Izzy and Kat’s Collaboration – 1st Draft

This is technically Kat’s 2nd Draft and Izzy’s 3rd draft but this is our 1st Draft as a collaboration and what we’re submitting for this 2nd of July deadline

Due to exams and such we are still at early stages of our poem I think, we’re set on idea and structure but haven’t quite shifted into editing and refining stage yet so this poem beneath is our creative monster we kinda need to tame, all feedback appreciated 🙂 At the moment, reading it now, it runs at 5 minutes but we’re planning to cut down some bits expand on others to make it more efficient we just haven’t had time to meet up and carve it into shape so? Also set wise hasn’t really been a thing considered – its set in a fast food van at Leeds Fest so if anyone also has any ideas how we could convey that, without a literal fast food van in the Studio stage, it would be helpful. I (Kat writing this, haven’t run it by Izzy) thought maybe just projecting an image of the festival as a backdrop? Anyways

1 – Ending is not finished or refined we have an idea for it not quite got to putting it on paper
2 – Yeah lines and punctuation are not my (Kat) thing, I should maybe learn that, so bear with, apologies
3 – May read a wee bit funny because haven’t actually defined who said what so remember this is being spoken by two people and some parts are taken in turn like a conversation – If i need to edit it to make this clearer just say

Ok sorry for long introductory paragraph, now for the piece:

Welcome to Leeds Festival; don your aprons we’re cooking for the masses

I’m sweating grease, skin sizzling in summer sun alongside strangers,
Slap of limp discs of meat
Eager in the liquid heat
Crammed against the streaked paw
Of the spatula
Leaping, screaming, craving release
Hair wadded beneath a bandana
Face gleaming
Youths clammer for my offer of damp and mealy burgers
It’s a carnival in here
All colours and hot bodies
I see the beads of sweat dancing round the fluorescent paint on my customers face,
Wishing I could dance with them

Theres this girl next to me
We’re both simmering silence wrapped in our own little worlds.
She’s too quiet I can tell she’s thinking as well
I wonder if she regrets this three day summer job as much as I do
Sulking we do our work and exchange small talk less frequently than tired sighs and judgemental glances at the kids who try to order while high
Thinking we’re above them when we wish we could be immersed in their basic bliss losing all of it and more in the mud
Spending our poorly paid minutes watching real life like documentaries on repeat
And the world burns, all grease, sun and insults; imagining a world outside our fast food cells

Play spot the top knot
Play spot the kid who’s so off it he couldn’t find his top knot if he was holding his head
He turns slow circles in blue camp
Glazed and twitching
And they take selfies with him

Nearby a girl sloshes some unknown blue drink
Yelps as it discolours her blouse
“You ok love?”
Play spot the Fuck Boys
“Let me buy you another.”
“No, let me get it!”
“Can I help you take it off?”
The boys swarm
Spring free from Range Rovers
Fresh from exam halls
And the kid still spirals
He’ll join the energy drink jitter bugs, watch the caffeine shake them into sound waves,
Rattling away, a million vibrations
Play spot the fire hazard
Alcohol and bodies like scattered ash on the grass
DIY barbeques
Abandoning tents like fractured road kill
Startled by the shriek of a boy
In the tie dye peace shirt
Lynx can ignited
Breathing washed bluish flames
Scented with the fragrance
That never got him laid

Look over there
Play spot the common hipster
Their flower crowns force a halo to rest upon their skulls
Bleached blonde and hidden behind white rimmed sunglasses
Their festival is digital, artificial
Photos or it didn’t happen, doesn’t matter
Watch the stage through pixels and snapchat
your smeared sugar lips as they sip vodka and older boys
Annoyed, we were three best friends and I was the fourth who paid for bus fare
A coven who never summoned me into their houses
Only nights out, skate parks, walking home alone in the dark
One more face in the cover photo
And now they don’t recognise me through strobe tinted eyes
As I fold sooty fat into bread and butter
Serve up their summer carbs
I’m just one more slave to them; I guess nothing changed
You’re bitter that you’re not part of their party games

Play spot every kid we wish we could be.
With their illegal glass
Swapping names and bottles
Each face a blurred Polaroid bliss,
Snapshots of ecstasy singing, riding off each other’s energy.
We are witnessing mass hysteria and itching for the fix
Play spot the festival beat, can you feel it, can you remember it?
Last year, dropped jackets in the mud
They let us keep our drinks at the silent discos
Melt into the ink pool of rustling denim
Misplaced elbows and dogged steps
Ecstatic expressions
Last year our skin laced with adrenaline and
Wondering when we last wondered what time it is

Play spot our history
See a girl, flung high, into the spears of upstretched hands
Surges on the crest of a wave
Away, away, away
Rolls high
The stars and the laser smoke smeared across her eyes
Safety net woven so fine
The mesh is lost in the spotlights
We’re remembering what it’s like with swimming eyelids
Glance back and she’s faceless
Waist deep in mud, and running

Play spot our alter ego.
I saw him over there, high Vis and monstrously stone faced
So close to cracking under the weight of the bending barrier and giving into temptation
Constructed from steel beams and resentment as a building in a crowd of tsunami arms and earthquakes.
He does not fall.
Face a structure we copy as if we are stable
As if we don’t feel the vibrations in our soles
As if we are not just worms being called to the surface by rain

And then it starts to rain