Sweet Lullabies – A Spoken Word Performance
I performed this week at the newly rebranded The Habitat (formerly Tuning Fork). There was a massive crowd, mostly new. And a lot of the new poets spilt their tales of pain, depression and heartbreak. My original plan was to do a dark,smoky piece or a breakup piece. I have been in such an emotionally bruised place, that I was in need of comfort. But just like writing, I realised performing is catharsis, not healing. So instead I created comfort with this piece. It’s an old one but I’ve revamped how I perform it. What do you think?
Here is a later version of the same poem:
This is for you
With the battle days and the war weeks
Learning to steal time away from
Family, friends, lovers and yourself
To put it away with the ammunition that day demands
You feel like insomnia.
Sleep.
Sleep the sleep of alarm clocks finally falling silent
The digital numbers count off
Your life in deliverables and goals
You are an eternal wait
For the next notification
The upcoming announcement
That long awaited bell
Sleep
Sleep the sleep of airport lounges wondering why don’t they just stop?
Chasing perfection
Plugging every pore
Put on face, keep up a face, Make a face
Let’s face it
Your life is a face
And it’s sagging at the thought of tomorrow
Airbrushed with promises
Sleep
Sleep the sleep of an eyepencil turning fullstop into a beauty spot
You there
Watching the world run
Luxuriating in the ache
Of muscles that have never seen a gym
Your life a backdrop to other people’s dramas
You keep it level for those who run
You sleep the sleep of clean cotton sheets dried stuck to the lines after a day of wash and sun
You lie with a book or many to forget
Your eyeballs grease their way down someone else’s stories
The skeleton in your closet turns into a boggart at night
Let these words seek rhymes and snores
Rhymes and snores
Let them echo under the same blanket
Your blanket
Sleep
Sleep the sleep of incomplete stories lying silently between pages till it’s time to turn
Maybe you only feel the prickles in that blanket
The bumpy lumps of pain in memory
If you are stretched out on a bed too big for one
Its dents matching the missing slices of your heart
As you learn to sleep alone again,
Remember, you always did
Sleep
Sleep the sleep of extinguished lamps long abandoned by their genies and finally at rest
There is a day of wonder to get to
And before that, this dark emptiness
Is yours
And yours alone
So sleep
Sleep the sleep of the night sky the same colour over everyone seeking refuge
You sleep.
