Sad songs for sad Sundays

My empty arms caught the morning rain

As I fell victim to this feeling of Sunday 

Comprising if battered photographs, cream paper and bruised fingernails 

When tried to unearth the lies I had buried years before

Wrapping them in crimson paper

With 'do not disturb' written over their bones

And I fell victim to this feeling of Sunday

Whisperings of new beginnings swung their legs on the window pane 

But there were doors that had come unstuck

I walked for miles that day

Their keys sit under drainpipe covers and rest in potholes

Your roses smell like decay

And Sunday feels impenetrable now 

Post Break-Up Drive Home

The gearstick your lance

I am wounded by forced silence

Hanging between our fingers

And nestled within the static 

Of a Radio Four documentary

Unremarkable stretch

Of grey-blue blurs 

Interspersed with coughing saplings

Struggling in their plaster casts 

The miles tick downwards

My chest balloons with relief 

Sweaty fingers fumble with the dials 

Is there a station to drown out your resentment? 

Deep lidded glares, caught in the musty smell eminating from

Under my seat 

A War Poem

Falling over hilltop and mound

Like cattle strung up by the neck

Only days ago was this a spot

For plump gentlemen, children

Battling it out with sticks 

If we could only have rearranged

Those faces which line 

The pews of the Commons

For we trudge, empty handed with

War's steamroller chasing our broken footsteps 

2 minute writing exercise - 9:48pm

We weren't prepared for when Adonis would fall

And black ice would encumber every journey

When our apex sighed into itself

And tried to curl around a wisp of smoke

Left to smoulder in the empty fruit bowl

Of our golden kitchen-top heydays

2 minute poem at the train station.

Uniformity reigned

Over cracked concrete slabs

Buried cigarette butts, scraps of

Gum wrappers, made home in its mercy

Its bleary eyed subjects emerged

Sheep shorn of their sides

And backs, shuffling as though it were

The Great Yorkshire Show

Or some such lark. 

Poem for Today

THIS IS A LETTER 

By Rebecca Dunham 

This is a letter to the worm-threaded earth. 

This is a letter to November, its gray bowl of sky riven by black-branched trees. 

A letter to split-tomato skins, overripe apples, & a flock of fruit flies lifting 

      from the blueing clementines’ wood crate.

To the broken confetti of late fall leaves. 

This is a letter to rosemary. 

This is a letter to the floor’s sink & creak, the bedroom door’s torn hinge 

      moaning its good-night. 

This is to the unshaven cheek. 

To cedar, mothballs, camphor, & last winter’s unwashed wool. 

This is a letter to the rediscovered, 

to mulch, pine needles, the moon, frost, flats of pansies, the backyard, 

      hunger, night, the unseen. 

This is a letter to soil, thrumming as it waits to be turned. 

This is a letter to compost, eggshell’s bone-ash chips, fruit rinds curved like 

      fingernails, & stale chunks of bread. 

A letter to the intimate dark—mouth-warm & damp as a bed. 

This is a letter to the planet’s scavenging lips

If me and Anais Nin were friends

I wish you'd forgotten Sunday
And cracked the glass of
The gilt picture frame
Depicting you; seven, red ribbon
Bruised knees.

Reflecting me, old, dungarees,
Shit taste.

I wish you'd cut your hair so short
That I could feel all the knobbles of your skull
And imagine how your smelled
Whilst we muddled through
Tripping over feigned cool

Clenched fingers at Communist rallies
"Statement" art: glitter glued condoms,
leopard skin and desecrated Manet prints

I don't know what kind of statement we were trying to make.

How I would like to go

It tasted like good wine
As he rolled it over his tongue
Inscrutable experience stood to attention
And dug its trenches within the lines of his face

Remembering the name of our mistakes
The candelabra and her grandfather clock

The lake glowed pink under a renaissance sky
Over lowered shoulders and shaking hands
With unstoppable, indomitable courage
It was coming

Another 3am Haiku (Western style)

Barren souls sauntered alongside
The endless desert moon
I sighed to see them go

What Remained

Jack's thick blue shirt
Huddled in the corner
Crumpled under the weight
Of the memories lining its pockets

Your jewellery box
Slurred its words
Gasping over the premise
Of unfulfilled treasure

My photo album, arms folded
Leaning against the dresser
Each yellowing snapshot
Slightly missed the mark

Whilst the memory of the tulips blooms
Its subjects cannot help their decay

2 minute writing exercise - 22:32pm

You can't connect the dots
Because you have forgotten Sunday
You are that papered ribbon of a moment
When you wake up and forget who you are.

And the coffee-scented sunrise catching his dusty eyelids
Doesn't make the breath catch in your throat
Any more. The imagery's turned stale.
Your camera's out of film.

When your plans with friends turn to shit - UNFINISHED

We pass through dusk, nonchalant shoulders tilted
Too soon, the colour drains from the street
Extremist pamphlets reign upon your shutters
The house longs for new friends.

The night makes the floorboards creak.
Anticipating, we turn to dust
Whilst the ghost face of the wind
Meets our rattling window panes

We become ash-grey
Skin bouncing off moonlight
Radiating hollowed eyes and hair,
Transformed into a mass of sleeplessness curls.

And so we sit, 2am
Devoured by expectation
Drinking tea
Listening to the flicker
Of black and white film

Innocence//Experience

"

If I were able to count using
Every cell on my burning skin
I still could not count
The number of times
That I have thrown myself
In a purposeless heap
Onto your unwashed bedsheets

Nor could I count
The number of times that
I have gagged on the porcelain crotch
Of the toilet bowl
The shower blasting
To conceal my moans

There are multitudes of
“3:35am and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life”
They creep behind my shuttered lids
Whilst I shiver in the unheated box
Of my cold water flat
They refuse to rise and be counted

Really, who could blame them.

"

Ode to My Shrinking Friend

“

You’ve been living too fast recently my dear and I hate being the one who helps you out of some stranger’s funky smelling bed sheets, who forces you to look in the mirror, forces you to look past the fading eye make up and bed head and to look at your sunken cheeks, the lack of vitality - or even feeling - in your eyes.

And I know it’s hard because we all want to squeeze ourselves into a life different from our own and convince someone enigmatic and mysterious that we are equally enigmatic and mysterious.

And I know you hate who you are when you’re strewn amongst last night’s abandoned hopes with your dress hitched up around your hips and some guy telling you to shut up because your crying turns him off.

And I know it’s hard to be yourself when you loathe who you are but I love you. And I want you to let me in and allow me to neutralise this acid that corrodes your biting heart and I need you to let me soothe those singe marks left upon the delicate fibres of your soul, the artwork of people who aren’t even worth a second glance.

So for one night, throw away your inhibitions and come roll down hilltops with me and we’ll swing in the playground and dance furiously to High School Musical like we used to at school discos, dizzy and giggling because 9 o'clock felt like the end of the earth. Hell, I miss seeing that smile.

”

Tree

“Tree, I stand.

Abandoned by square shaped eyes
Burning with apathy
The flickering ‘grams
And the deep curl of bass
Thundering down oil slicked flagstones.

Tree.
No feet caress your proud carriage
That carried, life
Into the lungs of those
With the fairy dust eyes
And the sleep shuffled hair
Sitting by the glare
Of flickering picture
Neurone destroyer”