'Hahahaha'

Confession
in written whispers,
blood from a pen.

The taste of cranberry,
like subterfuge
upon stretched lips.

Trite words.
A scraped thought,
like a throat.

An unfeeling trope,
dearth and aimless
as a zombie.

#poetry #TashPoetry #writing

Repose, settle in and down
under your black widow totem
that defies, like a sundial
to prove its worth with its shadow.

See how we try
to paint our lives by numbers;
fill in goals and compromises,

opaque to our childhood intentions
to live well, bathe in the light
before we go.

"They were just dreams", you said.
"Just grow up."

Life should remain beautiful,
even when coloured by the shadow.

#poetry #TashPoetry

The question of gravity
was settled with the impact
of a non-Newtonian kind.

Less science than sense.
The sensation of scraped hearts,
hands and knees.

The body is an athletic cliche;
a soma collapsed; expiring.

Get up, get it, get out.
The hammer in the chest.
Bags of air, heaving.

Say something, anything:
breathe, curse,
confess...

But stop the damn weeping.

#poetry #TashPoetry

I AM MALLEABLE.

AN ARROWHEAD.
A COLD COUNTERWEIGHT.

RECOILED AND SPRUNG.
SOAKED IN GUN OIL.

A HOOK, A SLIVER.
A METEORITE SPLINTER.

SHARPENED LIKE KUKRI.
TARNISHED LIKE HOPE.

#poetry #TashPoetry

It was simple,
they trophy took my spine.

Cauda equina, a piece of tail,
stroked & groped since three.
Play, by being pinned down
rather than pin the tail
on the guilty.

Midback, a target
for paralysis, for legs
to open, unaided;
rather than thrash
like an air-drowned fish.

Cervical, so I may not be heard,
so I would not speak,
so I could not feel a thing.

They took my spine, but let
my head loll free.

I remember every skin tear,
every muscle bruise,
every hope bleed.

#poetry #TashPoetry

I post differently, right?
The poem's in the images.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'House By The Sea'

Our door,
once the guardian of my solace,
no longer keeps my secrets in.
It is a gouged dichotomy
of being closed, yet broken;
hinged on rusted pins.

The mud borne water
had washed away our toil and labours;
taken our hearts out to sea.
Exposed roots and cavities
like a mouth beneath our timbers;
torn by the slip of soil to gravity.

I woke with the sun's teeth in my eyes—
it had spiky flares, as from
a child's drawing.

Part 1/2
#poetry #TashPoetry

'Half'

I could rise from the depths
to repose, as a rainbow sheen
in a half glass of nonchalance.

I can smile brightly,
have my thoughts dulled
by a medicated circumstance.

There is a storm in my cup
with a void in its centre.
There is a whirlpool
stirred within my glass.

Not half-empty. Not half-full.
Fluid sorrow sloshing around a gyred hole.

A frosted glass,
scratched and chipped,
opaque to the world.

#poetry #TashPoetry

'What are you looking at?'

I can shed anything,
apart from myself—

disrobe, to exfoliate
the outlines of my body's duress,
before I bathe my lines
of permanence
from something worse.

I feel cheap
though there's never been a price.

No, that's a lie,
I've been given away once.

I am not what you need,
rather the notion you always want.

So what?

#poetry #TashPoetry