Tag / dversepoetspub

by Carol J Forrester

Privilege Does Not Always Protect

Little girls are taught that boys being boys,

will torment to show their love.

 

Big girls will claim that love makes up

for bruises,

broken bones and split lips.

 

I am lucky not to have known that sort of that love.

I’ve never been struck

by someone claiming their heart beats for me

while echoing the beating with their fists.

 

When it happens to a man

they are reduced to the weaker sex,

because it’s bad enough when a woman

doesn’t have the balls to leave.

 

Without experiencing the same thing

I can’t say for certain,

but I’ve carried enough fear with me

to understand what it is to cling

to the things we know.

 

Privileged,

is a tricky word to stick

when most of us hide

the things dragging us down.

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by Carol J Forrester

Good Ideas – #DVersePoets Quadrille Night

Good ideas never really come all at once.

Your lightbulb moment

is more like the switch on a kettle

pinging to off when the water finally comes

to a full boil.

The stillness can be mistaken for suddenness,

but clarity

takes longer to steep.

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by Carol J Forrester

Another Poem About A Boy

They told me you were hard to puzzle out,

a riddle wrapped in a conundrum.

Like an onion, I would have to peel back the layers

to find what you really were beneath.

In reality,

your smile was so open,

I walked in uninvited.

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by Carol J Forrester

A Garden Variety Hurt

I looked up what ivy was supposed to represent,

after we called the man with the poison

to clear the wooden fence panel right to the root.

This creeping plant,

that works its way between the cracks,

and closes its fist so slowly,

so quietly,

that you cannot see the brickwork break,

it’s supposed to represent friendship.

I thought about you then,

how I’d failed to see how deep you’d planted yourself

until the moment that you cracked me clean in half.

Like ivy, you keep coming back

no matter the cold or the drought,

there is no prying those tendrils loose,

no poison that will make this shadow of you wither.

I must live with the damage you have caused.

I must somehow learn how not to crumble.

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