A diary entry - a blue song

there is this song that i want to sing you all

not that my voice is good, its cracked

got broken when the moon

looked away. don't blame her

she's not that easily distracted, there was

a real war going on one time

so she turned for a moment to see 

I smile with my mouth turned down

what the noise was. when she did 

my top note shattered. i was sore for a day

or three but i stll remember the melody

 so don't expect clear water

all i got is soft mottled syrup

clotted near the aorta of the harmony
but sweet

liable to break your heart still

yeah i believe i can say that

with humble authority

these lips have chapped

from all the hurricanes  i've blown

all the circle songs

that have raised the dead who  camped in my back yard

but i'm not ashamed of those angels , not me

i got a song i want to sing for you

 something i am proud of.

i'm a lady with a blue song

a blues song made of diamonds, 

ash and water and golden syrup


written by Zena Edwards 2011©

Day with a Little Girl called Queen

haiku red

Being Undermined


in just one place, there!
hot scratches of anger scrape
her chest raw, don't speak...


words will make it right
the wrongness must be felt hard
keep it a secret


exorcise at the gym?
To drive it into the ground?
Let the fire burn hard


patience. time knows when
there's dignity in the wait
trees come to blossom


strike! the moist moment
ripe to release with control
injustice: fair game

haiku green

Let it go


her lashes lower
shoulders meant for relaxing
sing a sigh, hot bath

haiku yellow

You Joy


face ache, inner glow
thermostat set to 'roasting'
next joke, reload, go!

haiku blue

Laden


Just too much, they said.
No-one should have that much, true?
Sadness chooses who.

The Dead Line - By Zena Edwards

The piece is about a frustrated artists who is stuck in a loop of dead end temp jobs and her infuriating current boss who haunts her every waking and sleeping hour…

Click to find enlarge. Find the smiley face...

Written and performed by Zena Edwards©

Commissioned by James Robinson for BBC Radio 4.

4 months breathing this air

i met a Spirit today
a warm new Spirit, a friendly little Spirit
still asking for it's Mama for milk
not knowing he needed to be held still
for healthy growth
your average human being should hug
4x a day for healthy emotional development: security


We spoke a long while, he told me plenty
not in the mouthed codes
i'd decipher as 'english', no
in burbble gurgles, conversating
with my psyche, asked me to listen
to hush enough to hear my own pulse


to listen to pure talk about his day
about the crazy people from the day before
who never held him right and talked too loud
or the fact that if he looked at his foot
and thought about it hard enough at the same time
he could make the toes wiggle


he smiled in his dreams
drew long breath, filling tiny new  lungs
nodded his head as he took instruction
alert to learn, walk strong in awake dreams
with a heads up about the next day
i envied his sleep


and his communing
the airwaves clear and ungarbled, he smiles again
before he wakes


Written by Zena Edwards©

The prince and the poor bitch

i'm a raggedy rich girl with empty pockets
looking at those invisible diamonds on my fingers


you are a list of encores on my palms
an a to z of inhalations

exhalations

if these simple lips and tight tongue
could put voice to that breath
they’d talk the wind of a web
of the bind of supine spells that snare me
in the sound of your name


in a pitch night of flawless entrapment
fucking with monumental moods swings
in between the blades of these venetian blinds
shades of flaring orange and intrepid indigo
you kiss (like its supposed) to make everything ok
i rise and fall in turbulent tides, turning, forever turning

                                                                                     Dangling from the edge of a dawn chorus

                                                                                     over dreams of Onyx unicorns and fawning lilies

                                                                                              who turn their sex to a moaning misty moon


clouded in lost love songs not yet born

love so potent it’s daunting

haunting until my stomach comes out on my tongue

I give what I have

and I desire only to be here

there are wet eyes in the sky tonight
watching a rich girl
with empty pockets
slipping a diamond so willingly
onto his finger


Written by Zena Edwards©

Air port

Airports

in the efficient business
of separating, re-connecting
cheek pecks, slow kisses, embraces

corporate hand shakes and cold stares

In the market of trading emotions

That swarm over marble sky

hundreds of tons
love and lonely laden  lead geese
Knocking the roof of the troposhpere

Written by Zena Edwards

The Book Of Night Women By Marlon James

One of my Favourite Books of all time. It gave me an insight into what it could have been really like for African women in the Caribbean as slaves. Set at the beginning of the spread of the Slave Revolts all over the Caribbean, Lilith is what I would call the anti-heroine of the book. I do not like her, but was totally engrossed in her story. It a compelling read. Marlon James nails it.

#Occupy Tweet micro freestlye...

 ... on a 3hr train ride from Stockton after a days mentoring, I saw so many tweets about Global Occupy 15th October. 

I had to go. I had to tweet

 Untitled

We squeeze you out of our minds
Where you squatted self righteous
Charging US rent
Now we occupy our own street
Student and Youth generation courage heaven sent
To remind us what we really are
Not bodies as batteries
But self empowered stars
#Occupy, the Whole World is Watching, SHINE!!
#OccupyLondonstockexchange #occupylsx

Haley Never Cut On Wednesdays

Haley never cut on wednesdays

To see the inside outside

All screaming bloody murder in a streak

down her thigh, rimming her socks

“issues! the girls got issues man”, a statement

meant for the  grip of a seagulls beaks

over the city dump near a Thamesmead estuary

She let the river run the rest of the week

she dragged the children’s home for

broken glass and compass points,

discarded bits of metal car parts, barbed wire

Haley, patterned kente and celtic cumulus cloud

in her daydreamed skies

Anything to pretty up the walls

of the St Augustines care home for girls

waiting for the next fostering

brown girl out of a catalogue

cheap as an Argos sovereign

Wanted for the money, not wanted for the money

She raided the stationary cabinet for something to do

her heart was honeycombed like

Each hole a puncture in the photo

She brutally hole punched faces first

her brothers eyes as empty as in his mug shots

then necks, let it out

let the scream out through that black hole

White washed into stats and perforated facts about her

Mixed heritage and marked middle ground

Nothing is sacred in St Augustines

Just logged but nothing’s regulated except lights out

Written by Zena Edwards©

Zena E's Selection Part 1

Here's a set of poems that I feel repesents a spectrum of my work from 2003, 06, 07 and '10. More to come soon.
Enjoy!

Zena E's selection Part 1 by Zena Edwards

Last of a Line

DEAR DIARY

i am the last of a line

it stops here with me

no children, as yet, to pass the blood on

to flow over the smoothed rocks

of an ancestors foundation

last of a line

where the estuary ends

And as a child, first generation born un the UK, I make sense of my world

With  British Tongue and brown skin.

The book I am to write is of how We came to be here

of how this world's history branded We,

And I am to make sense of the archipelago

Of stories, pebbles washed up on a the shores of

an old empire coughed me out

A free radical

that came into its own,

the thorn in the throat of a giant, a clot

Feel it

It was when I read poetry

that I found the Aunties and other Mama’s who knew me

it was as if they laid their hands upon me.

It was their in their voices, there in the resonance of words

Their deep sigh for me between the lines

to guide my steps

Space for me to write me

I imagine I had not lived an authentic moment

till I felt the word of Maya* or

mm-hm-ed the vex of Sapphire*

Stuck between the cracks of Englands creases

If you truly pressed them out you'd be sick for two bicentenaries

I'm not ready for that kind of sick alone

No, I need to find succor

in the symphonic stutters of Sister Sonia* 
and the cradle of Jean*

For Marcella - RIP Sister

For Marcella

Bloodlines explores identity and a young womans returning of Afi-Cari-British heritage to her Ancestral homeland of Africa. I have been lucky enough to travel to many parts of Africa and the account of the countries visited in this piece are true. So is the part about being claimed by numerous tribes as one of their own. The  Khoisan girl in the piece Marcella, became a friend of mine when I selpt some night in the Namibian desert. She was beautiful spirit, generous and gentle, a wonderful singer and dancer. Sadly, she passed under mysterious circumstances in 2008. This post is for her.

Bloodlines is one of my first BBC Radio 3 commissions. I sound so young : ) But it was also one of my most enjoyable. I hope you enjoy it too...

Edens Serpent

Edens Serpent 

this ‘S’ on my chest
is a molten lava river
flowing down to power source my vulva

this ‘S’, a serpent
gripping its tail in its mouth
swallowing the knowledge of itself
till it is sated

singing infinite circle songs
signing itself onto its own scales
to the tone of the kundalini ohm
a note recognisable in us all
if we only listened

WHEN THE 33'S SPIN - Music, Race & a Little Girl - Pt. 1

When The 33's Spin - A poem

Eleven and home alone

with the turntable 

and the shiny liquorice  platter

playing a set

for memories to be made treasures and cuckoo stories

of broken hearts, of lost things found,

of courage liberated

the triumphant fist of blues

the spectrum of emotion played  in those grooves

onyx plates of Soul Food 


Bobby Womack's gravel molasses tones

riffs stretching notes  beyond the elasticity of time

Funkadelic dooloops scoop me on my rollerskates:

ripped carpets, broken door handles 

CODE EMPHASIS CAMERA CLUB ON THE SOUTHBANK OCT '11

Code Empashis is a great Facebook camera club that arranges to meet and agre to assignment set by Bunny Bread, the founder of the club.
One Indian Summer day in October, th emission was to go to the Southbank and take portrait shots of people. I was apprehensive at first but once I go the hang os smiling sweetly and making people feel interesting, some interesting shots revealed themselves to me.