Jess Green

Biography

I am a spoken word poet currently living in Liverpool and trying to carve out some way of making a living in the arts. Performing on every stage possible in the North West, held back only by train fares, I have also been published in In The Red 8 and 9, The Yellow Room and Envelope. I am currently working on my first pamphlet published by Holdfire Press.

Samples

Midnight soliloquies. Gangs set fire to your uncle’s house and as the flames scorch the Nairobi sky I’m waking up in Toxteth on an electric blanket hearing your half voice in the swamp of part sleep intonation curling high in the middle of sentences then locked tight and growling. A dripping Monday sky pulls me in to morning but I search with padlocked eyes for your words in the swaying hours thick and drooping spilling out of you hanging smoking from the window requesting Kenyan rap on Youtube because your fingers won’t work the guitar. Then your silk unconscious words on the pillow passing out in your clothes our respective partners oblivious. Together we were brilliant. Together our voices spun and wove And filled the corners of pubs with reverberating tapestries as we argued over the no mores. No more poverty, no more greed, no more crime, no more David Cameron, no more Twilight. Now I meet puff chested men racing beers in bars with their burp filled banter and hot air thick with testosterone. They make a game of grabbing women matching cop offs with Sambuca shots, but they don’t want to talk about changing the world. I go on dates but they can’t argue through the candle light like you don’t want to debate the Lynx advert call me antagonistic and leave. When your emails are pocked with full stops and consonants I want to hear your words crack through the North West roads like the speakers that used to thud in our bones and pounce around our brains ‘cause now you’re dancing in my sleep sodden ears like the radio tuning out and I don’t know what’s made up and what’s you. I can’t write about you without drowning you in adverbs those l y words that just decorate the verbs when all I want to say is what we did and how I still hear your whispers and the cluck of your tongue at the end of a Tusker and the rhythm of your syllables when you’re fired up to fight injustice. But in daylight reality you are soundless and when I return home to an empty inbox you are wordless. I won’t share this city. Tear apart Sefton Park rip up Elm tree shade by the roots, splice green crowns and trunks hack walk ways into barbed pieces break benches into planks. Pierce the Penny Lane wine bar let bitter Merlot flow through the crack hurl glass smithereens like hail stones, lacerate sofas with their springs. Rupture speakers in the damp dark where we pressed hot on dripping walls, grate the bass from the rhythm cut out the vocal chords crumble the cheap pills, coke and talc waltz on the wind. Score Hardman Street in half sever the take-aways and kebab shops leave the fat dripping and spitting in gutters. Chop up the rats into snout and feet and tail. Rip lightening through street lights and high rise bed sits hit the Radio Tower with a white electric bat force it to topple hang mics and headphones from remnants of windows. Tear open the sky swipe at the pigeons. Stop the poetry. You can spend our pensions on dinner with the Beckhams sack the police then ask them to work for free to trick, lie and arrest teenagers with shifty eyes and frustrated minds make us pay to have babies and glue back our bones pick the pockets of sixth formers penalise the unmarried and patronise the women. I will stand on the tables in cafes on the grass of parks give me a soap box or just a flagstone on a street corner. I will light the fuse of villanelles look down the barrel of a sonnet blow Blake in the air choke the monarchy in metaphor. My mother warned me about men like you; lie and charm and cheat and slime your way inside then rip out the life support. Distract us with a Royal wedding look what your life could have been if you hadn’t lacked a little inspiration. You can crumble the foundations on which we’ve built our lives but you will not stop the pens moving. You can’t stop me waking from dream filled sleep collect the stained glass stories from my leaking brain. Take away our pens and paper and we’ll just make the words move faster, louder in the corners of pubs we’ll prance along the bar until they listen climb the walls of buildings if we keep telling the tales of the war you’re waging on the unrich, the unprivate, the unmiddleaged they won’t forget. Slap super injunctions on clause 60 tell us to calm down kettle us, keep us, beat us and berate us but you won’t stop the poetry.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.