Pittakinionophobia (Fear of labels)

Don’t label me… Look at me…
Use your eyes. What you see, this is me…
I have no airs and graces
but sometimes I can’t read faces

I have a thing called Aspergers
which sounds like bad fast food
But it means I can miss social cues
and come off seeming rude
So my presentation of facial expression
is limited by my mental condition…

And now I have said those two words
you can’t unhear them, you have labelled me…
You have categorised me…
Filed me under ‘Mental Condition’
Pigeon holed me without further information
labels marginalise and sideline
labels stigmatise dysfunction

labels cannot define me, I am a complex human being
labels are an artificial tag
for a complicated web of chemicals and interactions
labels are a convenient excuse
for your own fear of what is different
Don’t label me…

I am not a phobia or a mania
I am not a condition or a syndrome
I am a human being
with faults and quirks and hopes and dreams
I am not a label…
This is who I am…
and you… and you… and you…
You are not a label too…

Peter Roe – July 2018

Coming Out Of The Bubble

I have a mental health issue
I don’t like to say dis-abled
Because I feel mis-labelled
I have A S D and sometimes
It’s like a fricking superpower
Specifically I have P D A
Pathological Demand Avoidance
No… It’s not just a label…
No… It’s not just an excuse
I can find myself trapped
In a descending
spiral of indecision
Because having to make a choice
Any choice
Yes, no or maybe
Creates an anxiety bubble
That I can’t penetrate
Rationality and logic are hopeless
Because they are hiding
Over there in the corner quaking…
The simplest mole hills
can be the highest mountains
Prevarication is my watchword
Putting things off is my defence
It may seem crazy to you
and I know it doesn’t make sense
but I am at the mercy
of a web of neurones
and brain chemicals
that turn my thoughts
to plaited fog
This isolation
time spent with the black dog
nibbling on my toes
doesn’t really help
Going round in circles
Living in a tribe of one
With just my own company
Is not my idea of fun
It’s just the way I’m wired
but if you feel inspired
Ask me…
‘Is there anything you can do?’
I’m my kind of normal, not weird
I’m just on the spectrum
Like many other people too
Let’s all reach out and ask
“Is there anything I can do?”

-Peter Roe – December 2020

 A recollection:

I remember it well. Aged 17 and being told I’d not be able to have a ‘normal’ job, or life or anything that other people did. Why? Because at 13 I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I’d already been told by my consultant that anything I wanted was possible. Mainly, because I was stubborn, he said. Adding, that’s a good thing, by the way.

So, in a job centre aged 17, to be patted on the arm like you’d pat a pet dog, and told to give up any dreams or hopes now. Then, because you were kind enough to help, you might find me a little job in a quiet office counting parking tickets that was the limit.

I might not do anything exciting for work, but I chose it. I do the things I want to, when I  want to. I might have listened to you thinking my life at 17 was over.

You told me at 17 my life was effectively over. That I’d live a life alone, without children. I’d never have a job I enjoyed or go beyond the city I grew up in. I should be afraid.

Then and there I decided I would do what I wanted and I have.

I have hidden disabilities and unless I tell people which I’m fairly open about doing, you wouldn’t know. I travel as I want, I have the child I wanted. I have like anyone else had jobs I’ve loved and hated. I’ve fought my own corner. Lived and written my own stories.

Don’t do what that woman tried to do to me. Don’t try and destroy someone’s hope. Don’t assume anything of anyone. Just because the internet says it doesn’t mean it’s right.

Do ask yourself if you’re being biased, it’s not difficult to stop for a second. Do ask how you can understand what someone deals with. Do ask questions of everyone, because one condition can have many outcomes.

Just be a thoughtful, sensitive human. That’s all. Disabled doesn’t make you dead.

-Ailsa

© AilsaCawley2021

Bios And Links

-Peter Roe

is Neurodivergent, diagnosed twenty seven years ago. He was retired from work due to physical disability ten years ago and reinvented himself as a performance poet. He has two published collections and is widely anthologised. A former Bard of Dorchester, he is a Health Champion for disability, ASD and mental health.

Tree in Snow

We grow as Nature ordains
never complain and bear the pains
from black to grey, green to brown
one by one we fall to the ground
Our duty done with full obedience
spreading freshness and fragrance
with peaceful quietude we surrender
making space for others in elegance.
This is The Truth This is The Call
This is The Providence of The Fall
Be it Oak, Pine Fir or Kowhai
Sown ‘n Grown, This is The Final Cry’.

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Tree Law

-Jennifer Roche

If we were trees
(after Tom Weir’s “Glass”)

Some of us were profligate, we were sycamore, we bolted,
trampled gardens. We were full of sap. We were headlong.
and
some of us were yew that puts down roots in graveyard loam
and closes up the mouths of the dead
and
some of us were holly, glossy, sharp and bitter We were all unkind
and
some of us were silver birch, we went everywhere like witchlight,
asked nothing of the ground; we could live on air;
we drank light. We danced
and
some of us were oak, and some of us grew straight as the mast
of a good ship, and some grew stunted, rooted among lichens,
and there was gold in our grain
and
some of us were old from birth, all wire and sinew,
we were hawthorns, our spines wicked against the browsing tongues of beasts
and
some of us were evergreen, fast growing pine, lush spruce,
lined up for the saw, the axe, how easily we split
and
all of us knew what all trees know, which is the art
of letting go. Every year we practice dying
because every one of us will burn. One way or another

-John Foggin

I choose.

A big old strong tree, gnarled
like an olive and full of owls –
Loll on in its generous shade
inhaling that uniquely exotic fragrance;
the power to command every quote and
epigram carried by the bees,
ivy-league messengers sweetly laden
with the harmony of the spheres.

-Jane Newberry

Be that tree,

standing strong, in all conditions.
Growing and stretching
arms towards the sky
completely free, still,
grounded deep in the past.
– Omar Kay

Artful
Love grows like a tree;
you never see it happen
but we have blossom.

-Lawrence Moore

Mulch
I wrote about you on a maple leaf.
Pushed for space, my words were brief.
They blew away with a sudden gust
and will turn to compost,
just like us.
-Lawrence Moore

Rowan

Mountain ash: I banish witches,
Grace hillsides, straddle ditches,
Greet spring, green as grasses,
Hold court as summer passes.

Red as winter cheeks, my berries
Pucker your mouth, like sour cherries.
Jelly rich in C and A
Wakens taste, keeps colds at bay.

Autumn’s gift gives winter savour,
To lend meat a piquant flavour.
I hold fast, through squall and blast,
To greet the living sun at last.

Bride of storm, the lightning flash:
Red-crowned rowan, mountain ash.

-Yvonne Marjot

Lament for Lemon Trees

I hate to slice a lemon
and cut through a pip

that’s green inside.
It’s like cracking an egg

and finding the foetus
of a chicken. But the seed

would have sprouted,
the chick would not.

I think of the tree
I could have grown

like those that touched the ceiling
at Elmfield Gardens,

had to be left behind,
too tall for the new house.

-Peter J. Donnelly

Bios And Links

John Foggin

lives in West Yorkshire where he writes an occasional poetry blog : the great fogginzo’s cobweb.

He was one of the winners of the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition [2015]. His latest collection was Dark Watchers [Calder Valley Poetry: 2019]

-Jane Newberry

is a late-emerging poet, after 30 years of motherhood and a career in music education. March 2020 saw the publication of Big Green Crocodile (Otter-Barry Books).

Published by The Emma Press, South Magazine and online, Jane lives in Cornwall.

-Lawrence Moore

has been writing poems – some silly, some serious – since childhood. He lives in Portsmouth, England with his husband Matt and nine mostly well behaved cats. He has poetry published at, among others, Dreich, Pink Plastic House, Fevers of the Mind, Sarasvati and The Madrigal. @LawrenceMooreUK

-Peter J Donnelly

lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter.

He has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Writer’s Egg where ‘Survival’ previously appeared.  ‘Peppered Moth’ was included in the Ripon Poetry Festival anthology ‘Seeing Things’. ‘One Day on Dartmoor’ was highly commended in the Barn Owl Trust competition and published in their anthology ‘Wildlife Words’. It was also published online by the National Trust on their Fingle Woods webpage.

The Barkskin – photo by Paul Brookes

So light passes through every leaf

From leaf
I long to learn
to let light
through every cell.

What is this light passes through leaf?

When the leaf does not eclipse my eye,
the light lands where I can see it,
subsumed in other light
(or being more mobile than leaf, perhaps I
am the one with agency to eclipse).

What light passes through leaf?
With eye within the penumbra I can barely see it;
such bright light shuts my pupil:
I shun the glare involuntarily:
it lands in my iris.

What light comes through?
In the umbra I dilate.
I dilate as if on purpose–
purpose–iris–unfallen leaf

From leaf I long to learn
to unimpede,
to look less solid,
as I know I am as much space between atoms
as the space between stars.

-Karina Lutz

wounds

i want to know
bark intimately
by the bite
of early syrup.
i need the names
of the wrappings
around coarse
trees: the dry,
the thin-skinned,
the unravelling.
i must get familiar
with the flesh;
the pulped meat
like a jerky. my eyes
are pine blue.

— K Weber

Day-drenched

After a cloudburst, the tree
bark appears reptilian

especially the sweet
gum in its damp sloth

and the slither
of a slow trickle.

In unwavering verdure
the midday sneaks by, stainless.

Animal and insect resume
their wet warbling.

The robins disperse
from trunk and fence

as limpid sky invites
the bluest canopy.

The only video of this scene
will play in raw memory.

Baffled, batting eyes
adapt to the remediation

of sun in just this moment

***originally self-published in my 2019 collaborative poetry project, “This Assembly” (https://kweberandherwords.wordpress.com/2019/12/10/413/) featuring words donated by Tom Gumbert (reptilian), Oak Ayling (unwavering), Peach Delphine (verdure), Mathew Yates (warbling), Venus Davis (limpid), Reluctant Ringmaster (video), Cassie Coletta (baffled) & Madeleine Corley (remediation)

— K Weber

The Old Year

The satisfying crunch
of the grass underfoot
and branches newly jewelled
in first light

Watery sun bleeding
along the horizon
distant mists dispersing
as it climbs

Witnessing the garden
before the kettle boils
nothing much to report
of the old year

Scattered splash of yellow
and rust-red clinging on
with tendrils seeking still
a safer hold

These last few nasturtiums
whose heads wearily droop
till conquered by the frost
they’ll finally fall

The earth is sleeping now
you can hear the soil sigh
listen for what truth
you might discern

Then pause along the path
stare up at the ash tree
as if it held some lessons
you could learn

-Mick Jenkinson

Ash
(with all due respect to Richard Wilbur)

The High King of Summer, bent and ancient,
stands by my back door, bearing his crown.
The lawn respects his shade and dies, turning brown
and dry. My sons turn cartwheels and fence
with plastic swords across the throne room, bent
on mayhem, hardly noticing the regal frame
that looms over the garden. When I named
The Old King I did not intend prescience.

As autumn comes I watch him overwhelmed;
a poor, creeping end for Odin’s World Tree.
The King of Summer loses his crown and realm
to the usurping fungus: that sneaking, petty
thief. Generous giver: as ash keys fall like confetti,
will this year close the annals of the ash tree?

-Yvonne Marjot

Conkers on the Knavesmire

They remind me it’s mid September
despite the weather, an illusion

of summer, like the cows in the field
near the old Terry’s factory

are an illusion of the countryside.
They distract me from my déjà vu

of the last time I did this walk,
in the midst of lockdown.

It felt like summer then too,
though it was only April.

Low Moor, Hull Road Park,
St Nicholas’s Fields,

I’ve avoided them
like the painting by numbers

I started, as my grandad avoided loose tea.
A tea leaf on his tongue brought back the war.

-Peter J. Donnelly

Fountains Abbey

Built along the Skell by monks
banished from St Mary’s,
for the practical purpose
of the river, not the beauty
of the dale, to which they were blind,
how did they keep their faith
that harsh winter, in land
they considered only fit
for wild beasts? Did they foresee
that deer would one day graze
in neighbouring Studley Royal?
A Georgian garden they could never
have imagined, nor the Elizabethan hall,
their only shelter a thatched hut
by a great elm, their food
its leaves boiled in water
perhaps from the springs
that gave the monastery its name.
-Peter J Donnelly

Brain Tree not in Essex

From the Arcadia tree
I might pick the how-to
of simultaneous equations.
Tucked down a hole in the bark –
the key to the periodic table
and infusing the leaf tips
could release the power to
translate from any language

I choose.

A big old strong tree, gnarled
like an olive and full of owls –
Loll on in its generous shade
inhaling that uniquely exotic fragrance;
the power to command every quote and
epigram carried by the bees,
ivy-league messengers sweetly laden
with the harmony of the spheres.

-Jane Newberry

Woodbrains, woodbrides, woodwives

Grovemind, groovemind

synaptic branches
neuron tipped limbs
sacred grove recovery

oakbrain opens doors in my head
ashbrain spears my ideas
elmbrain plays the fey

electric gust moves limbs
inside my head

barkskin neural net
circumnavigates damage
fruited hemispheres
replenish, restore, reimagine

senses water roots
grove in my head
grooves in my head

between oaklimbs
between ashlimbs

her flaps of the wood
bride of the barkskin
her inner lips of the forest
fermented honey drip
not butterfly laced stained glass

fapleaf
lamina mulch make out

fragile doors into lust
nympha

tongue kindly these guardians

ashwives

grew from blossoming blood
of Sky’s balls and prick
hacked off by jagged edged
adamantine sickle wielded
by his son, Time,
goaded on by his mam, Earth,
distraught at Sky exiling
her one eyed bairns in hell.

Oakface

Blaze is agog at Oakface
funking it up in her dance.
Her dad is a river,
her body writhes,
as if under rocks,
tumbles o’er ravines.
Her mam is called ‘Many Gifts’.
She hums her mam’s sweet songs
as she dances.
Oakface wants nowt
of leering Blaze.

Oh, how cute! Oakface
is flushed when her friends
find a lost tortoise outside.

She sits down with her mates,
puts tortoise on her lap.
Tortoise writhes into a snake,
her friends scarper.

Snake becomes Blaze
who screws her
agin her will.

Sobbin’
pulled art an afeard
she runs to her dad,
River, and mam, Many Gifts.

Gives birth to bairn
she calls ‘Both’,
Takes him where a lotus
tree grows an hums her mam’s sweet songs
as she picks a flower

off of it
for bairn to play with,
blood trickles dahn
her wrist an ‘both’
feels his mam’s tit
harden as her feet
become roots
her flesh become
barkskin
of a poplar tree.

Lotus tree were woodbride
hiding from Penis
as were after her.

And bastard son of Blaze
is left pulled out
and bawling for his mam.

Whispering Forest

walk among us, as us

known as oakman
known as birchwoman
known as elmlad
known as ashlass

Each one gentle,
one is strong
one elegant
all older than they look

their voices not listened to
I talk to the tree
“Hug a tree
I am a tree
seen as signs of waywardness
to be laughed at,
pilloried and scorned.

later they will scream
when cut down
or have a limb amputated

we ought to listen.

-Paul Brookes (Excerpt from my book “The Headpoke And Firewedding”, still available second hand)

Bios And Links

-K Weber

has 6 online poetry book projects in digital and audio formats. Access these works at http://kweberandherwords.wordpress.com as well as all credits for her published writing, photography and more!

–

-Peter J Donnelly

lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter.

He has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Writer’s Egg where ‘Survival’ previously appeared.  ‘Peppered Moth’ was included in the Ripon Poetry Festival anthology ‘Seeing Things’. ‘One Day on Dartmoor’ was highly commended in the Barn Owl Trust competition and published in their anthology ‘Wildlife Words’. It was also published online by the National Trust on their Fingle Woods webpage.

-Karina Lutz
worked as a sustainable energy advocate for three decades. Earlier, she received an MSJ from Medill School of Journalism and worked as an editor, reporter, and magazine publisher. She’s currently collaborating to launch a permaculture community, Listening Tree Cooperative.

Snowed Wombwell Spire

-photo by Paul Brookes

The Igloo

The surveying field-course, and
Malham Tarn was frozen flat and
snowed on, a deep lagged mass
warming for spring and
breathing at its edges.

We set up tripods and pointed laser
beams across the ice, derived a number
called curvature of the earth, cut
blocks of ice and built an igloo,
warmed inside while waiting for the transit.

Months passed before I returned in early summer.
The ice-shell home was soft brown lake water
and a ring of snow survived in grass
to puzzle walkers and feed their children
summer evening snowballs.

-Cy Forrest

-John Hawkhead

-All photos by Gaynor Kane (Clothes Pegs previously published in Bangor Literary Journal)

Half Past Autumn

It’s half past autumn, the pumpkin, the smoke
and morning mist drops heavy dew
Trees sag, as if those few remaining leaves
hold the weight of the world

The last of the swallows have upped and gone
Thoughts turn to comfort, food, warmth
and gathering together for talks by the fire –
feeling the pull of home

It’s time to go foraging for winter store –
for plots and plans and sustenance
Treasure now those snow-hardy brassicas –
munitions against melancholy

This is how your heart learns to survive
as the world gets older and harder
Not quite winter, but a premonition –
bring on the snow angels

-Mick Jenkinson

THE WINTER GARDENER

The snow glitters, lifelike.
How nice to see snow,
thinks the winter gardener,

after a long summer of bad luck.
He throws some snow over his shoulder,
because he has no salt

and watches it fall,
moved by the grace of it.
His pruning hooks catch the white of it,

swinging in their dark mists.
The winter gardener looks long into
the cold, remembering when the earth

was blood rich and clotted with veg.
His winter head is a December hive,
his hands almost warm and blue with bite.

-Natalie Crick

Photo credit: Lise Claire

Thanksgiving Weekend in Quebec

I see my daughter’s eyes, not quite brown—
a shifting coppery green
like the fallen oak leaves on snow—

as we trek through the Gatineau trails
in a late November morning light

where shadows grow long
and such reminders bring her close—
as only distance can

-Lise Claire

Bios And Links

-Mick Jenkinson

is a poet, songwriter, musician, and freelance arts practitioner from Doncaster, and is an associate member of Right Up Our Street, a nationally funded organisation dedicated to improving arts participation in Doncaster. He runs Well Spoken! – a monthly open mic night held at Doncaster Brewery, and his second poetry pamphlet, When the Waters Rise, was published last year by Calder Valley Poetry.

-Natalie Crick

Natalie Crick has poems published in The Poetry Review,The Moth, New Welsh Review and elsewhere. She is studying for an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Last year one of Natalie’s poems was commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020 on the theme of diversity and awarded second prize in the Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020. One of her poems received a special mention by judge Ilya Kaminsky in the Poetry London Prize 2020. This year a poem was highly commended in the Folklore Poetry Prize, highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award and she received a nomination for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Natalie is co-founder / poetry editor of a small literary press based in Newcastle and Prague, Fragmented Voices.

-Gaynor Kane

lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur photographer, and in both is looking to capture moments that might be missed otherwise. Discover more at gaynorkane.com

-Cy Forrest

is from Manchester but now living in Wiltshire. Poems in the Honest Ulsterman, IceFloe Press and The Wombwell Rainbow. Poems due to appear in Stand in 2022. Strong Men, Carrying Horses was longlisted for the Fish anthology 2021.