POETRY

I’ve had a troubled relationship with poetry over the years. While often the shortest medium of writing, it is the one I often have the hardest time finishing.

I often start with a really strong concept, the picture in my mind is so strong, but the more I put it into words the further it dilutes, until I’ve lost the picture. My notes app is full of good lyrics, but no songs. Good lines, but not many good poems.

Here’s what I could dredge up from the depths.

I was kinder at 11, bolder at 14, wiser at 17.

Now I'm 21 and all I am is older.

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I got a ghost penis - they never see me coming

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Confidence or arrogance, I can’t tell what to think

Your best friend duly turns into, an eighteen year old shrink

Holding onto childhood but I think we’re out of time

Being half as tall as all the trees you used to climb

Your Mac book and your iPhone, listen to you weep

Spend seven hours on instagram and six of them asleep

Long sleeves in the summer, staying inside in the fall

Blank spots in your mem’ry, and the craters in your wall.

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We halved an apple on the porch steps. I’m glad it gave me something to do with my mouth other than tell her how much I loved her.

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Love is a mother bird pushing her chick out of the nest.

Love is wearing your favourite shirt even when you’ve stained it.

Love is sitting on the wet chair so they don’t have to

But love is also a mother stopping her chick from leaving the nest because they aren’t ready.

Love is buying a second of your favourite shirt because you stained the first one.

Love is tricking them into sitting on the wet chair because you’ll both find it funny.

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I sat next to you this morning. I let you try my lunch. I said your name when I said goodbye. I thought about you before I fell asleep.

I spent a whole day saying it. I love you I love you I love you I love you.

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All the women I know hold so much anger. Maybe it’s because if they frown, they’ll get wrinkles.

So they stay silent, and they stay pretty. And the world stays the same.

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Forgo the throes of love in life anew.

So many words were spent with good intent.

Leave now to save a memory held true.

Dog ear the salty page that I once knew,

In favour of the newly bought content.

Forgo the throes of love in life anew.

I wish, I wish, I wish it wasn’t you

I left, I lost with time undue unspent.

Leave now to save a memory held true.

Leave lip stained picture frames I never knew.

Hold strong against a back I never bent.

Forgo the throes of love in life anew.

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A person with no flaws would be like a song with no pauses, noise with no breaks. Nothing to make you hold your breath.

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What’s poetry?

That was a rhetorical question,

A literary device.

Does that make this a poem?

What if I speak like this?

Does that make this a poem?

Pretty words,

Contradictions,

That’s all it is.

I never respected it. Never respected the poets.

I could put beautiful words one after the other too.

I never liked poetry, I didn’t see the point.


My mind started changing when I fell in love with the shape of her name.

I caught myself conditioning my hair so she could run her hands through it more easily.

She wasn’t perfect

Not even close

Her kiss didn’t taste like strawberries 

Or pineapple, or roses, or cake.

But she tasted how she smelt and she smelt like home.


All the poetry in the world couldn’t describe what I felt for that girl.

But then it ended. As it often does.

I lost my love.

And I lost my love for the beautiful words too.

She and they became like coffee, a bitter addiction that kept me up at night.

But if I can be honest.

Despite the pain and the hurt and the sleepless nights

I can’t wait to fall in love with a beautiful girl again

Because I know I will fall in love with the beautiful words again too.

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