Bluebell in my hand,
Sheltered petals kissed with dew,
Cold gnawing at my fingers,
But I will not let her through.
Bluebell safe and warm,
Perfume rising on the wind,
Winter wants to take you from me,
But I will not let him win.
Bluebell dipped in sky,
Violet harbour in this grey,
I know that you are dying,
But you need not be afraid.
Bluebell mine, bluebell mine,
Ever beautiful and frail,
Long after you have left me,
My heart will sing your tale.
Imagine if Death were a child,
A curious collector of things,
Of the fireflies flickering deep in our souls,
Kept in jam jars with polka dot trims.
Indexed, and ordered, and filed,
An exquisite, unparalleled trove,
An existential menagerie, if you will,
Indiscriminate, eclectic, and bold.
And the stories that she would amass,
Vast tomes atop dust laden shelves,
The penned trinkets and temporal titbits of man,
Bedtime tales of creation itself.
There would be quiet, unassuming ones, ones driven by love,
There would be ones that stood out from the rest,
There would be tragic ones, ones that would go forever unsung,
But the simple, honest ones would be the best.
Every jar, every soul, every book, every tale,
An epitaph for the universe known,
Her museum a beacon for those passing over,
Calling them, guiding them home.
Imagine if Death were a child,
She’d be lonely, she’d be lost and afraid,
But as she toed through the interminable dark after life,
Her jam jars would light up her way.
My mind is sticky, stuck,
That’s the tricksy part of luck;
To have these thoughts, these needs,
and to never set them free…
They do not know me yet
– closet hyperbolic wreck –
(See, they still think I’m sane
and I still play their games),
But my mind is sticky, stuck,
My lips are melted shut
while my heart growls, stomach screams,
and an earthquake rips my seams.
Black Dog’s pulling on his lead;
A hungry, rabid fiend,
Must let the right ones in
to this naked sideshow of my sin,
But my mind is sticky, stuck,
Disconnected, out of touch,
And they will see the cracks set in,
Watch through translucent skin,
See my insides turn to ash,
Watch me stutter, jerk, and thrash,
But they’ll never do enough
to get my sticky mind unstuck.
I was not involved in #NaPoWriMo (now #GloPoWriMo) last year, and while I can’t commit to the whole 30 days, this year I may dip in and out….
Here’s a poem about choice:
DOOR
There is a door
at the end
of the hall,
Shut tight.
It is not locked,
but jammed
with fear.
How did I end up here?
I press an ear
to the wood,
I think I could,
I think I should,
But is an open door
really freedom?
Or just the beginning
of a razor edged wall?
Will I fly?
Will I fall?
Should I sacrifice it all
for possibility?
Or is that naive of me?
In reality the
shades are grey
And so I stay
put.
For now…
Better the devil
you vowed
to know.
We are
our missing pieces,
The missing peace that eats us,
That chips away at the stone
until we alone are rebirthed
as earthen vessels of
imperfectly perfect worth,
Filled with errs,
And blurs of unsures,
And swirls of cause
and effect,
Centiletres of regret.
We are an amalgation
of tears and blood and sweat,
Of all the yesses that were nos,
And of the times we second guessed and froze,
A web of what ifs and not yets,
Of bated breaths,
Of one-bar rests,
Of waiting for the right time,
Of praying for some more time,
Of grieving for our lost time.
We are everyone we have ever met,
And yet
we can never be free,
Because we still see each other
differently,
An endless spool of not like mes,
Of better than shes,
Of wish I were hes,
When in reality
We are me
and she
and he,
We are perfectly
and beautifully
and unequivocally…
we.
We all bleed.
Our hearts all drum.
We are all the sum of the things
we have done and seen,
And of all that’s in between,
We are all the sum of the things
we think and feel and say,
We are meant to be this way;
Flawed,
and scarred,
and scuffed.
And that…
Well that is
good enough.
Morning, long time no write, but it’s #nationalpoetryday today so of course, I had to write a teensy little something……
A History Lesson
A flame is ignited,
Paper fans are firelighting,
A history’s divided
and the ashes fall either side,
Her story unfolds
But his story denies it
A silk net that’s entangled
with untruths inside it,
Love may be blinded
but hate sees a spectrum of shades,
Where she becomes all
because he is afraid?
Or misguided? Or privileged?
Or deeply ashamed?
That the past is not buried, forgotten, mislaid,
That from the fight for true justice
he cannot dissaude
this rainbow that broke through
the clouds that had greyed,
Of the truth that will thrive, that will grow,
that pervades,
And won’t march quietly onwards
To the drumbeat he plays,
Won’t be quelled by the promise
of thirty one days
to remember, and teach, and sing out
of an age
when he was her master
and she was his slave.
© 2016
I’m drowning
in this sea of faces,
So many faces,
All eyes on me,
So many eyes,
I’m suffocated,
So many eyes,
But none can see,
My mind rewinds,
Removes all traces,
Inside, my stasis
starts to bleed,
The wounds are born
from sworn self hatred
that filters out
wellwishers deeds,
All good intent
my mind erases,
And in its place;
a rotten seed,
And from it grows
all the hollow aching
Black Dog’s thirst
could ever
need.
I took a moment to
walk
in the
wind,
It took hold of my limbs
and danced me to the skies,
An invisible guide
that found its way
inside my mind
and whispered,
“It will be OK”,
Showed me there’s another way,
That there will be another day
beyond this night,
That it’s all right
to sometimes hide away,
To secrete my tears amidst the rain,
To stifle sobs until they fade,
To mask the pain,
Because a walk inside the wind
clears the cobwebs of all sin,
clears out
e v e r y t h i n g
and muffles all their din
so I can let the right ones in,
Reset,
Restart,
Rescind,
so I can win.
Photo credit: Radu Voinea
Inspired by the dutch word uitwaaien:
I am through,
And it’s all on you.
I know that I will lose,
And when I do,
I know that I will choose
to welcome death,
I cannot catch my breath,
My eyes are sunken,
My mind is drunken,
My face is ripped off and I’m hunkered,
The body blows are raining
and I’m failing,
Because I cannot duck and weave,
How can I when I cannot even breathe?
There’s no reprieve.
I am drowning
in the sky,
I cannot hide,
The night
washes over like a tide,
Fills my lungs with poisoned dye
overflowing through my eyes
like acid tears,
And I am melting,
Dissociative and helpless.
I am through
and it’s all on you,
You could stop this if you choose,
But you refuse
to let it go,
Your heart is stone,
Your hooded deeds are hammers striking bone,
Your words alone are iron
and I am pummeled from a lion
to a haggard Jouvet cat,
Slipping from the only consciousness I had,
My head is lolling,
The water’s calling,
I am falling,
I am drowned,
The roar of life
has dragged me down
and it has left me
without sound,
Silent, bloated, blue.
I am through,
and it’s all on you.
Well played.
I am a sleeping bear
with the richest hide of tan,
Try and wake me if you dare,
But none too many can.
You can poke and you can tease;
I may grumble, I may moan,
But in a deep passivity
I have made my humble home.
A bear unlike my kin,
Yes indeed I stand apart,
For while I may have thickened skin,
It hides a timid heart.
So sleep is what I choose,
And I choose sleep because it’s safe,
For even the strongest sinews
will give way to strain and fray.
One hundred times you’ll shake me,
One hundred times I will ignore,
One hundred one? Now that will break me
and this sleeping bear will roar.
So the moral here is clear,
The warning; plain to see
I am a sleeping bear
and you’d do well to leave me be.
