Of one thing we can be certain

Gold cherry
Poem of the week
Pick of the Month

By Noo

Sun, 07 Oct 2018
  • 4918 reads
11 comments
 

Plastinates

We have become something else

Like the weird sisters’ old riddle -

Lesser than ourselves and greater.

We are chemicals and frozen bones,

A delicate tangle of sinew.

Sagging breasts and wide eyes,

Like cold, blue marbles.

We do the things we always have –

Ballet dancing and basketball,

Playing cards with others,

Holding a hand that will never change,

We didn’t know we looked like this.

Our skin suit peeled off and

Draped across our shoulders

Exposes everything we were,

Shows the leveller’s work.

We are awful,

We are absurd,

More than human,

Only plastic.

*

In the room

In the centre of the table,

The wreath is beautiful,

Elaborate.

“I brought it back from the crem,

I didn’t know what to do with it.”

What can you? -

Put it in the kitchen by the cat food and breadbin?

Outside in the garden on the graves of childhood pets?

No, a wreath is austere and awkward.

Not a crowd-pleaser in home décor,

Not a fitter-in.

And I’m thinking about the thing we left behind in the box.

Bruised, sallow flesh,

Prospective ash.

Can’t anyone see it?

Lilies and roses don’t mask its smell -

It’s followed us home.

On the table, the wreath’s lilies sit,

As white and bare

As the grin of a skull.

*

Echo

I am haunted by rooms emptied of possessions.

Void where life used to be,

They have taken everything.

Now there is only slanted light

Through murky windows

And the artful eye of the seller’s pictures.

It’s a doer-up at a great price,

Really worth looking at,

So I’ll show you round.

Here’s where my father hid his vodka bottles –

Just there in the cupboard under the stairs.

Here are the stairs he fell down

On top of my mother and broke her arm.

Here’s the bedroom where he pissed the bed nightly.

Here’s the kitchen where she lost her mind,

Where he died.

They cleared out every photo album -

There is nothing to confirm I had a childhood,

Only my memories of photographs –

And I’ve never trusted photos.

Nasty, slippery, unfaithful things.

There are no echoes in this house.

The walls are too thick,

The beams too sturdy.

The house will absorb,

The house will get over it.

*

Certificate 15
Poem

Comments

Submitted by bosch on

soft, could use consolidation, simple excision. had remarks on parts 1 and 2 but decided they were intrusive.

******

in your last part look at cutting lines 1 & 2, and then lines 7 & 8.

also, would cut "pissed the bed nightly", it may be gritty, and true, but i don't think the reader wants to hear you report that detail to the world. doesn't make your poem better, can't make you feel better, so cut it or work it another way. .

 

consolidate last lines,

 

They cleared out every photo album--

There are no echoes in this house.

The walls too thick, beams too sturdy,

The house will absorb,.will get over it.

 

 

 

Submitted by jolono on

Really like the way this poem tells it's own story. The now. Not always pleasant but true. A passing of inevitable time. Reminded me of when my Mum passed. Things are there and then they're not, but we move on. Best thing I've read in a while. Nice one Noo.

 

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

You share piercingly the rawness of the cutting off of bereavement.

The material body changes cells all the time, I believe. Wreaths just remind of the empty shell in the box, the 'plastic' fatiguing, and of the room having but an echo of busy living. Photos whether handled or remembered are only something if they bring incidents of the past to mind, which the empty house can't do so easily, I suppose. I think we all feel like robots on autopilot at such times. Rhiannon

 

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

So real I can smell the lilies - wonderful piece.

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

Our pick of the day and poem of the week too!  Well done.

Submitted by archergirl on

The kind of stuff I ponder almost daily. Beautifully written piece.

Submitted by london_calling79 on

Absolutely stunning. Captures that other, in betweenness, perfectly.

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This is our Poem of the Month - Congratulations!

 

Submitted by Stephen Thom on

Really powerful work. I liked the line about never trusting photographs. it's a strange feeling finishing it, like despite the final words it's such a hugely powerful piece with such a weight of feeling. You're really talented, like I think to be able to relate that (in a lovely comment above it says 'the other, the inbetweenness') and it is that but it's also huge, in some ways the crux of it all, is real special

 

Submitted by Mark Say on

I like the way the final section becomes very raw and painful, but then you wrap it up with the line about the house getting over it. I get the sense of time giving us the chance to cope with all sorts of traumas.

 

 

Submitted by Barb7 on

Great descriptions. Sums up the hollowness when loved ones pass.