'I am from the world' from Altered Festival
EVA SCOTT | Bristol, United Kingdom | BS5
This poem was written at the Altered Festival that was run by Keep Art It.
I am from the world.
I am from the Earth,
The elderflower sea got to know me when I was seventeen,
But we’ve known each other from my childhood,
and for a time longer than the length of my life.
I am from Bristol.
I am from the silk in the sky that lowers at night and settles as the silvery layer of dew.
A hot day gone cool, a dry day exhaled.
You see the mist of that sky silk lift with the dawn.
I am from the dusk and the dawn where the sun and moon meet.
Where the silk lowers and rises.
My mother is a psychotherapist and a novelist from Dublin.
My father is a musician. With his twin brother they made music that sounds like the voice of outer space. But it’s from here.
I was a CD child. In the car with my sunglasses on.
The blue tint of the windscreen glass. Old orange peel.
I come from a place where people dance through the day, through the night.
And dress in shining decorations like the moon.
As I’ve grown older, I became upset with the pressures and the systems and that false idea of life as steps to be completed through pain.
But I’ve seen its beauty, I move with it.
And I come from the human race, in all its celebration, decoration, connection and creativity.
I come from music and I take it with me wherever I go,
On my back, in my lungs, in my eyes, on my tongue.
I come from the water, I move with it, sing with it, feel it in me.
But there’s also the fire.
Because my lover’s the sun and teaches me how beautiful, and how right the world can feel.
I come from the train that runs through Bristol trees.
The metal beast is my friend and I’m safe it its company.
Take me to a place that sounds like adventures but smells like home.
They say anger comes from love.
An emotion that arises when something we love is taken away.
I feel angry at the history that came before me.
Born into a world where beauty and culture is stolen and stories of humanity are smothered out.
Can I alone stop this greed?
Because it’s not just a thing of the past, but it’s all around.
And greed causes unhappiness.
But when it’s the norm, it feels like if I did what I was told I would be happy.
And happiness feels like an action, a choice.
And I hope one day it can be even closer.
I hate how my country takes and takes from kind hearts.
And I pray that all hearts can stay kind and true after such a betrayal.
Remember we are one, but we are all individuals.
The wisdom of children
The people are healers
Kind and loving nature.