For Leanne Bridgewater
The world needs more women
“crazy” enough to be themselves,
whose boots made of springy compassion
trample down the paths
of least resistance, in any given conversation.
The world needs more quirk.
The world needs more ‘out there’.
Out there every night, in the frozen field,
fighting to save the things you love.
The world needs more mischief and mayhem,
sincerity and singularity.
The world has been robbed.
Assumption: a mistake.
We were secure. Plenty more years ahead,
to admire how you tinker with society.
Bump into you, in pubs and galleries,
watching your chatter
play narrow minds
like a pinball machine;
your directness spinning them off
in confused directions.
Some artists spend years
trying to develop personas
as refreshing as your personality.
(I think I hear you laughing.)
But ‘refreshing’
makes you sound like a cocktail.
If anything, you are Molotov:
smashing through ideology,
curdling vanilla froth;
a searing attack on convention.
Sounding alarm bells to wake up
selfish lives, as the shelter of lies they live behind
are gobbled up by flames.
I get it now.
I thought you were unafraid
when, secretly, you were being SO brave.
Pedestaled you as shining example
of how to live full-time as yourself;
to tear up the rule book of everyone else,
doodle on those paper tendrils
and scatter them, swaying, arms waving –
and the whole time you were smiling through pain.
Dancing in spite of, not in triumph over, this world
and chemistry playing silly buggers in the brain.
Whatever the neurotransmitters whispered,
you were NOT a stain –
but you ARE indelible, an impression that remains.
Endless refrain
of a song where I don’t claim
to understand all the lyrics,
but I’ll cradle it to my ears, on repeat,
and cherish the harmony just the same.
raefboylan 