come to uk for great weather, hospitality, and quality of life? how do i explain all this, and still retain artistic merit?

i spent days looking for a metaphor to put the palestinian nakba in, until i found a home that once looked beautiful and prim, then opened the door and found it’s contents ransacked, its family massacred, and its garden on fire. from that day, i abandoned any hope of metaphor, and accepted that i could not write poetry about this, that everything i tried to imagine had already slit its own stomach, like the afternoon i spent with a women who had been raped, and i asked her to capture it in verse. i asked her to use simile, and alliteration, until she looked at me and said i don’t know what those things mean but i can tell you in a few simple words what it feels like to live with the satan of your own heart

poetry isn’t for me. it’s for people who can use words like ‘odoriferous’, while putting red wine to the lips of their white skin and implore the technical endeavor of a poem, its wit, its ingenuity its metre and form, not its helping, not the ambulant siren which screeches from the height of its title. that is why this is not a poem, and i am not a poet

because i cried read douglas dunne, and arun kolatkar, borges and neruda. i cried when i went looking for female poets and found few, i cried when i asked how many black poets penguin had ever published and was told two. when my english teacher told me that language wasn’t my strength, that my anger crushed my intelligence, that i should think about going and learning a trade

and i cried then too, when i spoke to a group of young men about what it means to be a man, how we inherit this cancerous culture, how we inherit misogyny, objectification and the glory of violence, whilst silently suppressing the sensual
these are all the hardest things to talk about, to write about, and to live with. that is why i keep saying that i am not a poet, and this is not a poem. because all of the above digress and ignore the rules set by the establishment, but all that doesn’t matter because it’s done now, you’ve come this far in listening

endings are always the hardest things to write because the author knows that that’s the last impression the reader will be left with. so i chose the following wisely; we are made up of all the things that broke us just to keep us alive

maybe i could have said just that. but i didn’t, because like i said, this is not a poem, and i am not a poet

- anthony anaxagorou lyrics

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