Poetry & Prose by Carol J Forrester
This tether will not lead me to anything,
least of all you.
But still I keep it clasped
between rope burnt palms
unsure of the slack
where once there was a taut pull,
desperate and pleading,
but slowly fraying
in the places I chose not to look.
With the Daily Prompt no longer running I’m looking for some new places to hunt for inspiration. Does anyone have any recommendations for poetry prompts/link ups that take place during the week?
You arrived too early,
at the point when my heart
could only shudder not flutter.
So unused to feeling anything
besides the grinding of pieces
forcing themselves to fit
into places grown too small.
Instead of heat pooling somewhere deep
there was fire along my hairline
inside the back of my skull,
with some primordial lesson still drumming
in the shadows of my DNA.
A tempo of hammering,
lungs creasing and collapsing
feet turned to lead still beating
with the panic of my pulse
as I let the miles run out of count
beneath me.
Catching my breath was a year long exericse
which when marked
only came up with a half score
of ‘could do better if she applied herself’
and ‘doesn’t seem to really understand
the subject matter discussed.’
Daily Post: Premature
Despite the warning signs
I pressed myself against your skin,
let the acid burn away my fingerprints
until only teeth were left
to identify the body by.
You were poison and venom,
though it’s unclear how
the first dose was administered.
If you closed your mouth
around my throat
or if I sank my fangs into you.
What doesn’t kill you
can make you stronger.
Or shift the basis of your DNA
until the mutations
become the building block
of something new and half done.
When I recognized us
for the first time
I didn’t know my own face.
Something that toxic
could never be real.
I knew we were wrong when the doors closed on an empty theatre
and every mistake I’d ever made
came up in black and white on the screen behind you.
Power-point has its uses.
Explaining how to make someone more lovable
is not one.
Daily Post: Lecture
There are days where parakeets won’t stop squawking,
monkeys are rattling cage bars like tambourines,
chatter and laughter from hyenas is overflowing,
elephants have expanded from trumpets to brass bands,
pythons pay xylophone across giraffe necks,
riverdance is hammered out by gazelle,
hippos have taken up a baseline that’s rattling my bones
while lions sing tenor like a welsh church choir
and all at once sound becomes this physical thing
battering me in submission.
This zoo inside my head doesn’t know silence,
it doesn’t even know quiet or tempered or hushed,
all it knows is the racket
threatening my eardrums from the inside.
The one that won’t stop despite my screaming
despite my pleading.
It doesn’t understand that all I want
is for it to stop.
Written For The Daily Prompt: Zoo
