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.