Stay good, stay pristine
and you won’t give me a showing up.
Stay silent, don’t move,
and I won’t need to show you why you’re sorry.
Stay mine, don’t have an opinion,
and I won’t slap you around my table.
Stay perfect, don’t pull your ribbon out,
and I won’t need to adjust you in public.
Stay close to me, don’t challenge me,
and I won’t need to give you a showing up.
This poem is for NaPoWriMo Day 20, challenging us to write in the voice of a family member. This is from my abusive mother.
You give me a tickly tummy
when I’m ready to race.
I try not to be scared of you,
knowing you’ll up my pace.
You make me feel sick sometimes.
You always bring along some dread
that I won’t be able to perform.
I fear coming last instead.
So, how can I use you to guide me,
to help me think positive things?
Cos surely the butterflies you send me
are there to give me wings…?
Pick up a pen
and fill a page.
Expressive writing
will calm your rage.
Pick up a pen
and say what you feel.
Therapeutic writing
will help you heal.
Pick up a pen
and write from your soul.
Creative writing
will make you whole.
You live in a box of 70s plastic blue,
a doting reminder of
what I quickly outgrew.
Opened, it exudes a scent of resin
that transports me back
to being eleven.
One touch of your fragrant satin
and I’m back on stage in
a pirouetting pattern.
Your robust pointes are carefully sewn,
your ribbons a symbol of our tie.
To you my love I’ve always shown.
From that first day you were moulded to me.
You are singularly mine, today,
as I was back then: size three.
The day we met, I became whole.
I wept when ballet lessons stopped.
Only the smell of you, now, helps console.
I’m still in shock that,
of all my lovers, you –
honest to the core – were
hard to please. Made me feel less
than those you said you’d deceived.
I gave my all, I never put you out
Yet you feigned you were on
when really you were out, on that
desire to claim, on that will to bed,
your obvious needs much more than
I could bring. And yet friends ask of you: is he
the man he always was?
Or is he fumbling and stumbling?
Pretending through his down that he’s up?
As you tread from day to night-time gap, the
lack of sex and intimacy trap, the breathless
lull that leaves you stuck: you climb the stair
to meet him there, urging with some force to
leave his control behind, let some dormant force come forth and burst.
Oh that he leaves his ‘stuff’ behind, changes into
a being that seeks some life fulfilment’s
dream. No more the live-alone desolate
feeling. Can he release the guff that’s trapped in his attic?
Original poem: last four lines of Philip Larkin’s Deceptions
My mum dies.
I lose my dad again.
Doubly I cry.
Take one low self-esteem
and challenge its main themes:
stop thinking ugly duck
let those bullies self-destruct.
Change the way you mirror
to see yourself much clearer.
Chuck that tired old clutter,
keep that stuff that matters.
Take a good old look
at what keeps you so damn stuck.
Let your tongue slip down a sled,
letting go all that’s unsaid.
Create a dumping ground
to feel loved, alive and found.
There’s a magnetic lean to the front
of the elderly, knowing they’re dying.
Will I be next, they say
as their curiosity bends in
to smell the freshly tossed earth,
circling the inevitable grave.
There’s a reticence from the heart
of the broken soul knowing it’s over.
Will I finally leave, they ask,
as they submit to one more abuse
from a partner who says they deserve it.
When will alone beat feeling lonely?
I’m trying to talk,
you look at your watch.
I want your time
but you’re far too cross.
Those lines on your forehead
show you’re far too busy
to raise your glance or
heed the neediest me.
I pluck up some puff
to express how I feel
but your eyes become glazed.
My spine loses its steel.
So what I really want to say
feels unworthy, goes unsaid.
All I want’s a shred of praise
But I flush with shame instead.
I never was, and won’t ever be
enough to be front of mind.
The words I speak to you are mute.
By dismissal I’m undermined.
So I stop showing myself out loud
The treasure is hidden deep.
It’s only my words that know the secrets
my sorry heart’s been forced to keep.
It’s fifteen short years – today – since my dad passed away.
Five long months since my mum did the same –
and two sets of grandparents, before and in between.
My black suit’s hung up, hopefully for a while.
I’m clearing out cupboards, releasing old bones
from my present day guff to stuff from my teens.
I’ve been grieving, on and off, for twenty-five years:
funerals, death, and the emptying of heart,
that beiging of walls that one’s small life becomes.
But my eyes are tired of closing to what’s vibrant.
And I’m done with that greyish half-life not lived.
The anniversary today, I wanted quiet to think
but what I got was the buzz of life and a blocked sink.
I wonder if it’s finally time to colour my house
with the glories of living, not the shadow of a hearse.
inktuition 