Poems for the emotionally isolated

(They’re a bit depressing. I did warn you….)

Isolation isn’t about ‘not being around people’, is it?

The media will tell you it is. Those snippets on the telly about checking in on ‘people on their own’. But many people ‘on their own’ are perfectly content, aren’t they? They enjoy it.

No, isolation is a state of mind.

You can be in a room full of people and still feel lonely.

Isolation is about missing connection.

What is true connection? A shared joke, touch, laugh….a look that darns souls.

Most of these poems are written around that theme of isolation and longing for true connection that never really leaves some of us.

They’re also about the feeling of restlessness when we don’t have it - trying to settle and appease oneself. It’s the way a baby seeks a warm, milky nipple; thrashing his head around in vain to be met instead with a silicone dummy teat that plugs that need with a mouthful of intrusive nothing.

Yeah - that.

Traffic Jam

I can’t get past it, sometimes

The inertia

It’s the saucepan grey of traffic jams

I’m stitched in graves of metal lanes

Wanna saddle phantom horses

Steer my rage through cloud partitions

But I’m forced to be an adult

So I distract myself with music

Then, there it is…..the cruel song

Masquerading as a friend

I lock into its steely horns

They pierce me, tender berry

How does this stranger ‘get it’?

We’ve clearly never met

Then, the realisation

That we’re all hemmed in

Piped as icing into hardening lines

I peer in window-eyes and see it

Impatience paces like a sickness

We’re all trying to distract ourselves

Make our way home in heavy traffic.

The Void

There is a void of emptiness

A gap upon the shelf

I guess I could attempt to cram

This void with something else

But everything seems fake, contrived

A replica of real

Since you made me an expert

In how my heart’s supposed to feel

I bear the weight of nights

That suffocate me with crude lips

My soul becomes a paper doll

Awaiting teardrop ship

My mermaids sing for seagull wings

To soar the years I waste

My body stays, my flesh betrays

The love I yearn to taste

So what to do, to stop the pain

Ignore the void or fill it?

I’ll stack it high with worthless shit

It’s either that or……

Star of wonder

I’ve nothing

It’s gone

Hurled like a stone

To dog, a bone

My grape skin heart

Is frozen wine

A million miles

From sunny vine

And where it went

I just don’t know

Did someone spend it

Like a note

Could maybe turn up

In a coat

Lace handkerchief

That hope forgot

Initial in an ivory corner

Embroidered by

A cheerful girl

Who dreamed of

Love that flowed

Like robes

Someone may buy it

Take it home

Adore it like

A favourite baby

Eyes of kindness

Hands of harbour

Someone’s missing

Star of Wonder

This Hand

You removed your warm hand

A brutal exposure

Naked in winter

Minus sheepskin mitten

I am free, I am cold

I am rain licking branches

At the same time,  I’m barren

The season, it wrenches

And what would I do

For lost fingers that squeezed me

The suede of swept skin

The twine lick of your ivy

The ground lies, white smirk

Didn’t see the snow forming

Never knew evergreen

And now,

This hand is mourning.

Self Preservation

Routine sought to engulf me

Used monotony to sour

A shell formed……..new country

I locked in my rising power

The same stinging odours swirled

But I made sure nothing could enter

A protective, porous world

Preserving pure, my golden centre

Your Body

.

I never loved your body

(Although it’s true, old thoughts are muddy)

It never pleased me like a ripple

Nor tore through me as a storm

I didn’t revel in its splendour

Find it comforting or tender

You employed it as dagger

Weapon born of pent up anger

But I did once love your mind

(Though you were cutting, never kind)

The way a child prizes a penny

Before he sees a useless coin

Getting there

.

My grandma had a fancy bed 

With tall metal bedstead 

I’d grasp on to brass corners

Play ‘Bed knobs and Broomsticks’

But no matter how I held on

I’d never seem to get there

The magic place I dreamt of

Of singing, happy grown ups 

.

At home, we had a cloak room

So often, I’d climb in it

Thought if I moved my arms enough

I’d find Lucy and the lamp post

But…..all I ever managed 

Was snow of coats falling from hangers 

At least, when I screwed my eyes up

The cold meant it could be Narnia