Back when you stormed out into the dark November sky,
I soaked three onions in your favourite mug.
It is said, if you cut the moons
underwater, they won't make you ripple and wring.
Maybe one can pretend one was dismembering
layers upon layers of little white lines,
lying beneath the purple of your favourite shirt,
A shade above the bruises on my paper thin-skin.
They were right, I could not cry.
Today, I am reading B is for Bad Poetry.
Finally! Something worse than your words.
Poetry for the lay man,
for those who have
no man, and
for those who lay awake alone;
for those who don't need anymore
seasons because they cannot tell the gloom from the glory,
for those who can do
without tracing spines because they cannot find their own,
They get poetry so bad, it reeks
of unoccupied seaters barely stitched together,
of hot dinner kept cold from two weeks ago,
of stale motel rooms for sixty dollars a night, miles from their nest
and a sickening weight upon their thumping chest.
Nobody breathes, but on paper, they try to shriek.
I could do without this cold
but I have burnt my mother while cooking
My favourite soup of old
I have torn a wall in trying to fly.
I have pricked my finger while making a ring
but I have promised myself to try
to smear blood on paper and call it art,
write a poem and call it heart.
This morning, I ran and my chest fell apart
But I stopped before my pulse could start.
All I am saying is that,
For myself, I am learning to live.
It is, perhaps, my only gift.
(references have been made to Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy
and B is for Bad Poetry by Pamela August Russell )
and B is for Bad Poetry by Pamela August Russell )
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