Tag Archives: free verse

strawberries

you are part of me, yes
but you seem so
far away and surreal
not quite a fairytale
not quite a fantasy character
from my little picturebook,
but you have lived only
in photographs for so long
that the thought of you
somehow existing in my reality
is almost laughable

you could almost have been
my imaginary friend
or a once-loved doll
from the toybox,
lost to the years and
faded now in adulthood
with nobody really
too sure on the
specifics of your life’s breath

I remember the sting
of dettol on my grazed toes
that I got dancing
through steps and wild
strawberries,
the first week we moved
the scars are long gone now,
but I bristle in joy
each time I see a strawberry
growing on the side of the road.

I remember my baby heart
turning into stone
when you sucked in your
last laboured breath
tucked into clean white sheets
your bones are long buried now,
yet your soul’s suffering
is still taking up
too much space in my mind bank

should I surround myself
with strawberries and slippers
brown LP sleeves and men who
grumble and laugh like you
used to do, before
you were dying?
will these things
ease my inheritance of your pain?

only that I had
been just a little
bit older
perhaps you’d be
an anchor instead of
the salt sea breeze

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.

soldier

the lonely
titular warrior
never won
any battles.

but she had
no choice

that is why
they called her
the lonely
warrior.

the single
swordwielder,

dies lush in
folklore,
but she dies covered
in blood and shit

like every
nameless soldier.

there are no
dragons
to slay
in abrupt reality.

no princes
to peel

from cruel enchantments,
crumbling castles,
vicious step-parents,
or jealous fairies.

she speaks alone,
alone,

in battlefield pits
to nobody.
what good,
is your war cry?

what good,
is the war cry

from your sweet
wound of a mouth
when said
into nothing?

stone

stone girl,
you look in the mirror
who do you see there?

do you see
the cracks
in your
nature

do you see
how you filled
them up
with technicolour?

stone girl,
you feel the storm
weathering your heart

I wonder
if you know
how implausibly strong
your barriers are

I wonder
if you feel
your rejections
of splintered wood

stone girl,
you brace the curse
of a compromise

the others
made of clay
could never know
your power

the others
so delicate
when mixed with water
glazed over

stone girl,
you were thrown
into the fire

stone girl,
you came out
at one thousand degrees

stone girl,
if only you could know
what you have defeated

knife

alone now.
sea air is a knife,
but a clean blade brings purity to skin

icons are dead.
nostalgia is a knife,
burnt and stuck in heart of existence, before

dream is wrecked.
this city is a knife,
sweet and sharp caresses down trembling sides of lovers

together once.
love was a knife,
carved perfect patterns into the history books we read to others

still alive.
I could be a knife,
on the right hand, aiding divisions, set neatly, for need or want or standby