
FOR THE LOVE OF POETRY
Monday
It was a sunny day, a bad day
A mother-of-all-news day
I felt sad, I felt bad
And maybe just a tad
Bitter and disappointed
Well actually a lot
Nothing else can be said
Except life goes on
So I just… went to bed
*a poem about someone else's experience
The colours in my washing machine
I have colours in my washing machine
Spinning round and round and round
I thought it would be okay to mix them up
But confusion and disorientation is what I found
The red has leaked and seeped into the blue
Turning it into the colour of a bruise
And the white once bright has now greyed
Into a cold miserable winters day
I can’t seem to find the summer yellow
Oh wait, hang on, there it is, hi, hello!
But it’s quickly replaced by a mushy brown
A colour beaten and battered, making me frown
The washing machine spins a hundred miles an hour
I can’t keep up, it’s exhausting all the power
I don’t know what to do; I don’t know how to make it stop
At this rate, I will need a bucket and a mop
To wipe up the water that is sure to spill out
And drown the inhabitants of this house
My words
Sometimes
I talk too fast
The words, they just
They roll off my tongue
Run out of my mouth
And dissipate into the atmosphere before I can even-
And sometimes
I think too much
The thoughts, they just
They whirl around in my mind twirl around in my brain
Making fleeting connections but dissolving before I can even-
Because you see
We don’t always think in words
And we don’t always think in pictures
We think in thoughts.
And I want to share those thoughts with the world but sometimes, sometimes the thoughts, they just, they get lost
In translation
So I’m just
Uttering
Stuttering
Stumbling, mumbling
Pausing and causing confusion and pollution with my words
Sometimes my thoughts they
Race through my mind at the speed of light
And my words they
Try and keep up
But they’re never quick enough so my thoughts they
They have to slow down and once they lose momentum they stop and once they’ve stopped they-
And when my words finally catch up with my thoughts
They’re only in partial
Incomplete
Unfinished
And my message to the world is
Only half done
Half-spoken
Half-shared
So I stand here in despair
Wondering why I even opened my mouth
And let the words slip out
Occasionally I feel like I’m running out of time
It’s just slipping through my fingers, running down my arms and dripping off my elbows
And my words
The word that I need in that moment is swept away so I’m just scrabbling, fumbling, groping in the dark trying to find a replacement but all I’m left with is a shadow
Of the word that I need
But ironically
Every now and then
I also get overloaded with words
Like a flooded dam on a stormy night, they rise up and spill over
And because time is slipping and the world is waiting
I don’t have the luxury of selecting
So the words that come out of my mouth are uncensored
I talk fast
My sentences restart, not once, twice, maybe thrice
I don’t mean to but sometimes I speak so offhandedly I actually talk offensively and at times I may forget to add an s at the end of a word and mix up my singulars with my plurals, making me obsess over whether I sound like an ignorant ignoramus
But they’re my words
They may be
Rough around the edges
And they may graze you as they fly by
But embrace them with an open mind and you’ll see
They’re a work in progress
Like an outline of a sketch
Or a rough cut of a film
Or a skeleton of a dance
And what I am trying to share
Is there
If you just care
To hear
Seventeen
A drop
In the ocean
I am sinking
Sinking
Do you see me?
Hear me
Soundlessly
Screaming
Choking
Clawing
Freefalling
Deeper
Darker
Colder
Ice cold
To the core
Numb
Barely there
Well at least I got a bloody poem out of it
Sticky black strands wrapped around my waist
Snaking up my back, shoulders, neck, face
Don’t get too happy, I’m still here
I’ll never leave you
Tired
Head stuffy, nose fluey
Muscles aching, bones shrinking
In
On
Themselves
Condensing, compacting
My eyes retracting
Into their sockets
Tight throat
Hard to swallow
I want to be angry
I want to want to curl up in my bed and sleep the day away
But I’m a body in a coffin
Buried alive
With the weight of the earth compressing the air out of the space
The air is being compressed out of the coffin
In the coffin the air is being pressed
Leaving nothing but an asphyxiating blackness,
The vile after taste of a sick sense of humour,
A tiny, tiny heartbeat, somewhere, barely there
And just out of reach
The relief of death
Dangles
To stay or to go
The moment when you need to make a decision but each option pulls you from either side and with equal force and you think okay I’m going to blindly pick one and you do and for a moment there is clarity until the opposing side taps you on your shoulder and reminds you of all the reasons why it is there.