More Poems from the Archives

The following poems were all written in the second year of my university course in Lancaster. It was a tumultuous time for both me and O, with my mood being all over the place and although we had some really good times we also went through some of the toughest times in our relationship to date. I do not claim that the following poems are some of my most technically competent or well written, but I am publishing them here because I think they have something to say, and capture something of this part in my life.

Pregnancy Scare

He sits in his cage
day and night.
A small box
full of his own shit.
I'm scared of him:
scared of his teeth,
scared of his tail,
scared of his potential
to run away from me.
More than just an impulse buy
guilt on legs.
If I am too scared to love a rat
then how can I
love a child?
Brittle bones
and tiny hands
she will break into pieces easier
than the cornflakes
on the kitchen floor
underneath my feet.


The Truth of the Matter.

Having a mental illness is not about slashing your wrists and rocking backwards and forwards whilst grown men hold you down in four point restraints.
No,
It’s wearing knickers that are fifteen days old.
It’s your jealous friends not being jealous of you, but full of pity.
It’s realising you can’t do something that you could do when you were five, like eat a sausage roll without thinking you were going to choke and die.
It’s being full of self doubt twenty four seven.
It’s not being able to ever participate fully.
It’s not being able to remember a film you watched last night.
It’s cringing with shame for the next week when you get somebody’s name wrong.
It’s cutting your leg with a screwdriver because you haven’t and will never finish that essay.
It’s ruminating for hours about what the last thing you eat will be before you die.
It’s going around in circles and recycling old epiphanies again and again and again.
It’s knowing in your heart of hearts that you are boring.
Its knowing you are a cliché, so clichéd you can’t even write a book about all this one day.
It’s not ever being able to think as clearly as you did the day before.
It’s over idealising yesterday and fearing everything about tomorrow.
It’s never being able to live in the moment.
It’s eating a whole chocolate cake without even feeling guilty.

It's killing time watching “A Place in the Sun” when the sun is actually shining and you sit in your gloomy living room.
It’s not being able to enjoy a kiss because you’re obsessed with the way your chin looks.
It’s not being able to think of anything artistically except illness and death.
It’s watching torture victims on the news and feeling nothing.
It’s wanting to die and being terrified of death.


Born Lucky

Right now
in this, our beautiful world
someone is taking their last breath,
someone is doubled up in agony,
someone is crying, but more than that
millions are crying at this very second.
People are starving.
People are burning.
A man is hung on a rack in a torture chamber,
A woman is spread legged on the gravel
being taken, foreign hand over her mouth.

A boy’s balloon pops.
An old man is having his teeth removed.
Some poor nurse is having to say the terminal words
I’m sorry you’ve got cancer,
I’m sorry there was nothing more we could do for him,
I’m sorry, you’ll never walk again,
Would you like us to turn the machine off?
And I look at my trainers
I think of brown hands stitching
the child at the machine
the beads of sweat along their brow.
A gun is being aimed to kill,
a needle is sliding into a vein.
Vomit is hitting the ground with a splash,
a woman is fondling herself alone in her bathroom.
Brakes fail,
hearts fail,
rain fails,
appendixes rumble.
There is mud and dirt
and endless hunger.
People are thirsty
desperately thirsty
yet on this Tuesday morning
over elevenses
you snap your head up
from your grainy cup of coffee
pick up your cupcake and growl
“What the hell are you
grinning for?”

Pure Nostalgic Soppiness

I’ve been sorting out the ‘my documents’ section of my computer which hasn’t been reorganised since the second year of Uni, back in 2002. It has been quite some feat! I have found millions of unfinished blogs, introductory paragraphs for short stories and lots of embarrassing photographs.

Also, over the course of this frustrating dragging, sorting and deleting of files, I came across some old poems. They made me feel quite nostalgic so I thought I’d share the ‘best’ (I use the term loosely) ones on this blog so they’re not just languishing away on my hard drive for the next five years.

The following three are love poems, written over the course of mine and Owen’s relationship. They are displayed in chronological order. ‘Marked’ was a poem I wrote the morning after the first time we had sex without a condom, I was wrapped in a blanket waiting for Owen to make me a cup of tea and feeling very taken, very in love. ‘Because you must love me’ was written in the aftermath of a silly argument as a reconciliation gift, and ‘Victory’ was composed on the beach outside our Honeymoon apartment, three days after we had married.


Marked

It smells
sickly sweet
running down
my insides.
I thought it
would waft up in
savoury swirls.
I thought it was
supposed to be
salty.
It trickles out of me
soaking through my
stolen boxer shorts.
I think of them now,
swimming inside of me,
tiny little tadpoles
that all have your face.


Because I guess you must love me

I’m sorry for my clothes,
on your bedroom floor.
For never shutting the toilet door,
For being too tired and not rubbing your head,
my knickers kicked carelessly under the bed.
For turning conversation too often on me
and endlessly wondering what the future will be.
For eating all the pickled onions in the jar
and constantly dreaming of being a star.
For not washing up
and picking my nose
and ignoring five day old
stains on my clothes.
For talking and talking,
dragging heels when I’m walking
for interrupting john snow-
and finding it hard to just flow.
For not being bothered to go on top,
for keeping on going when you ask me to stop.
For wearing your dressing gown and burning the sleeve,
and just never knowing when I should leave.
For farting and wafting it under your nose,
for admiring and lusting then stealing your clothes.
For my hair brained schemes, my silly ideas
my cigarette breath and not cleaning my ears.
For the occasional tantrum when I don’t get my own way
my inevitable tendency to overlay
tell me this darling:
why the fuck do you stay?


Victory

He swims
up and down
the shore,
head bobbing
like a beautiful buoy
in the ocean.
His skin
glistens
in the sun,
his eyes
sparkle
like the water
dripping down
his body.
And I think
fuck me
how good it is
to witness
death
being cheated
by flesh
and blood.
How we've lost
before we've started
but our small
victories
are sips of
water
on a long
hot day
in Spain.