Incidents of Isolation: Stares/Stairs by Jamie Tinklepaugh

Me and my father Peter are currently based in London although always we’re always planning our next trip out of the city – we try to learn about the world by somewhat random immersion. We have worked collaboratively on this project, exploring the theme of isolation particularly relevant over the months of the pandemic and lockdown, through word sounds and poems, looking at the barriers that people and society place in our way. 

Listen – 3 poems…

—Isolation Is the Carer (3:32)

Isolation is the carer
Who?
Who me?
Yes you
Does not care
Less
Does not care who knows
Certainly don’t know
How to truly care about the person
Who?
Yes
Me 
Over here
The person you are working with
What a joke?
Lost in a fog of ignorance and
D
O
W
N
Right
L
A
Z
I
N
E
S
S
Right for you
So
Wrong for me
Trapped whilst you dictate the terms
Small print not read whilst I cling
 on to my
 Dreams of seeing outside this cell
Circle of hell
You are my source of freedom, yet so often you are my jailer
Prisoner, paying by the week for the privilege
My crime?
It seems is to have my own mind,
Know where  I want to go
Down the street, even get on a bus
Bus, that symbol of resistance
 Boycotts, not allowed to sit at the back
Blockades,  by hundreds of wheelchair users activating
Demonstrating
 that
They can not  get on a bus
That was back in 1994
Am joined by the chains of history to them
Eternally grateful to those I cannot name individually
They are not remembered by name on a plague or statue
That mass of humanity
I thank each time I get on a bus
 Raising hand aloft
Only
That time
The last time?
I hope not
Some
Where
Deep
Within
I
Know
Not
Trying to convince myself to be hopeful
Looking from outside at my own life
So strange
Reality life and I seem to be so
E
Stranged
Sharing space with my jailer so electronically absorbed
Stuck in the middle of the island of self-importance
 Sharing
Shouting news,
  Views about football scores
News from home
 Here, there, everywhere
News from nowhere about nothing
 as long as they are not bored
Don’t ’t have to strain a sinew
Yes
You
Who has joined your comrades
In striking
Refusal
To walk for five minutes or get any bus
Trying to drown out my dreams of freedom
With cries of protest placing a verbal placard
Squarely
In
My
Face
‘No, I won’t go’ you shout
Plan my response
Military strategy
Break into sections
Working out ways to counter
Rejections
Know what to say
When and how
Performance
Jailer is my audience
Yet need to know when I am beaten
When I withdraw
Power relationship
 White flag as curtain
Yet
You
Under
Estimate me
Hate me
Want to debate me
Until argument goes to ground
Wait until you are no longer around
Temporary cessation
  this human isolation

—Snowdrift (4:03)

—Isolation (8:46)

Isolation
Word
Exists
On its
Own
So?
Nobody around
Everybody has gone to
Ground
Floor
Lift
B
R
O
K
E
N
Down
Down
Again
Stuck
Upstairs
No choice
Waiting
Waiting
For hours
For
Somebody
Anybody
To fix the problem
I can see
Out of the window
Blue sky
Thinking
Birds
Singing
Windows open
Nature incoming
World not outgoing
Now
Do
You
Realise
The challenges I face?
The steps
I have to follow
To access a world
That
Has for so long
Shut
Me
Out
Slammed doors in my face
Spat
PAH
 In my face
Every day
A fight
A war,
 putting on fatigues
 a hard hat to fight to be heard
Every day
I have to think
Is the place I am going to go to accessible
If I want to ‘access the community’
I have learnt the language, so much time
To write the world in my head
Talk to the living and the
Dead

Isolation
Back
Again
Never left
Whatever I thought
Whatever I hoped 
Think about that feeling of
Not when you chose to be on your
Own because you were
Sulking
 Wanted to talk to yourself
the best conversation you had all day?
Wanted to dance around the kitchen floor
Be quiet
Shhh
 watch the world scuttle
 Scurry by
No I mean
When you had no Choice
You know Choice
That thing we all have now
Hold it close
Precious
Birthright to choose

Now that we are all customers, consumers
Beautiful word
Didn’t you know that it is just a word?
No choice at all
‘I’m sorry sir, we don’t have an accessible toilet’
Have to watch what I drink
Drunk on
Power
Less?
Ness?
‘No we don’t have a ramp Sir’
‘No lift  Sir’
you give that smile that even the mirror must be tired of
No lift
We all need one
I need one now
Not in some unspecified future
I am a poet
 not science fiction writer

When I enquire sometimes I get a look as if
As if
You are unsure 
Have you heard me correctly?
Do I have a horse and cart?
Do I want to know where I can stable my horse
For the night
Can you recommend a place to purchase hay?
Hey?
You’ve lost me,
How careless
you never had me in the first place
I Will go elsewhere where I am
Wanted
Where they will welcome  me  in
Open the door
Not slam the door in my face

Isolation
That feeling when you are
Invisible
Sweat
Blood and tears
The ink on this page
You walk through
The door
One door closes another one opens
Words are easy
So easy

You do not see me
Another door is
S
L
A
A
M
M
M
E
D
In
My
Face
On the other side
Of the glass
Looking in
Observer
Observed
If you see me
You pity me
Speak to the person behind me
‘How old is he’
‘He is standing right here’
Take time to sit or crouch down
Always craning my neck to stare up at people
Isolated within a room full of so many
So few who truly understand
See life from
My Angle
Yet you insist
‘My life is  so busy
You choose
How you mark your time
Every moment
So little
Time
Measured
In grains of sand
Fleeting
Gone.

Isolation
Is
This
My
Moment
In
The
Sun?
Minus elation
Electronic communication
Drifting in
And Out
Of
Your
Conscious
Ness
I know the feeling
Zoomed in
Zoomed
Out
Don’t want to think about
Dis
Ability too much?
Makes you Uncomfortable
Still so much a minority
Isolated within a community that has won some
Lost so much
Come and go
Did you not know
Dis
Ability is
Democracy
We are all disabled or
Will be
Perhaps
Have an accident
Slip
Fall
You never know what
That rocky road of fate
Has in store
For you
Age
Dis
Ability
You may bask in that heat of ignorance now
Yet why do you not
Celebrate what I can achieve?
I am a person with a disability
Society disables me with stairs
Stairs
That you leap up like a gazelle without noticing
Automatic reaction.
Reflex
Maybe you carefully pick your way as you age
Sifting
Through your own
Archaeology
Every treasure every shard
Think of me
At the bottom of the stairs
Worn
Down
Through
The ages
So many people
You are just one more
Another little speck of dust
Blown
Away.
Dis
Ability will visit us all
That guest we forgot about
 Half hoped would not appear
Yet may have visited already
That well-worn symbol of a wheelchair
May not be
Accurate
At all

Now that we have all had no choice but to isolate
Stay in
Look out at a world
Continuing its story
Perhaps you’re used to being the leading character
In your life
Now you just come on
 Say a few lines
 Slink away
Bit part
You are not used to that
Not happy with your cameo role
Consider the world that has turned
Upside
 Down
From mine and so many others’ point of view
The telescope reflects an unfamiliar landscape
that’s our lives
Don’t pity me
Otherwise, you really haven’t
Understood
Judge a little less, understand a little more
If you have questions, ask
Even if I can’t see your face
Behind that
Mask
Ask
Even if it’s
‘What’s wrong with you?’
Nothing, blame it on the society, that’s  what’s wrong
I am not an angel
Haven’t polished my halo in a while
May have slipped off
 Whilst I was not looking
I do not want to inspire you
Be your charity case
Make you feel good
You helped the ‘disabled’
Just yesterday a man in the swimming pool called out to my assistant
‘Bless you for helping him’
If you knew the truth
Appearances are deceptive
I am not saying anymore
‘Let’s stop there please’

Isolation
We are a nation of 60 million people
6 million people with a disability
We are people first
Who can be as wonderful, generous, loving, bad tempered, selfish as anybody else
What did I say?
People
It takes all sorts of people to make up this world
Stairs will still defeat us
As will that feeling summed up in that recent survey
70% of people would not date a disabled person
After a year and a half
We can now hug, kiss, touch, love,
How isolating that we are still acceptable as victims, less comfortable as lovers?
Think about the next time you are on your way
Upstairs.

Jamie Tinklepaugh is…

…a wordsmith, poet, writer, lover of languages and words. Peter views the world through the eyes and hands of an artist, with his sketch book. We have been travelling the world together for the last 35 years, sharing a love of languages, adventure and unexpected encounters.  I chronicled one trip travelling by train from London to Hong Kong in my book ‘Wheeling East’: tinyurl.com/hjpfapsc

CONTACT:

Via the festival team: touchfest@deserthearts.com