Poetry Archive
Below is a small selection of poems as released in previous months on various social media platforms.
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Please note: novel poems are only availble within the novels themselves.
He sits with the curve of his back pressed
against the cold, indifferent brick wall,
where within, among the glaring fluorescent lights
regular people shuffle along with their zombie walk.
The tendrils of chill seep through his torso,
curl about the tips of his fingers as they protrude
from his thinning and fraying fingerless gloves,
and nibble at his toes through the cracks in his worn shoes.
His matted hair gathers in thick branches across his drooping shoulders,
hangs over his eyes
- eyes that have seen the underside of our world,
the side that regular eyes notice not -
blue eyes with cracks of red veins reaching across the white.
Coughing, his lungs a-rattle like the change in his tin cup he shakes in the air,
he wheezes as another real-world person walks out of the store
and begs for change to put food in his belly
- Regular Man turns his head in disgust,
his kind almost always do -
and the beggar drops his cup to his side once more,
waiting for a person, a good person, the right person,
to show him a rarity in his world...
a kindness.
I knew before I was told -
in fact, I was the one who told myself first -
yet when the truth became real
and I was forced to acknowledge that my journey had only just begun,
I admit that I was at a loss.
Turbulent thoughts, rushing emotions,
chaotic urges wavering between
crying the pain out drop by drop with each shed tear,
or screaming until I felt my lungs collapse
and the ceiling crumble upon me at the force.
It wasn’t a comforting voice and caring touch
that gave reality to what I had barely accepted before.
It wasn’t the efficient and businesslike words of a professional
that ground home fact and truth and horror in one.
It was a heading on a questionnaire,
hastily dropped in my lap by a nurse,
and the first question read simply thus:
‘How do you feel about being diagnosed with cancer?’
The fangs of hunger’s maw lock in,
revealing an aching emptiness,
a blackened void,
representing a deep longing of body, mind and soul
where the sensation of being sated
is little more than a lingering afterthought.
It is not food I crave,
not wealth or fame,
companionship or hope,
nor even water or air,
but the one thing that has forever been held
teasingly
tauntingly
an inch from the reach of my trembling fingers:
Love.