A selection of poems on trauma and loneliness
A friend suggested I write poetry. I found these poems tucked away in my files. Some are nearly twenty years old! I make no pretensions when it comes to being a poet, but I quite like this little offering. I hope you do, too.
DREAMS
In the silence of the night
I dream
Waking dreams
Of whirling
In time so still
A vortex of tense nothingness. (1998)
WOUNDS
We all have our wounds, kind sir
The willows weep
branches billow in fractured sunlight
My mother’s curse
Mary in yonder days
Scant eyes upon the widow’s peak
In the icicle cold ways of youth. (May 1998)
NIGHT
Eyes wide as shadows dance
Tantalising is the darkness
Enticing is the unbroken silence
Desirable the sweet chill of fear.
DISTANCE LEARNING
He promised her biscuits and a TV
What was wrong with that?
She can watch the fighting at a distance
And feel apart from it
Friday saw another explosion
A few more thousand dead
It doesn’t touch her
Lying in her bed
Can’t she build a bomb inside the TV and blast it all away?
When heaven meant to call on him tomorrow
And sent him there today
She meant to tell him another story
But it got told by him instead
Jason’s burning up
Inside his big head
She thought love lived inside a freezer
Mary said she knew
Not much got done about her poor heart
Destiny blue her hue.
ON SPIRITUALITY
Make the journey safe
Sacrifice, your soul
Invent one crucial space
To murder moulded hands
In heavenly shroud
Mellow moods of knowing
Sparks and subtle glows
Never late to fabricate
Bugs in beds horror
Sharpen perceiving eyes
Looking both ways
Lover love reflection
Light look undercover
See trembling lies
Fellow mover over mountains
Finger to figure form
True to be a fated truth
Open petals fragrant
In thankful promise
in these things we treasure most
Resting beneath my breath
Cascades deep, river fresh. (2003)
TRAUMA
Ankle deep in shattered hopes
Their shards dig deep wounds
Leave big holes
Where love should be
A barrier, a shield
Blame the dreams
That served to shelter
A tattered heart
That led to waking
To find the nightmare real. (July 2000)
I wrote more on trauma in a powerful short story, ‘Bad Good Friday’, included in this collection.
Isobel Blackthorn 