GLASS HEART

I bring to you a heart

Reviled and broken

A fragile thing of glass.

In places there are many cracks

In places there are smooth untouched surfaces

In places there are empty spaces

I give to you to fill.

Some of it is hard as stone

Some as soft as cotton

There are chambers in my heart

Where no light gets in.

There are chambers in my heart

That glow ferociously.

I bring to you

This fragile

Transparent piece of me.

I place it in your hands.

Inside it you can see me,

All of me

Raw and unabashed

Naked within my own flames.

Complete yet unfinished

Whole yet halved

Meek yet fierce.

In short,

I bring to you myself.

I bring to you

I bring

I

FROM GRACE

My grace,

I lost you

Fallen from me

Through the winter

Of my discontent.

Cascading to the ground,

Amber autumn leaves,

Crunched beneath the feet

Of my tired soul.

My grace

You called for me

Through howling winds

And screaming gales

My name you called

‘I’m here’, you called,

But the screeching of this

Empty season deafened me.

My grace

I lost you

You tried to hold me

So gently,

Entangled in your silvery grip.

But I slipped,

And I fell…

From grace…

I fell

From grace

I

Fell from grace.

PREOCCUPATION

Lately I have noticed

A preoccupation with grey.

I’m wearing it on my fingernails

On my legs

On my feet

On my torso

But mostly,

I’m wearing is inside my head.

It’s a lack of colour obtained

By combining

Two polar opposites.

The black

The white

The absence of light

And the abundance of it.

Shady unclear thought

A process of complacency

Lost ferocity

Blurred lines that once

Formed a  boundary,

A definition of a whole person.

Now it’s just a white noise haze

Encroached upon by the dark.

Grey matters

Inside my grey brain matter.

IMPASSE

I am at an impasse

Between heart and mind

Body and soul

I am floundering

In the depths of my

Own murky waters.

Where is my solace?

Where is my giant bear hug?

My words of solidarity or comfort?

Where is my 5am voice

At the other end of a telephone?

Where is my everything?

I tried to declare a moratorium

On all things pertaining to my heart.

But it didn’t work.

It keeps beating

And feeling

And never letting go,

Never stopping its

Constant rhythm of

Thick, blood lined emotion.

A distant heavy tattoo

On fleshy drums.

It’s no wonder I can’t tell

What direction I'm going in.

Steps forward

Steps backward

Steps sideways.

It’s all just steps to nowhere.

I console myself with cheap coffee

Cheaper movies,

And even cheaper wine.

There are no arms of respite here.

Here alone with my death

My breath

My lingering heart beat.

I am at an impasse

I am at war

I am holding on

And I am letting go

Stripped bare

To the bone

To my core

Beating,

Pumping

Rising

Falling

Reviling myself

In a body that’s slowly ending.  

VICTORY OR VENDETTA

Where the godless fear to tread.

That’s where I keep my heart these days,

Or at least my head,

Where no light gets in.

Where tumble down is a stasis

And chaos gives way to a stillness of the mind,

Havoc comforts

Inside the arms of madness.

Quiet calamity

Breaking softly at the

Foot of a vacuum

The breast of heart ache

The mouth of hungry anguish.

It chomps at the bit,

Waiting for the sound of the starting gun,

Waiting

Like my anger

Hallow and fierce

Standing in line

Emotional cannon fodder.

Blast a gaping hole through my psyche

Let me crawl through myself.

To walk in a straight line

Towards victory,

Or vendetta,

Or simply peace.

WALK LIKE THUNDER, WRITE LIKE RAIN

I walk like thunder,

Write like rain,

Until  the world

Just falls away.

A fragile heart,

Broken skin,

Beneath the steel

I hide within.

Cascade on me,

Oh summer sun,

And let in light

Where I've begun

To die and fester

Mould and rot,

The husk of me

That time forgot.

I walk like thunder,

Write like rain,

I try to stop

Familiar pain

From taking hold

From getting in,

From overtaking

From within.

But I can’t win

This race in time

My heart a clock,

Its wings divine.

I tread upon

These angel wings,

I wake and stare

And still can’t sing.

For all I need

When I'm in doubt

The only thing to do,

But shout,

Is walk like thunder,

Write like rain,

Again

Again

Again

Again.

BEGIN AGAIN

I enjoy making lists

Sitting down with a cup of

My latest indiscretion in my hand,

And thinking

‘Wow, you’ve done it again’

I go back to the start.

To the beginning.

And try to map out

The order in which

This most recent city of dreams

Began to fall apart.

I rotely repeat this process

Each time.

Getting back to the bare bones

Of a catastrophe.

Examining it.

Carbon dating it to see

How far back it really goes.

How old is a scar?

So I make lists,

I number my failures

My ill conceived endeavours.

I try to give structure to something…

Chaotic,

With no crystal lattice to hold its form.

I try.

But we have to start somewhere.

And number one on a list

Is as viable a starting point as any.

And who knows,

Maybe next time

I’ll get beyond the first

Before I have to begin again. 

CHILDREN OF THE TIGER

Our nation,

Known for poetic words

And gifts of song.

For bards and storytellers,

Scholars and academics.

Silenced.

Hushed to mechanical monotony.

Creativity pushed from view.

I stroll past a scrubbing brush

Soapy water

Washing away the evidence of a killing field

From a Graff war.

Its value held only in the eyes of the beholders who

Find beauty in the truth of street.

Art all around us, waiting to be formed.

Visible through the smog.

Look, listen, take heed.

Absorb the stories the pavements tell us.

The histories hidden in the walls,

In the sound of a breathless republic.

We the children of the tiger

Fear not,

Take charge,

Time comes

Urban chaos transcends

Deconstruct, reconstruct, find a voice.

Our arts not dead. 

WINE AND DESPERADOS

Drunk on wine and desperados

Climbing the cracks

Of my fractured heart.

Hazy nights

And crystalline tears

A tragic work of art.

I trace with fingertips

The stains you left

Upon my brittle skin

And with each sip

This wine becomes

A cloak for me to hide within

So, drunk on wine and desperados

Fallen from

My broken heart

This hazy night

These salty tears

I’m tearing me apart

OUT OF FOCUS

Glimmering hope

Through guilty eyes

Sharp memories

Fake smiles

Real hurt.

The dust coated floor

In the room

Where I spend hours

Counting seconds

Passing time

Breaking down.

Twisting colours

Reds and yellows

Contrasting

Contradicting

Too many words

To hear them all

Too much emotion

To truly feel anything

I’m full to bursting.

Your face blurs

In and out of focus

And I can’t hear your voice anymore

Except when I think of you singing. 

TURN THE TV UP

TURN THE TV UP  Aoife Read aoife_read@yahoo.com


I thought I had a foothold
Upon a concrete platform,
But old traumas and post romance jitters
Knocked me off it.

Rattle and hum.
My brain buzzes belligerently
Around this cavernous skull.
All the curtains open
Onto rows of street lights,
Dotted along my vision
Like a jewel studded death row.
Adornments of entrapment.

Off in the outside
The roar of  aeronautics and engines
Break my reverie.
Three floors up and no closer to heaven
Than the insects below.

I close my eyes to hear the silence,
To revel in the quiet chaos
That’s breaking in my head.
Problems with the frontal lobe.
It’s just too loud in here.
As headlights crack open the dusk,
And I turn the TV up.

BEAUTIFUL CHAOS

A backward clock still ticking

Loosing time with every moment we go forward,

Every moment I go back.

A backwards clock has nothing

But time on its hands.

Am I standing still while the world

Spins around me?

Or am I running past the world

While it waits for me to slow down?

I would have to stop to find that out.

And stopping is not an option

When your heart is a sand timer

And your constant motion

Is what turns it up and down.

I run on time based around

Chaos theory.

Stability and stillness

Derived from ceaseless motion.

From random occurrences

With no pattern or boundaries.

Interconnected, vital and oddly structured.

Beautiful chaos.

Spin it on its axis

And use the world as my treadmill

EMOTIONAL COMPOST

It feels redundant

To write another poem

About heartache.

To put my pen to paper

Ooze with bitterness

Hoping to sound beautiful

Hoping to form beauty from

Something so ugly.

It seems redundant.

But there again,

Everything seems redundant lately.

And isn’t it true that

From shit, roses grow.

Like an asphodel birthed in Hades.

Perhaps I can grow something,

Heavenly, celestial or simply lovely

From the swamp of my

Emotional compost heap.

That’s it isn’t it?

Compost.

Dirt.

Earth.

The basis of life.

That’s all that’s left.

A bulb

A shoot.

Back to my core.

And all I am doing,

Day in and day out

Is spreading my roots

Inside my personal flower pot.

Ceramic and brown with

Three holes in the bottom

Just waiting for water.

I guess it takes time to

Grow something from a root.

So patience

So time

So care

So love.

Provide myself with these things

Perhaps?

And soon I’ll be

The Great Oak I once was.

Because I was great.

Before I was chopped down.

Before I was smothered,

Choked and parched

With all the light blocked from me.

You were anti-photosynthesis to me.

Reverse respiration.

A blacked out green house.

Time to grow.

IN TRACES OF YOU THERE IS SOLACE

You could have knocked me over

With a whisper of my name

I was so taken with you.

You could have made me stoop

Made me lower myself to depths unknown

I was so enamoured by you.

All the things I’d never do

I would have done for you

I was so blinded.

And now there’s solace only in

The traces you left behind on my skin

Imprinted on my midnight theatre

Of memories and sorrow.

I yearn for you.

I miss you.

I know I’ll never own you

The way you own my heart.

SILENT SONG

Loneliness is timeless

Emotion is listless

I crane my neck to hear the sounds

Of my own body in a swansong.

The musicality of utter stillness,

Tuneful breath.

Walls that echo lullaby’s

I fill my empty spaces

With a handful of chords

A mouthful of words

And an earful of sound.

Motion and stillness,

Stillness and invisibility.

Sight in all of my dark places

Without my heart song

I would be lost.

But my brain plays a tune

Through my undulating darkness

I find light

I find peace

I find respite

In shades of silence.