I remember
Being so young of age I could count
My years on one of my hands
My teacher was gone for the day
So we joined our classmates next door
My teacher was gone
My safety net for a day
I counted the minutes tick by
I ran out of fingers
And then
I ran
Out of hands.
I’m trying my best
I’m shutting my mind
I’m reading a book
I’m eating sweet cake.
Anything to qualm
These pesky annoying sweet
Butterflies
Flying
Flapping
Flickering
Inside of me.
An uninvited
Stranger
Stealthily tiptoed
Across my
Unsuspecting
Vision.
I’m tormented.
And so the pain I suffered lifetimes ago
Buried far beneath ten layers of snow
Simmered and stewed and viciously grew
An explosion came as it threatened to do
The band was ripped and all laid bare
My pain is raw, love was never fair
Cloaked in a sheen of
Vulnerability.
Obscuring hidden scars unseen
Before a blinking eye –
Or shocked murmur could
Escape.
Her cloth was yanked aside
Exposed!
Not everything was lost.
For past the steaming horror
Of uninvited eyes
A tapestry of beauty
Expressions of life and colour and love and pain and strife
Quietly shyly
But with a growing confidence
Emerged.
I gave myself
For cheap slivers of silver
I sold myself
To the lowest bidder
I fought a weakness that is too
Strong
I battled a nature I could not
Quell
Before I could trip my own self up I simply –
I simply gave it all up
I simply and hopelessly
Fell.
Alone I sit
Conflicting thoughts for company
I hear the laughter I hear the sounds
Of lovers, partners, friend and family
While fish in ponds before me splash
I breathe the air I breathe the peace
I exhale those longings that take hold
With a merciless strangulation
Around my soul
I exhale it all.
At the very edge I sit
As the streaming waters flow
Reflections of the day abound
Settling on a rippled plain
Moon and stars share their
Glistening lights below
Caressing my heart
My mind
My soul
A thought
As tiny as a thought can be
Popped alive and into being
A thought of you
Gained strength and speed
Intwined its limbs and wrapped itself
Around my hapless
Helpless craving
A thought of you
Devoured the whole of
Me and in its wake I was left with nothing
More than a wafting scented dream of
You
Each day I longed to walk with you
To share each drop of finite time
Your hands your face your touch I feel
It’s written on my stolen heart
This heart of steel I thought I had
Is nothing more than molten stream
Of pain and hurt and loss and want
I empty all myself of you.
Cast my heart anew of gold.
Poems and Petals 