Found fuel in my anger and burnt like a star. Bright but bitter. Still, it was beautiful, to be cloaked in fire. A phoenix for you to pluck over and over until ash, then flame, over and over again, and again. Until I ran out, grew volatile, beyond control. Singed you, a little. Realised fear, on your face when I broke past your expectations. Learnt burning eats you, from the inside out. Word of the Day: Fire
Keep your balance and your wits grasped tight. Knot them between your fingers like purse straps when the street empties to darkness and even the lamplight does little to chase away shadows. There’s no rescuing dignity if you spill, heels caught in the rickets of this ladder we’ve built from the bones of those who wept behind closed doors. Emotion would prove them woman and that was weakness, still is in the eyes of some. So the weak gift their spines and prayers, hollow themselves into armour for the next generation, and the one after that, in a desperation that they will be the drop that tips the scales to even.
I gathered the stones myself, stacked them before you like a temple offering, my skin the sacrifice as I bared it inch by inch and asked for a blessing you denied me until the pile was fragments and my flesh peppered with your approval.
One sip to poison a prince, his teeth sunk into forbidden fruit, while one-true-love stands waiting, patient, the perfect good girl all fairy-tales and smiles, alone. Drinks her own potion, steps free of skin crafted from paperbound volumes brittle with age. Breathes. Finally. Screams.
I pretended not to hate you last night, knees pressed into your pelvis like stone fists, your cold, clever lips there against my wrist with promises you would make things alright once the morning at last brought home some light and you could show me why we must persist, how without you, I would barely exist, and why it was pointless for me to fight. But I kept count of those lies and those kisses. every feathered touch up, along my ire, and each time I should have taken your tongue when your arrogance stoked up this fire and told me I did not have strength to rise when you were the one crawling all along. Bjorn is hosting the first Poetry Form night of at the DVerse Poets Pub and he’s picked an old fling to throw up as the first challenge. While I played with sonnets years ago, I went off them in the same way I went off most fixed form poetry. However, anyone who’s been around this blog for the last …
Whoever standardized time did a piss-poor job. I could tell them for a fact that Wednesday move more slowly when there is less to do, and Mondays always arrive much quicker than they leave, yet Fridays take their sweet time no matter the cheering from the stands because let’s face it they’ve worked out who’s top dog before the firing pistol went off and they don’t need to rush to prove their walking home with gold. Whoever standardized time, did a piss poor job of the whole damn thing. Because a second becomes a moment when the right person holds it, and a minute becomes an hour, when your waiting for the answer or the result, or the next sentence in a conversation you really don’t want to see through. Worst of all is the touch, that barely lasts at all, that goes before you noticed it and leaves you wondering for months if you should have seen it coming.
No one explained that best before was subjective at best. Instead they suggested that you were lucky to find a man willing to settle for spoiled produce so close to the sell by date. Did it occur to you the rot might be them?
I’m still getting used to this lion in my mouth. But sometimes the notion of seen and not heard still aches in my chest, despite the waterfall of words I seem to spout whenever my lips part. When you’re trying to stay silent, some times it helps if you cover up the abscene with something meaningless and hollow, like empty poetry. Laughter is also good. If you can laugh about it, it can’t of been so bad. But time can chip away at you if you let it. Too much silence can eat the soul of you completely. Not matter how small the seed. If we just don’t mention it, ignore it and carry on, then it’s not that big of a deal so why make a fuss. Women always make a fuss. At night I feel silly, walking with my car keys turned to the sharp edge of a key-chain, cold and hard against my palm Alone is when I think about the school corridor, his face …
He called her The Office Bitch, to her face. Drops the comment like a hot coal before she climbs into a taxi home and I turn my car keys over in my hand, heels sharp on the concrete, the elastic in my shoulders twisting tighter as the words sink in. I can’t help but repeat it, turn the words over in my mouth the needles of the teeth still there, as I wonder if he’d of said the same were she a man. Would she have had to swallow it, if she were a man. Because at worst he would have been a bastard. Not The Office One. I wanted to add another stanza to this but nothing seemed to work so I’m going to sleep on it any maybe come back to this piece another day. In the meantime I’m relatively happy with how it works at the moment. I’d love to hear your feedback though.
I don’t mind if you wolf-whistle across the street, my insecurities won’t believe you’re looking at me anyway. If you tell me I’m pretty the worst I’ll do is blush and smile because I don’t count flirting as an offence and I know that you’re mostly likely looking past me to the blonde I walked in with. The other day I changed twice before work, not because I did not like the outfit or I felt it was not flattering enough but for the stretch of skin from mid-thigh to knee that I have loved since fourteen suddenly striking fear into me. It takes one conversation to reduce a woman to the worth of her shape. I learnt that during an informal meeting where my supervisor passed on words she did not believe herself and told me not to worry too much about it, just to wear darker tights next time so people were less likely to notice. At nineteen I sat in McDonalds in Bath after a poetry evening in the …
