The unfinished house on Heartache Avenue

A post questioning the value of therapeutic writing and a few poems from this week

There’s a half built house on Heartache Avenue.

An eternal work in progress.

The builders are always in, knocking down walls, making noise, tearing through my red rooms with their stark white emulsion. Digging up the foundations, time and time again, finding those structural problems that won’t go away. It’s unstable, subject to subsidence and needs underpinning. The cracks continue to reappear.

Maybe you live there too, in that house.

Do you recognise it as your own?

You stay out most of the time, but sometimes you have to go ‘back home’, right?

And what a squalid hovel it is.

But it’s what you’ve got.

So, you do your best to find sanctuary in the corner of the shadowy cellar, the bomb site of a garden….

Hoping one day the chaos will stop and you’ll be able to simply chill.

And until then, if you’re anything like me, you just write about it.

I’ve been examining the role of writing poems as my therapy, this week.

Wondering whether I delude myself with that idea. The idea of it helping.

Sounds so ‘wrapped up’ doesn’t it? Slick.

Committing to word every bump on the road, magic carpet ride and dead end. Each alley ringing with the incessant clanging of dustbin lids.

But when you write it down……what then?

Does it up and fly away like a swallow?

Or does it over winter in a barn, nesting in all you’ve supplied it with?

I’d been remembering an old friend who’d been abused and raped. She started going to counselling but found it detrimental to her state of mind, felt it made things worse, wallowing in that mire.

“I’m going to stop going, cause raking it all up every week seems to do me more harm than good.”

She’d said.

And it made me think about writing in that way.

Question whether writing and reading back your own words, was akin to repeatedly removing bandages, revisiting those wounds. Arranging reunions with your homespun ghouls, having those familiar bullies meet you at the school gates ready to kick the shit out of you.

And you ask yourself, ‘why do I keep returning to those gates?’ Knowing they’re still there?

‘Better out than in’ has become fashionable, hasn’t it? But is it helpful? To get it all out? Or does it hinder?

Does it heal…..or further seal in?

Is it like blowing a dandelion clock, freeing an emotion to go boldly on its way, or do you put the same record on repeat til it latches like a thirsty leech feeding on your pain?

I’ve been struggling personally, recently.

Some of you from Twitter may remember my sources of head and heartache and nothing much has changed there….

I think the solution is more ‘real’ in my life.

Maybe create some goals that engage my body rather than my mind and heart.

I’ve come off Facebook for a while. You know what it’s like when you’re down, all you see is sunshine, ice creams, glossy looking dogs and Disneyesque children.

And space is okay as long as you fill it, right?

Busy yourself.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on whether you find writing about emotional turmoil useful or a hindrance?

In the meantime, have some poems I wrote this week from the unfinished house in Heartache Avenue. The littered shit tip it is.

Feel free to step inside.

I’ll make you a cup of something but there’s no cream for your coffee and I hope you don’t take sugar, because I’m all out, right now.

Thread of gold

In candle light I knew you

A heaven scented soul

Swishing on a wishing chair

A rock in search of role

In daylight, things looked different

I saw your every shard

A pane had smashed, its aftermath

Was clearly piercing hard

And both are earthly dresses

For life wears many shades

But what I see the brightest

Is your thread of gold, pervade

Remember me

Remember me when you wake at 2am, impaled upon the serrated spike of memories that puncture your slumber like a goring frozen tusk.

Remember me as onyx wrecking balls of silence smash your calm composure, a swinging knock out punch. Double you over, leave you winded and breathless.

Remember me when you’re trying to be ‘present’, but time has you stick your hands up and cower to its cocked and loaded gun, offering each second as metal bullet.

Remember me when moon is cruellest blue - scolding and scathing, cradling her craters as ugly pox scars she scares the skittish stars with.

Remember me as breeze bristles through your limp body, an unswept chimney, shaking the blackest parts of soot loose in your soul, causing you to choke on what can never be cleaned.

Remember me when your empty arms ache from holding solid hours as bricks, heavy and awkward.

Remember me when your pale, kissable face is touched only by the sharp blades of razors.

Remember not to nick yourself and bleed.

Because you never know how deep it’s gonna cut.

How long it’s gonna last.

That strong, vivid, red current.

If a scar will form.

Remember me on an egg yolk afternoon in June, as you walk briskly through an effervescent park, trying not to notice lovers feed each other cherries that stain lips cerise with the stomach flutters of circuses - trapeze and high wire.

As they watch swans, swooning over how romantic it is that they choose one mate forever.

Remember me next time you find yourself in a summer thunderstorm that breaks dramatic as a dodgy drum solo in an eighties rock song.

As couples make a dash for it, chins and noses wobbling beads of rain that become crystal jewellery in the peach soft lens of the other’s eyes. As they huddle under buckling umbrellas, leaning in, laughing, her head on his shoulder.

Remember me, for it could’ve been ours - the binding vines, silver ladders and rose petal life boats arriving in eyes every fraught dawn, to ferry each other’s tender heart to shore.

Remember me at 2am.

Because…... I can’t forget.

Remember me, for I loved you.

Knot

It builds in my stomach

A tight knot of nausea

Trapped yet moving.

Climbing sea sick

Full, yet vacant

Drawn in by a strict corset

Each curve of me, pulled in, rigid

Steered by bones

Each gasp reined to silence

But, is it secured?

Because it’s spreading,

A heavy, twisting, swinging rope

Braiding in my gut, my heart

And each rotting butterfly

That once landed there in joy

Together, they form this cloying dumpling

I finally gag on the emotion

As it seeks to exit my pulsing throat

Flat

I lie there, choking on a cloud of his alcohol

Breathes it out, dragon puff

Stayed up til stupid o clock

Don’t know what he does these days

Watch TV or YouTube?

Talk to people online?

When I went to bed, he was looking at a book of Monet, contemplating the use of light and dark.

And I like that he still has those sensibilities.

Every now and again I heard a joint being rolled

The door being opened……

.

His lashes are lustrous and thick

Trailing his lids, lush as mink stoles

Eyes still ring, dark bowls of song

His lips have freckles.

I never saw anyone with that before.

Always liked it. Cute.

And his teeth are ivory keys accompanying those aniseed ballads playing in his eyes.

I still like his voice

Soft and searching. Warm. Kind.

“You look good today!”

I say.

Does that sound too generic?

You have to be specific with compliments, don’t you?

For them to mean something.

So, I tell him I like the way the light hits his cheekbones, because I do.

That renaissance gleam you get when you oil teak furniture.

“I miss kissing you”

He says

My heart sinks.

You see, much as I can appreciate all these things, they are flat illustrations in a book.

They don’t leap from the page anymore.

Pop up.

I can’t lift them off, engage.

So, I take my forming grimace, toss it in a slick of oil and raspberry vinegar from our salad days, then I douse it upon my lips til they smart like hell.

And it contorts into a passable half smile.

“Yeah”