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Tag Archives: confessional poem

permission

for a long time I
chose to be
your victim
all torn up with
sorrow and disgust
making you all evil
all wrong
and myself
so weak
it was so much easier
to absolve myself of
thorny responsibility
this way

now
that victimhood belongs
to you
not me
not anymore
I survived your
long con
and your violence
and I will
not allow your
actions to scar me
any more
because you
are lower than shit
not evil
no, because that
would relinquish you
from the permanence of
who you are
in your humanity
and
the choices you made
in your selfishness

the reasons why I
allowed you to
exist within me
mean nothing at all
not now
not anymore
my pain
does not matter
not anymore
because I
have given it
permission to leave
forever

rope

he is a
wooden a-frame
an old one,
resolutely standing
at the side of
the school hall,
just waiting
to be climbed and clambered upon
by the tenth generation
of children.
you would think
time should have
weathered the pine,
should have
made it splinter and break
but still it retains
its polished surface
and strength,
somehow.

I am
not a wooden a-frame,
more a hanging rope
that burns the hands
and sways unpredictably
fun to climb
hard to
get down from.
but a treasured
piece of
school gym equipment,
nonetheless

holly

just a road like any other
suburban to the very core
full of grey paving slabs
and comfortable family cars
each house square and dignified
with just the right amount
of curtain twitching.

the shrubs are lined up
outside the short brick fences
each one alike in its nature
each front garden path,
trodden in with memories of
grown up children and
school mornings past

the holly bushes of the house
that once was ours
seem to glitter in
the dim night light,
but not looking nearly so
inviting as they did
all those years ago.

I steal a sprig from the front
a perfect thing, its points
all frosted with white
some fairytale thing,
it seems it my hand
a little piece of green is all
but dripping rich with
vibrant memories of the plainest
days

plain,
but so wonderfully pure
so wonderfully formative
so like a dream,
that I scarcely can believe
they belong to me at all.

joy hits me
heavy in the chest
with a fist
as I look through
painted green window frames,
still existing as they ever did.
and my sadness
comes off the roof
as mirror-like summer heat
or through the old brick chimney
smoking logs that we burnt
for three whole Christmases.

porcelain

the sink is my
porcelain paradise
running water and
safe smells of soap
my porcelain paradise
my porcelain prison.

contamination lurks
all around it,
once-friendly taps and
plastic bottles
seek to ruin my
little ritual with their
looming possibilities of infection

an elbow to the door,
the faucet,
a towel to turn the water on,
little fingers to turn handles and
the indexes to scratch itches.
still
everything feels dirty
and wrong
no matter how rigidly
I stick to my
fucking stupid little ritual

I sit in my bed,
another prison of comfort
surrounded by my things
my things that were
so clean this morning
now besmirched and dirtied
by what I
fear so greatly

I am a lapdog prisoner
content to lock the door
of my own cell,
to bolt the windows
and suffer
even though
freedom would be so much
easier.

easier
but so full of danger.
perhaps
I should be done with it,
and cut my own hands off.
perhaps.

magic

how can you
ever repay
goddesses
who gave you life?
a debt so enormous
unending
and true
yet never once
expected.

woman bore you,
in her body
laughed in the face
of the foul
modern expectation of her life
her work
never finished,
as you grew and squalled.

she bore a life,
and watched it
destroyed by
things she
could never control.
with her own pain
a searing
knife in the heart,
yours, a thousand
needles in her eyes.

yet
she carried you.
she is not made of magic
she is a foundation
on which you built your
independence,
expected by all as
a cornerstone of life

life tells us
she is not made of magic
but look
deeply into her loving eyes,
and it is what you will see
plainer than cotton
clearer than summer sky.
her magic imbues
us all.

room

the hot
white room
still tingling
with newness
paint and lino the same
is not the
friendliest place
to cast a glance
but somehow here
us strangers
freely see
our souls and sufferances
reflected in the walls
somehow here
strangers are my kin
all-knowing
of the aces and queens I
hold so tightly
locked to my chest
and though I avoid
the shocking blues
and greens of my friends
and lovers,
our brown
unknown eyes
meet in comfort
not breaking as we
would outside
in the world
we call real

what a strange
and hot room
this is.

dew

I’m not there yet, but I will be soon. 

my heart overflows with grace and gratefulness.
I suffer, surely.
but this humbles me
with a reward of
pure, composed contentment.

how could I
enjoy the dawn
so auroral,
argent and glittering with dew,

if never to live
in the mirthless night,
the sepulchral darkness?

if never to lift up my arms
in the unoiled sister-shackles
of pain, and furious fear?

the dawn comes,
and with it
the heavenliest sigh;
“freedom.”

ashes

year after year
I drop
cigarette ashes
and salt water
on your portrait.

is this not
a potent enough
concoction?
is this not
the spell
that will work?

my arms are dirty
with the
tea stains
you left behind,
no
vanishing solution
to clear them.

my lungs
and heart
they perished
along
with your
yellow skin.

but mine
emptied of
organs,
travels onward
despite complaint.

there was
no need
to breathe in.
no need to
beat.

the lesson
was learned
then,
in a hot room
of lilies
and machines.

the fifteen holes
in organs
rotten from suffering
tighten into
scar tissue.

they are
you
as I am
you.

I will
visit again
soon.

honey

your peaceful dreams
they dissolve
like sugar cubes in
below-average cups of tea

and your nightmares,
they stick to you
like hard golden toffees
stick to broken teeth

by now you should know
that sweetness rots your gums
and gives you gaping cavities
that are costly to repair

you may crave the
dripping satisfaction of syrup
in your little mouth
on your little tongue

but do you really want to remember
the honey trickling down your throat
when you are scrutinizing
the size of your hips again?

my darling, no
replace the lid of the biscuit tin
and be grateful that nobody
wants to see beneath your summer dress