some poetry

04/11/24

Leaving The Crypt

(not really a poem - a beloved song that did not make it onto my solo album)

you know, this Crypt caught on fire once
and I am so scared to be here every day

you’re wrong about me
you’re wrong about me

I am not sleeping in my father’s grave

have you always been afraid of flames?
will you believe you are someone who could be saved?

you’re wrong about you
you’re wrong about you

you are not sleeping in your own father’s grave

all of the beauty has happened to me
and all of this pain, too, will turn into beauty

I might be terrified
I might be terrified

but it is fear that’s the dawn of being brave

time to be brave

Pripyat

I remember, you said, Sally went.
I think that’s when I wrote the lyrics to 
‘Your Front Has No Door’

imagined you unreachable, in a suit
shovelling graphite from the roof

this morning, I woke up
all salted tongue and a decade older

and realised I feel abandoned
like I wasn’t worth having my pain seen

by you, 
everyone,
myself, mainly 

always ignore my pain to fill up
with the fire of others

and as I pick up dead leaves 
in the park, 
all scorched earth and centuries gone,
thinking words can still fix things

drafting and redrafting email, after email
after email

sat at a dead computer
won’t even turn on 

as I sift through old belongings,
rusting, trying to hold on,

trying to re-sow the moth eaten clothes
trying to remember

I realise it is just me here now.
everyone else has left

so I imagine leaving this wasteland;

imaginary door closing, 
starry, blurry things behind it,

force myself to picture running through it,

(nobody asked me to stay here
like some crypt keeper)

last one standing

I think sometimes, I am trying to
to make sure everybody is safe first,
before I leave

Sad Chair

I tell you that when I met you
I wanted to ask about your scar 
but knew not to

you tell me now it’s a birthmark,
a flag planted on the landscape of your face

you tell me to look at things and try not to name them,
to try and feel my hands buzzing, 
I tell you I haven’t really felt them in a while

I say I feel like a creature next to you,
you say, “me too”,
I say, a creature
“who fills up her friends like a balloon
until they burst”

but when you read your words to me, 

I fill up with music 
soft notes on a piano, buzzing
funny, I say,
that’s when I can feel them; 
my hands

a black dog is lost, 
you ask for the man’s number
and I think I can see it, on the horizon
like a birthmark in the landscape

I remember the first time I met you,
you picked up a chair on the side of the road,
said it ‘looked sad’

I am worried that one of these days, 
my grief will swallow me,
but I remind myself that

I chose to leave for someone like you

I don’t want to be
a sad chair on the side of the road, though
for you to pick up
and feel responsible for

but sometimes, I think I could pull myself upright again,
bouncing, almost, although supposedly in-animate

you tell me that when we ran to the train station,
the staff said something to you,
but it’s ‘too intense’ - you’ll tell me one day

something about us looking happy