Blackout poetry

My first attempt at blackout poetry, courtesy of my local library, who had loads of loose book pages to try it on and a display board for people to proudly show what they’ve done. Yay for awesome libraries!

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Overtime in the notebook

The lighthouse lamp dies.

Fog creeps into each synapse,

hiding the true path.

Crisp Pages

I open my journal, touch

the fibre rich pages with my pen      and pause.

How do I word the thoughts

in    my   head?

L e t t e r s  skip around, a merry jig

and I’m struck by how many writings

have come before this,

before me.

Surely those hands   did not falter   so?

Or perhaps they did,

and persevered anyway.

Writer’s pursuit

Where do writers get their ideas from?

All the world wants to know!

Do they sneak off to times gone

while we’re sleeping

and watch the goings on as a show?

 

Do they skip back and forth,

bartering in many different tongues?

Do they bundle old tales and morph them

into diverse, interlocking shapes

and hope the originals won’t see them hung?

 

Perhaps they come in dreams

drifting down rivers and across channels.

Do they filter onto pages in reams,

spider-fast ink overtaking the pores,

to at last become a slab of legible panels?

Unmade

It’s a long road.

Eyes sore, brain addled, body refusing to work.

 

Yet I can’t quit,

can’t rest,

can’t let myself be

 

until the last word is inked,

bleeding across the page

as if it were my very blood.

Ink

It spills out through my veins

my corneas, fingernails,

bleeding from my nose

to splash the page I’m fixed to.

I don’t find it suffocating,

only cold. But

it warms every now and then

when the words demand it

for their dinner.

I like those times.

I like to feed them.

Nightshade

Dark

falls at my feet.

A great river

just

for me, pulling

on my life

with spoons and sugars.

I swim

every day, against

the current,

accidentally swallowing

the water down

as I fight

to stay afloat.

To speak aloud

‘Who will slay this troublesome claw?’

I ask Night’s cloaked face.

Night snorts out a star, and says,

‘Claw? What claw?

I see only

a man digging the pit

in which he will die from his efforts.’

‘Do you mock me, Night?’ I say.

‘No, I do not mock you. I pity

you, for thinking that I do.’

And then Night turns its collar up,

strolling off into the Way.