A few poems

On crying and other stuff

I was crying and sometimes when you cry, it’s like a spring in a desert. The water comes out of your eyes but there’s no noise, no flush of red. Your face stays looking vacant. The same shade. As though just a process. The way you see elephants cry.

Made me start thinking about crying.

What ‘makes’ a cry?

Did you know, Natalie Wood’s mother famously tore the wings from a live butterfly in front of seven year old Natalie to get the cry established during an audition.

Is it the water, redness, expression or sounds that constitutes a cry? What’s the most important factor?

This led me to thinking about my old ‘Tiny Tears’ doll, which is my first poem here. I was contemplating the way a generation of girls were encouraged to fill her with water to make her cry, like a game.

And how, when you think about it, that’s a little bit sick isn’t it?

Was it teaching empathy or cultivating the opposite?

Tiny Tears

“She cries real tears”

It said on the box

So I made her cry

Often

For my entertainment

I admit,

I took pleasure

In seeing those big blue eyes fill

Watching tears stream down her cheeks

I enjoyed her helplessness

Being the one to make it better,

Comfort her.

Only to set her off again

Whenever I wanted.

That was the game, see.

She was just a toy.

And I was a little girl

.

I grew up and realised

There are adults

Who also play this game

But not with dolls

And not with water.

Still think

She is just a toy.

“She cries real tears”

Middle Age

.

Is it middle age itself

That makes me feel so frayed?

Or is that I’ve caged myself?

A homemade barricade

Sharp teeth of life forget their point

Obedient crushed pearls

Each hour a sore, a worming wound

Slow clotting gape of sour

Tasting days, lukewarm malaise

Boiled sweets to suck and swallow

Lozenge storms of mundane harm

Then do the same tomorrow

And some lodge hard, within my throat

Lead bullets from my captor

Come close to choking on their bleak

And there, I’ll end this chapter.

.

She wanted to be….

She wanted to be his diamond.

Freed from years of pressure

Picked clean of dirt.

To sparkle

Be prized

.

Wanted to be his pearl.

Retrieved from rock bottom

Resurface, a treasure

Precious

Her moon sheen coax rainbows from his sun.

Be more than a shell.

.

She wanted to be his gold.

The weight of her worth, heavy in his hand

Her value honoured.

Never let go of.

Protected.

.

She wanted to be his….

Winter coat

North star

Library

Long bath

Fast car

Wildest dream

Beautiful show girl

Challenge

Vista

Easy chair

Saturday night

Sunday morning

Birthday

First kiss

Swan

Everything

.

But only ever as who she was

She had no desire

To become anyone else.

Above all else,

She wanted to be herself

Dead Rose

I had a rose that smelled of you

A storybook of red

Held it so tight with all my might

Til one day,  it was dead

Could not revive the lustre

Lose my future to its whorl

As remnants scattered on the ground

A crushing truth unfurled

Our summer gone, life had moved on

All fairytales must end

I scooped each petal up with love

And cast them to fair wind

It left a stain upon my palm

A bruising shade of wine

The weeping of that stifled bud

Is now, forever mine.