Open Mic: Mould & Stardust with Teige Maddison
Teige Maddison is a lover of the lyrical, the evocative, the hard hitting. Studying in Cornwall for 3 years at Falmouth, he found a love for both the stage and page, thus founding his own poetry collective, The Word Zoo, and a publishing house, Sea Post Press, with friends.
He loves poems by Shakespeare, Kate Tempest, Danez Smith, Derek Walcott and Luka Lesson to name a few. You'll often find him dancing, with or without clothes on, to RHCP in his flat or probably complaining about the heat in a local coffee shop.
Raw and Mouldy
Daytime sadness frowns you scorning,
never finding solace in a good man’s fibres;
They’re rare things-
raw and in apprehension of their side
and the otherside that holds you up in its breaths and heartbeats
but strangles you down,
fungal python, which you it deciphers,
churning your chunks cos you forgot nan’s coconut milk
and she screams her demonic vitriol
in vain attempt to scare off the mould-
but its casing thickens, captures your eyes
so you see the world through its green lens trying to kill you,
it succeeds in murdering hope with
gunshots from your mac and iphone,
scraping your last bones for mould and stardust,
its a laughing mimicry of niggy tardust and
IT REPEATS, repeats
REPEATS a point that is not proven,
cos you are not who you are showing.
But as silk woven into a soft cushion,
slipping from your comfort and love,
in essence your soul, your magik,
your repetition to try and crack it,
your flailing arms that shout
I. AM. HERE.
Sawn off they hear your cracking
crunching
ballsack,
your shaking eyes
rolling on the floor to die
so your torture is blind,
blind to photos of kids and
to the tea mug sitting in the corner of the room
armless and the tea bag has been used
and thrown in the bin,
where it thinks you should have been,
where you think you should have been,
cuddling the with the lover who holds you trim,
Facebook messenger fLashINg,
SHE’S HERE DUDE OVER FUCKING HERE ON THE OTHERSIDE OF THE WORLD,
with a bloke who’s got tattoos and a husk voice
whom she met at zone festival;
fucked on ecstasy or LSD,
it doesn’t matter because love hurts in all its forms,
warm and gooey.
There’s always one hidden prick to burst your bubble,
the only one you’ve ever had,
and it hurts, it's fucking sad
that you're a pest to her and to you
now there is not mushroom for love,
but still you want the one person who swipes you off her skin,
always going back,
going back,
going back on the same old tack of
dead flowers and awful poetry
that laughs in your cathartic face,
giving another meaning to doing the one thing you truly love,
and i know little difference between she who gave you head
and your headmaster,
cos fergus he lived up to his name, he was a living stone
and as aforementioned, leaders in stone don’t do as they preach,
cherishing each young person in their care.
and i know no difference between this and
the dark shadow who drinks my wine and writes my poetry.
He severs ties with me and myself,
stupid jokes and an easy face,
he bludgeons my smiles into frowns that
have become my crown
my blood is the wine he drinks,
his hands trap me in my bed,
in which all i want to do is
escape into my dreams,
but my dreams are made of heroin and salt,
so every night i die, nailed to a mast
that’s in the past that is the present-
that pill, that vodka,
are the clear lies that still haunt us,
circled in smoke and brewed by fear
and tear after tear after tear after tear is
beckoning me to join mum and dad,
the very perpetrators,
the dark spear that boiled the kettle
and poured me these cups of fear.
its a tired, drastic waterboarding
making me believe the grass isn’t greener on the otherside,
but we don’t even have a lawn,
let alone money for a mower.
i keep on wanting to return into depression,
it's the only home where i have always been made to feel comfortable,
where i can keep my shoes on and kick back on the couch
have a wank in the mirror.
admiring how fat you’ve made me,
we wallow in my uncomfortable body.
he pristines me, his work of art,
with donuts and chips off the old block,
this is who i am and who you have made me want to be,
i am a greek god, a sculpture,
but in a society that draws its perception of health
from capitalist propriety.
ironically I am the one who is mouldy.
Old Man with a Happy Hat
the ragged mog ia tretched out on the catflap,
the Wise Man walks
left at the fork,
the right turning-
he is poured forth down the skittled bins.
his eyes,
unburned among the piles of rubbish,
gaze to the sky.
a myriad, too long in the lion’s lair, draws itself on the clouds:
green, orange, bright blue, red, black,
white; torn, neat, sumptuous, discrete.
Old Man’s eyes clap. Old Man tears up, swollen,
All swallowed in all of man’s forbidden;
Old Man’s tears write man’s forboden.
He walks on the cobbled stone,
His salty tears quietened by a moss plant in the cracks.
He jumps into the plant’s ear and whispers:
All beckoned moss is welcome.
He is taut as he watches the old black cat drag her paws
through shears set in stone.
street signs are names gone amiss.
in the clouds is a grand castle,
sprawled out like an intricate spider’s web.
its hallways are covered,
furlong after furlong,
in swathes of velvet moss, soft and tactful.
Old Man with a white beard strolls down the swindling corridors
to a balcony, to enjoy the view.
He sees Old Man watching the lightshow, among the trash, quivering ina we.
He laughs and smiles,
leaning over the edge he shouts
‘Any beckoned moss is welcome, any beckoned moss is welcome!’