A few of my spoken word pieces
If…
If you can keep your head when all about you Year 5 are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when Zoe is having an asthma attack because Roland just took a piss in the art cupboard
Whilst Jasmin has William in a headlock and everyone’s chanting fight.
If you can keep a straight face when Ravi jumps on the table and makes a mockery of the behaviour policy.
If you can trust yourself when the plasters won’t stick and everythings falling to pieces.
If you can do the online training but never let the modules be your Master
If you can jump through the hoops and not mistake them for goals
And bend the letters of the law into the shape of justice.
And keep the faith when they reduce you to a tick in box.
If you can measure them with praise for who they are, not what they do
For how they try, not how much they gain
And when they fall, land with them and be the doors in their walls
And the breeze to their flames and help them make a home inside their dreams.
If you can hold back the black mirror so they may drink in the morning dew of their lives.
If you can greet troubled eyes with love and see the innocence behind their fear
And shine for them like the sun guides a plantling around concrete.
If you can see in every child the better angels of our nature
And work through them for a future you will barely live to see.
Then you are a teacher my friend, and what’s more, you might learn a thing or two.
By Kevin Campbell Davidson
Includes excerpt from: Madama Butterfly, G. Puccini
Inspired by ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling
Grey Noise
A white man speaking is the sound
Of a tree falling in a forest of
Millennials clicking “I
Choose freedom”
What’s the collective noun for
An archive of incoherence?
Opinions are like Pringles
Advertising adds 27%
To your carbon footprint
Best close your eyes and hide
From the grey statues sinking anchors
Clamped around the grubby ankles of history.
Keeping us steady
Stopping us moving
Keeping us steady
Stopping us moving
Steady now.
Like the jabbering of some kind of zen
Monk in luscious grey robes
Half everything, Half nothing.
Fully neither white nor black.
What’s the opposite of grey?
Trick question.
There isn’t one, they
Hide in the eye of the wheel
Quiet as a mouse making
Neverending grey noise.
[break]
What’s the opposite of grey noise?
It’s pink noise.
Actually a thing.
You’ll find it where
A canopy of monsoons
A shoreline of waves
That silent Spring of skyless planes
When birds sang their sweetest
Without the background drone of grey
Imagine an astronaut cuddling a cat
True fact: A cat purrs
Between 25 and 50-hertz
Regenerating bones
That withered in outer space
Without the cold press of gravity
Take me to a silent protest
Wearing someone else’s blues
Take me to a safe space to say messy things and i’ll kick off my shoes
And go for a walk in their feet, their paws and hooves
50% of all life has vanished since the anthropocene
And 50% of all statistics obscure the truth
Grey noise
By Kevin Campbell Davidson
Human Being
I want to be a human being
Not a human doing
Racing around like a motor car
Tanked up with thoughts and feelings
Sometimes I am a human grumbling
I rehearse arguments in my head
With people who are not there and may not even care.
Sometimes I am a human worrying
Full of anticipatory regret
About all the bad things that haven’t happened yet.
Sometimes I am a human making
melodies in my mind’s ear
When I’m trying to be meditating
Sometimes I am a human crying,
I throw open the floodgates
And all my tears jump on for the ride
Through the roller coaster of human becoming
I am human needing, human longing
For that deepest home
Of human belonging
By Kevin Campbell Davidson
Includes excerpt from: Cello Sonata in Gm, Chopin
Shoobs: Humanifesto
I worked with The Play Collective to write a spoken word piece for Shoobs, a ticketing service and community hub for urban music events.