The bashing storm in my head
The accusing finger at my temples
The wisdom of knowing their falsehood
Getting out of bed is a struggle
Facing a new day with a smile is a struggle
Fighting for my identity is a real battle
I am not a disappointment
I am not a half way wonder
I am fiercely and freely living
Everything is spinning
out of control.
I rather be angry.
In that way,
at least,
I can do something
about whatever
that is eating me up.
The alternative
is sadness,
and that renders me
powerless.
It surely
will finish me.
This is one of the dark poetry which I wrote as a writing exercise. Dark poetry is not my usual genre. I had fun writing it.
That Summer was so hot.
Grass in the backyard choked
our footsteps.
Lying in bed next to you,
the loud crickets relentlessly
held me off of sleep.
I remembered
the panic in your voice,
‘Did you hear that?
They are coming for us.
Stay still!
They won’t find us.’
You struggled with the locust plague.
We hid underneath the blanket
on a 30 degree night.
Your panic
and the cricket midnight party
went on and on.
My brain shut down
and I slumbered into sleep.
‘Did you smell that?
They are cooking opium again
next door.’
The smell of smoke
stang my eyes to wake.
I sprang up from bed
to rush out to the garden.
The backyard was like
an abandoned camp site
in the daybreak.
You went in the ambulance
laughing in exhilaration,
‘I burned the fuckers.
Don’t you fucking mess with me.
No fucking plague under my watch.
I’m gonna get you,
you piece of shit
reincarnated
opium dealer,
undercover
fucking neighbour.’
That’s how that hot summer ended.
To create
is to be in touch
with authentic self
Dissociation chokes creativity
instead, it births characters
through fantasy for survival
Feeling, you fickle little thing!
How did you deceive a heart so strong to break?
How did you hide from the mountain of sadness
to portrait such a bright grin
each and every day?
How much do you give out to the world to see?
How long do you want to stay behind the bars
of your own tangled web?
Feeling, I thought you were my watch tower.
And you truned out to be the red flags
that I couldn’t see.
This is the recent collaboration with Benjamin Grossman which helped me greatly in breaking my writing ‘numbness’. Please check out Ben’s blog if you have not already read his amazing work.
The glacial battle begins in our heads
Face pressed to the sun-pierced windowpane
January snow in recession, the signs of regression
Half hidden like an iceberg in the arctic water
And where once a soft glow illuminated the surface
Only the placement of desolation remains
Reverberating silent screams
There is no one way of knowing cold
The stages are fluid and transient
Its meaning bitterly ambiguous
Yet in rare lucid moments, I see husks
An empty bed, scarred skin, chattered teeth
Spirit-numbed mind, missed meals, vacant smiles
There is no one way of knowing cold
Its symptoms appear to have no rhyme or reason
Although they move with wintry doom
From person to person increasing in aggression
Till you understand the meaning of icy
Which unbeknownst to us creeps in succession
There is no one way of knowing cold
Though maybe it’s always the same
Emotional and physical reaction
A state of feeling dangerously low
Struggling to survive between cold and colder
The very same polar opposites: Arctic and Antarctica
The garden flat I once lived
was so quiet.
There was this old copper tap dripping
made up the only noise.
I thought of putting some cheese out
to bait some mice to create more sound.
Then I got worried
that I would make them dependent.
And that would be unkind.
Sometimes I held my breath
to listen to the tap.
Just to be sure that
I was not alone.
Why did you deny my talents
I once believed I was a nobody
trapped in my own sanity
Why did you lie about my characters
I was despised by my inner circle
to be an unforgiven failure
Why did you steal my peace
I was terrorised by your pure presence
and poisoned by your every word
Why did you betray your flesh and blood
I was entrusted to your care and protection
in a world that was already cold
Why did you twist a knife in my core belief
I looked into the mirror and saw a shattered self
distorted by your snare
“Hurting people hurt people”
Painting by Virginia Bucknell, you may see more of Virginia’s paintings via: Art Lovers Australia Weebly Instagram
That Summer was so hot.
Grass in the backyard choked
our footsteps.
Lying in bed next to you,
the loud crickets relentlessly
held me off of sleep.
I remembered
the panic in your voice,
‘Did you hear that?
They are coming for us.
Stay still!
They won’t find us.’
You struggled with the locust plague.
We hid underneath the blanket
on a 30 degree night.
Your panic
and the cricket midnight party
went on and on.
My brain shut down
and I slumbered into sleep.
‘Did you smell that?
They are cooking opium again
next door.’
The smell of smoke
stang my eyes to wake.
I sprang up from bed
to rush out to the garden.
The backyard was like
an abandoned camp site
in the daybreak.
You went in the ambulance
laughing in exhilaration,
‘I burned the fuckers.
Don’t you fucking mess with me.
No fucking plague under my watch.
I’m gonna get you,
you piece of shit
reincarnated
opium dealer,
undercover
fucking neighbour.’
That’s how that hot summer ended.
Photograph of painting of a man by Aarón Blanco Tejedor
she was a sunflower
turned her back to below zero
gave her all to the sun
whenever she bloomed
she radiated life and enthusiasm
today
the relentless frost
finally defeated her
a scrunched up sunflower
hung by a noose
her spirit was crushed
with no mercy
– In loving memory of A who lost her fight with PTSD on 25 October 2019
(Two Sunflowers – Painting by Van Gogh 1887)
Flicker of Thoughts 