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 more than a bucket and a mop
To wipe up the water that is sure to spill out
And drown the inhabitants of this house
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 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.