9 Poems

Poems written for my A-level English coursework between May - December 2023

Skin Crawls

How is beneath the skin comprised?

Is it of insects - butterflies?

With flutter soft, wings open wide

Swarming when warm feelings arise

But to my mind, merely a lie;

A testimony falsified

For what could possibly explain

This emptiness I feel inside?

Did someone deploy pesticide?

Could my components not abide

By breaking body, boiling brain

Opting instead for suicide?

Perhaps, there once were butterflies

That railed against their own insides:

As soon as they left their cocoons

They all but went and died.

Whiplash

The hold of a friend, or a lover's languid embrace

Slow, sensual waltzes or fast fleeting jig;

No blasé back-slappings nor sugar-sweet nothings

Could ever postpone what is written in stone.

The heart may revel in smiles, delight in long-whiled hours,

Spiral - cut adrift in love's labyrinthine towers -

But always to harbour at the dock of resentment

Repentant of yesterday's jubilancy.

 

Fils du soleil

My bags are packed

The train awaits

They walk on, single file

And I'm about

To fall in line -

But then, you go and smile.

I had prepared

To leave; had dared

To turn and run for miles

And still, I'll say

I cannot stay

But then, you go and smile.

I oft forget

How I'll regret

These lonesome hours I while

Away from you,

Those eyes, clear skies,

And oh, so bright a smile.

In heatstroke daze

Before your rays

I swelter in denial:

Believing my

Pining could buy

To keep, alive, that smile.

Yet winter trees

Cast off their leaves

Should I, too, leave a pile?

And exit left,

Rescind, bereft -

I would, but then, you smile.

Pest control

Profundity - to be yourself profound -

Is to be as such simply to have seen

To glean of meaning from where you have been?

But what of eyes, blind to the light around?

Fluorescence abounding, life surrounding

Do their minds' machinations we condemn

To time's ephemeral void? And what then?

The cruellest dichotomy, confounding:

The most human perspective, put to death

For amidst scarring, resides a calmness

And, gentle, it glides beside the darkness

The most broken of us: profoundest of pests.

Cat gif sent at 3AM

Cat gif sent at 3AM

You're correct! I'm depressed -

But a goofy picture's better than

Those words I can't express.

Cafetière coffee

In the empty morning air;

I plunge down the bitter grounds -

Liquid, better off without -

And I, embittered, sit and stare.

My caffeine dream

Crushed like the bean

From whence the flavour came

When, mirrored to me

Through caffeine steam

I see a writhing pain

How it taunted in my irises!

It wrinkled in my nose

Sorrow coursing through each orifice;

What I had thought was artifice

The dim streetlight now shows.

And though the turmoil of my brain

Is surely worth being explained,

I hope some silly little pixels

Of a cat sat on a sofa

With its 'thumb' up to the camera

Are enough to let you know.

Microwaving nothing

Whatever should I eat today?

I say, why not

A pot of clay?

Force flavourless ladles

Down my chasmic gob

'Til I'm stuck to the table -

Cemented in grey.

And, oh, what music should I play?

Trumpets of blue;

Horns to convey

A smat'ring of rain that seeps

Through these weeping rags

Such fallacy, revealing

Pathetic decay.

But wait - what will the neighbours say?

They'll lament, Who

Led him astray?

While to their children they'll look

And pinch cheeks so rouge

Awestruck by their luck, that they've

No ash from the tray.

I flee the scene without delay -

The emptiness

Consumes my day.

Round and round

Eyes downcast, you pluck all of the petals

And, unsurprised, find that he loves you not.

The silence stings. You're grasping at nettles

Mind swirling, incessant; spurring the clot

Days, drifted past as you pondered mornings

And stories of weekends out-sprawled on floors

Do, in the raw retrospect of mourning,

Appear doomed to dwindle behind locked doors

Through condensation's haze, there stares a face

Its countenance drawn with drizzle of rain

Whose liquid laugh lines betray it: a trace

Trickles down, of little hope left to feign

Always to ascend, to go round and round

Never avoiding conclusions profound.

Projections on my bedroom wall

Concealed within enshrouding sheets

I watch the world go winding on:

Traffic colours - green - red -

Blend with headlights,

Blinking.

Peacocks in flight

Revolve around my head

So subtly, in darkened skies

Its antique clockwork can be heard

Thrumming; a taunting tone

That haunts us all.

We live

Bound in time's thrall

(For that is all we've known)

The tableau through the windowpane

Frolics, strewing about its leaves

Before moonlit traffic;

Dances towards

Curtains

Closed.

Friend of all

He latches onto the curves of their smiles

(An ounce of neglect and they'd come undone)

And files away faces, leaves names in piles

Happily hoarding those already gone.

Selfish in his puerile search for the self,

He thieves their present person, to then run -

Vanishing into the dust on the shelf.

The caress of the misty mustiness

Blinds him to his innumerable wealth

And renders reality's trustiness

Imperceptible.

Supine, I watch the weeks elapse

Poems written in July, August of 2024

Untether me

I gravitate towards a distant horizon

Alluring, unknowable; I want to be

Where my others are strangers,

Sights and structures, unfamiliar,

The air, alien.

Night flights

Oh, how I long to follow you

Into that pale blue night:

The swallows soaring overhead

The figures side by side;

Where summer's breath sets clock hands still

And languid moments last until

The city's cries subside

But walking in your wake, I'd be

Swimming against the tide;

With every stroke seeing me kept,

A week longer, inside

Yet summer's fumes instil in me

Delusions of autonomy

And in their lies, I hide.

Out of road

When do you conclude that

There is nowhere left to go?

Your eyes lock with mine,

Bright and loveless

Coagulation

Words unspoken

Recollections flying past -

The smile you wore in bygone days -

When do you conclude that

There is nowhere left to go?

Where to store in memory

The faces you may cease to see?

Finding your person

Residing in mine

Remnant in my speech,

My movements

And yet, you're gone.

Too tired to care,

I leave the dust to do its thing,

Collect, encase, damned near erase,

And wait until the phone rings

And I hear a voice entirely new.

Dustbin people

Peeking from behind the blinds

Stepping wobblingly back

Clothing of the unseen kind

Skin about the face, gone slack.

Yours is not a passing pain

Dustbin people, all the same.

Withering - a fallen leaf

Forced to watch the next come through

Witnessing, from underneath, them

Shining just like you used to.

Self-harm with your own refrain:

Dustbin people, all the same.

Your claws dig into my skin

Bundled up between my knees

I've never known something to be

So precious, and yet here you are.

In exhaled breaths I hear you purr,

Content as you drift off into

Those dreams I'll never understand

That leave you twitching to no end

Until your eyes meet mine again

And, stretching wide, you smile.

Cards

I used to glance down at his hand

And wish that it was mine;

I dreamt we'd swap our decks of cards

And I'd learn what it's like

To wake without anger,

Dress without sadness,

Fuck with no second thought; no catch

To lie in bed and feel relaxed

To look into the mirror -

No need to squint to see the beauty.

The Fletchers

With Father Thomas on his way -

Off to read some old dear's last rites -

The interment was done. We stood,

Gazes fixated on the flowers,

The gravestone of a man long gone,

A picture of one gone too soon,

And thought of her, now below ground,

Forever silent, ever blind.

Her eightieth birthday meal, that endless table

Gathering together her lineage in full,

Was but a memory, the chasm groaning in the pub

Reminded us. Dancing around the obvious,

We sought refuge in the casual: How's things?

When's the holiday? Look at his little face!

I felt the warmth leave my coffee with each utterance:

Eyes always returning to that beckoning door.

Us all in one room, not wanting to flee

A prospect consigned to history.

Somnambulant purgatory

The white glare of morning

Commands me to rise

Head bound to the pillow,

I don't meet its eyes

But listlessly watch as

The walls fade to black

And I helplessly see myself

Slip through the crack

Where the days pass like minutes

Exhaustion, infinite

I drown in the sound

Of life without me in it -

The chorus sings sweetly, confirming my fear:

"You are no longer required to be here."

Back

Back into the red again -

Into those crimson arms, spread wide,

I find myself once more.

Every day, from rope to rope,

Just like the walks we used to take:

The ending, always worth the ache

And now, in this crushing embrace

I feel it all

Dissipate

Never to have what they have had

Futile though it is to think

Of how things could have been

Had I been dealt a fairer hand,

On blue nights I begin:

Biology, as meant to be

That fundamental clarity

The boy they were supposed to see

The boy I was supposed to be

Carefree in discovery

Unbridled in ecstasy

Just like him; he, like me

Running 'til it hurts to breathe

On the grass

We hold hands

Or perhaps just

Share a glance:

One possessing all the words that we had yet to learn.

The fog-hidden horizon

The card tells me what's coming

I don't know if it's true:

This blockade of fog makes it hard to discern

What exactly I'm moving towards. Maybe

A many-pillared, many-peopled campus;

Maybe my childhood home.

You tell me not to wonder, but they make me,

The pallid spectres, their eyes

Piercing through the white;

Ragged figures haunting my horizon.

Only they know what it is I can't see -

Only they know if I'm moving at all

Supine, I watch the weeks elapse

Coffee beans replace my eyes

Caffeine controls my limbs

Directs me through the endless day

Until the next begins

Vitamins and medicines

To unfurrow their brows;

I get up, empty the bin

To show I'm still alive

But still the tiredness zombifies,

Has me grow weaker, thin,

Chained to the bed, left to lament

The sorry state I'm in.