Poems about ‘real’

Exploring themes of authenticity, mundanity and misrepresentation in love and life

Autumn is a shrouding season. We hide our bodies in shawls and scarves, cover our legs with tights. Even the streets become coated with leaves.

But something must suffer for the golden blanket on the pavements. The trees and birds pay that price. Are your eyes drawn to what is before you on the ground or what is lost above your head?

Wherever your gaze rests, soon enough that caramel carpet forming on the ground will also be blown or swept away.

So, maybe the message of autumn is to remember there is only ever temporary cover. Truth is always outed. Imperfection always revealed. What is gained in one area of life, leaves a deficit elsewhere.

If I had to pick a theme for this batch of poems, it would be that of authenticity. The full range of beauty, pain and mundanity that brings.

I’ll go through the meanings at the end.

*Not my own photos.

Real Fur

His storm became my stole

Immoral fibre kissed my neck

The majesty of tragedy

I will not give it back

Hot and cold caresses

He confesses to the crime

Arrests me in the moonlight

Yet prefers to play for time

.

Sometimes he hangs, a badgered fox

Dull eyed and disconnected

Murdered frolic in the wood

The rot of rest rejected

Ghosts of blisters, festering

As wounds lay unattended

Jaws hungry for the cruel applause

When hunters cheered the end

.

Dug out, cornered, set upon

A fight he couldn’t win

My food his bleed, his need my blood

The skinned adorns the skin

Drape weeps with leaping stories

Favoured glories and old problems

I’m cautious of performance

Numb on lavender and laudanum

.

The dressing up box bursts

Forced to converse with all I block

Compelled to pull the sequins

From smug hems of mocking frocks

Brooches, buttons, badges

Peacock feathers from their caps

A hearse of silk purse from sow’s ear

On thin spaghetti straps

.

Real fur is bad, I know, I KNOW

But cannot crave synthetic

Addicted to another’s pain

The sacrifice to get it

Not childhood wings or plastic things

Cheap novelties wear off

But weight of pelt is doubly felt

One wrap of hurt, enough

It bristles and it itches me

Yet gives superior heat

I churn his bones, he stirs my flesh

Learned symbiotic sweet

Walking

My heart is seldom heard these days

Just wind up teeth in chatter

I ache my silence to the bees

Convince their buzz suggests I matter

Love’s stalked me as its chosen prey

Yet so far, not moved in

I gaze on sugar meadows

As my patient patch wears thin

Daises chew my chaos now

In noise of wind’s reprise

I’m herded to the darkness

Feeling sunburn in my eyes

.

Yes, silver skies are tearing up

For touring schemes of flame

The wars seem ever nearing

As my season stays the same

Moons bloat my hope, inflated Aunts

Pearl promise in their shrines

For all their cryptic messages

His midnight not yet mine

I wander lanes as beams, and balance

Draining of my colour

Walking, only way I know

One step before another

How Hearts Are

First time I saw a real heart

I was quite disappointed

It didn’t float in helium foil

Nor come with scarlet roses

No elegance nor symmetry

Dull organ on a table

Instructions how to cut it up

Dissect its mass of marble

.

I realised that Valentines

Had used poetic license

‘Cause who would want a real heart

The truth would only frighten

If they plastered those on cards

The sensitive would bristle

Lovers would recoil in shock

At bloody lumps of muscle

I got quite mad, wanted to yell

“That’s not how real hearts are!”

But accuracy doesn’t sell

(The same is true with stars)

.

As I grew older, came to me

It’s what society does

Dishes up some make believe

Of pink, romantic fuzz

And that’s just life all over

Things are never what they seem

Each of us left surfing

On a marketer’s wet dream

They sell us this they tell us that

They sold us down the river

Victims of grim fairytales

Reality delivered

.

Is there not a middle ground?

Half accurate depiction?

Not scaring folk with brutal truth

Not sugar coated fiction?

If we were promised bland and plain

Our senses keen and open

Perhaps we’d never bear the pain

Of having real hearts broken

Meanings

Real Fur

Psychometry has always fascinated me. I have always liked the idea of objects retaining part of their journey. Many psychics believe they can use rings or other jewellery to tune in to those who wore them. I started to play with this concept and how it could relate to animal fur, stoles and particularly the (creepy?) ones of foxes that old ladies used to wear. I then began to play with the idea of the way people are often drawn to toxicity because they are addicted to that pain. How they enjoy wearing the palpable emotions of another.

I’m not weird, honest and I don’t advocate the wearing of real fur.

Walking

Sometimes it feels as though everything is changing except your own personal situation doesn’t it? Wars are happening, day is turning to night and there you are, stuck in your own dull cycle, not seeming to get very far at all. Are you unseen, unheard, or is someone, something actually responding? All you can do is just take each day as it comes. Keep walking.

How Hearts Are

I was thinking about the cartoonish hearts we are all familiar with, as used in popular culture, how they differ from a real, actual heart. I began to consider how those pretty pink and red shapes have been used to market ideas of love and romance, how the physical difference of fake hearts and real hearts mirrors our expectations of love and the reality. I wondered whether we could have some sort of happy medium, our expectations a little more in sync with our realities. The tone is a little tongue in cheek at times to poke fun at that industry and our naivety.

I hope you got something from one or all of these poems and they made you think, feel or both. Thanks for reading.