Old lovers, old friends, had beginnings and ends,
But as my grip slips from the recollection, vines wind
Their way up a sleeping spine to twist into my sleeping mind,
Thorns hooked onto the memory, grown into a dream –
Becoming a dance with the familiar amongst the unseen.
Some nights make a haunted house out of a home,
when the midnight sleep silence leaves the awake on their own.
A phantom hand on my shoulder, a chill in my room,
or the faint scent of an oddly familiar perfume.
These are a few blackout poems I have created, some recently and some from a little while ago. I like doing these when I want to write something but don’t want to conjure something from the depths of my brain. It’s also an interesting restriction to place upon one’s creative capacity, because there are only…
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Even the pinkest pinks will fade
Eventually, perhaps to a dusty rose,
The open becomes closed, even
The prettiest flower will cease to glow.
Bold days turn to cold days, even the smoothest
Petals fold, soon brown replaces gold,
A shrivelled insignificance falls to the dirt,
But leaves space for a new bud to grow.
Immersed in bubble bath scents
And sensations, I breathe,
I breathe, I breathe deeply,
And the water softens my skin
And the warmth softens my mind.
In with fresh oxygen and out with
A build up of grime.
a rusted reflection,
speckled and smudged
to wipe away is only
to smear the picture
a sun-bright ghost
in a hazy window
obscured by the dusty
remnants of raindrops
we stumble home through
dully lamp lit streets at 1 am
hand in hand with wobbly feet
cool night air cleansing fuzzy heads,
sometimes we sit on the edge of
the world (or it feels like it),
the city glitters, it’s colourful
even in the darkness,
window glows and street lamps
are mere scintillas of light
trying to mirror the stars,
and if they look small, then what am I?
a soft silky mesh with glittery golden stars,
pale pink, it draped to my touch,
it cut crisply with the scissors and suddenly
I was a girl again,
twirling in my princess skirt –
my own soft pale pink mesh with glittery golden stars
I can never sleep when the moon is full
Sometimes I wonder if part of me is wolf.
Maybe just a bud of wolf’s-heart that could
Flower if I let it, or maybe it’s a key in a lock
That I just need to turn to let the wolf in.
A candle tells of air that never smelled so sweet,
And perfume plants fragrant flowers on my skin,
But with candied scents, she’s a liar, liar.
Reflection flips perception, I’ll never know
What your eyes see, my distorted vision vignetted
By my trust in a piece of glass, inevitably a liar, liar.
Lauren Kathleen 