Roar

To roar

is to expel all hurts as shattered glass

back into the raw sand they came from.

 

To roar

involves building a shield of pure force

that gives a rebound able to buckle knees.

 

To roar

means to burn the leeches from your body

and watch them shrivel as you see your own blood clot.

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The Struggle of Acceptance

His dreams were chaos, the ground maggots

eating one another snap after snap after snap.

A vacuum pulled them in, and he with them,

squashing their soft, wriggling bodies against his skin

until they were pressed together into one.

Discord plucked on a silver harp, played

by her, who he’d never know again.

There was no telling what he was now,

crawling, belly low, through the neatly trimmed grass

attempting to exit the maze of cropped box.

Everywhere were deadlines, corpses of the past

left to rot against them. And he drinks from

the sullied stream where they lie.

Hat Stand

‘What hat shall it be today?’

the woman asks herself as she eyes

up the stand, the helpful monitor beside her

flashing with images of the latest trends.

 

‘Shall it be one that paints me an object, a soulless statue

worth only my measurements? How about the even tempered

diplomat, with no passion of her own, no dreams of her own,

no meaning of her own? Maybe the career minded robot

would like to be displayed?’

 

She lists them all, but none of them match her today.

 

None of them ever matched her, she realises,

and begins to wonder why she has hats at all.

She doesn’t remember buying them.

Were they gifts? Or suggestions?

 

She assesses the weather outside: mild.

 

She decides. She won’t wear one,

to see how it feels to be herself.

Sinew

The tin plate is tacked over my mouth before I can even get the words out.

This body is mine, I breathed into it,

I gave it nutrition, trained it, nurtured it

until it grew enough to have my mind accept it.

Now I’m being told it’s only fit to be measured by eyes and instruments

that clinically access its worth.

To me it is lifeblood,

to them it is meat.

Simulacrum

I cry rainbows at night when I think no-one else is near. Flower skeletons decay even more in my mind and silhouettes of birds turn out to be no more than shaped words. Carefully chosen, trimmed to perfection like a prize bonsai tree. My wings have been clipped. I’ve been pressed against pages leaving only an imprint behind. I am not myself. I am the person someone else wants to see.