08/07/20

I know I must have been happy then.
And if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost feel it
Between scrunched eyes and clenched teeth.

09/09/19

Memorized by your quick rage;
So readily summoned,
So inexplicable to me.
So, in my stunned state,
I forget to cower
From your well-practiced blows.

01/09/19

Your sweet, sincere smile.
Soft.
Stretched.

Strained.

Subjected to my single-syllabled solecisms.

Snarled.

Loving lips split.
Contort to bare clenched teeth.

I fuck up again.

03/08/19

Peel away
Your plastic smile.
There is, by far, more beauty
In the honest intensity
Of your quiet rage.
Blaze furiously onwards
In searing magnificence.

Do not speak to me in poetry

Do not speak to me in poetry.
Don’t present me with neat words;
Hand-tied,
Ribbon-topped.

Do not speak to me in poetry.
Give me raw, rasping rhetoric–
Rough and unrefined.
Imperfectly accurate.

Do not speak to me in poetry.
Don’t deceive me with rhyme;
Give me ugly truths,
Ill-thought-out.

Do not speak to me in poetry.

[14/01/19]

No more for you

How many more poems are in you?
I don’t want to keep writing about you.
Thinking about you.
Living and reliving you.
I don’t remember good with you.
I don’t want that nearness to you;
That association.
How much pain is in me still?
It is mine, not yours.
I reclaim my pain.
I reclaim my words.

[06/01/19]

Journalling

Journalling eternally
Fulfilling something deep in me;
Nurturing maternally
The turmoil that stews in me;
Harnessing and channelling
The things that I find challenging;
The doubting and the piss-taking,
The venom-spat crap shit-talking.
The bothering, the bullying,
The bitching and the bollockings,
The two-faced pre-teen teasing,
Taunting, testing, second-guessing;
And the you can’t dance, and you can’t sing.
The slouching, acne,
You’re too fat,
You’re weird, you’re gross,
You can’t do that;
And shut your mouth, and sit back down;
The “Alright love, don’t have to frown”.
The fucking fights
And family
And friends
And “friends”,
And poverty.
And punishment and petulance,
And ill-judged verbal flatulence.
For every nasty, angry lie–
Another verse, another line,
Another day not in my mind.
Just ugly words for pretty rhymes.

[27/12/18]