Ahoy!

A poem written while participating in the Pervasive Media Studio’s Alternative Technologies: A Just Transition workshop series, 2024.

We started with each other, hoping that our relationships could hold us as everything else began to fall apart. 

And then our relationships began to fall apart, and we realised that everything was relationship 

That falling apart had to happen to us + ours + our own if it was going to work, or play, or be. 

So then we started with ourselves, with the memories of relationship held in bodies that held relationships - 

containers of breath + water, energy + matter

everywhere relationships 

rupturing, corrupting one another in order to survive. The myth of purity 

collapsed all around us and within us and within me and I let it fall, and I hissed jealously at everyone anyone still in thrall of this terrible hideous myth that had spawned evil upon evil again + again + again.

Caste systems, dignities, worthiness quantified by shades + lines

each tessellating dragon of the myth of purity, locking harm in. 

We started with what we thought was broken, what needed mending to be whole again, what had to go back to how it was before everything began to fall apart. 

There was no end of broken things, no beginning to return to - 

now that the myth of purity had vanished with the dragons, the simorghs, the banshees, the insert your culture’s imaginary salvific beast - 

and we were left with only us, somewhere between the rupture of birth and the culmination of a long season of decay that we call death

it turned out that there was nothing unbroken

except for this soul 

which is another name for the myth of purity. 

We have been here before. 

We started with each other

so then we started with ourselves 

and then we started with what we thought was broken

and trapped in this trinity full of holes tearing + tears + all that has been torn open to enable life

a flower opening

the ground giving way to the first sprout

my mountain cracking wide to give her raindrop her chance to find her friends in her river on her way to her sea on her way to her storm

all eyes on this blue green brown grey us

all eyes on this golden raging perpetual myth

all eyes on each other

knowing we don’t know. 

We started with whatever we had, knowing that we have never been enough, knowing we are all we have. 

-

A postscript on enlightenment, 

the promise of purity

hailed by wannabe escapees

They cry: “Ahoy, matey!

Jump ship! Jump ship!

This boat sinks!

This body stinks!

Jump ship! Jump ship!”

“You made your vow, I’ll make mine.”

I sing. 

“I’ll meet the sea when I am done, 

no sooner.

You begin too quickly for my song

I’ll let you know

when I have begun.”