FOR THE LOVE OF POETRY

Monday

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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

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*a poem about someone else's experience

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The colours in my washing machine

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Seventeen

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A drop

​

In the ocean

I am sinking

Sinking

Do you see me?

Hear me

Soundlessly

Screaming

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Choking

Clawing

Freefalling

Deeper

Darker

Colder

Ice cold

To the core

Numb

Barely there

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Well at least I got a bloody poem out of it

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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

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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.