some poems by me

hi i really like poetry and i wrote some so here u go

Since before I even wrote songs, I’ve always loved poetry and just writing in general. Even now, often the songs I write stem from little phrases or pieces of verse I keep in my notes app on my phone (I know, romantic) and I love that sometimes words can just sit there without the music until I find somewhere that they fit. I also share a birthday with Sylvia Plath so I’ve always wanted that to mean something.

Today I thought I’d just share a bunch of poems I’ve written over the last few months that I feel like reflect a lot of what has been in my brain, and some of them have inspired songs/have been inspired by songs so I hope you like.

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This first one is inspired by my own song (lol) and the horrible awful terrible feeling of not knowing what someone thinks about you when you really would just like them to feel the same as you.

eat me alive

hot flush hot hands

somewhere a young girl chastises herself for looking too long

“you’re basically coming out in a rash”

that’s how bad you can see it on your face.

so bashful for once - like you’re hidden behind your mother’s legs again,

a distant somebody cooing over you in the supermarket.

i am that distant somebody in front of you now and i hate it

i hate feeling like a burden or the object of darting glances between friends

i hate conflating what i’ve heard with what i know with what i want with what i don’t

and i hate you for depriving me of that certainty.

i lie on my back and stare at the ceiling

and the wanting is visceral.

i see you in the swirls where the paint has smudged or conglomerated,

where its pooled

into 

    every 

                            bump

                                          and then smoothed out again like

nothing happened.

one day you feel so close

it’s like the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, reaching

out

out

out

desperate for connection. and they could probably touch you if you were there.

and if you were there i probably wouldn’t say a thing

for fear of you leaving.

so instead i let you talk

and with my name between your teeth i swear you could eat me alive.

This is the only other one in this group of poems that’s inspired by a song of mine, and I will be honest I only wrote it because I completely forgot about a university assignment where I was meant to read a poem to my class out loud and I had prepared literally nothing. I wrote this twenty minutes before class, and it’s Lucy the song, but lament-style.

LUCY

oh lucy, oh lucy

how you see straight through me

see all that i could be

and you do it better

oh lucy oh lucy

for the times you never knew me

i apologise profusely

for this cruel vendetta

your hair/your eyes/the way you move

to touch your skin the things i’d do

when i picture us i just see you

and it kills me.

because even if i hate you truly

i’ll never be you lucy.

though i’d love to undo me

i’ll never be you lucy.

This is possibly my favourite poem I’ve ever written. It’s kind of about being a teenage girl and that closeness you have with your female friends, but also the sinister side of that.It’s also kinda about my favourite book, The Virgin Suicides. It’s also kinda about an event that happened to a friend of min when I was too young to really understand what was happening and why. I really want to turn this one into a song but I haven’t yet.

greek chorus

scooter bruised ankles swing,

warm flesh on cobbles, softening.

do you remember that first summer?

when everything had a filmy sort of waxy haze?

drawing circles in the wet soil with one finger,

the girls, we would lie on each other, one freckled arm

draped on another’s knees, a mess of intertwined limbs and voices blending into one

because what we have we share.

the boys would dance around us, fanning their feathers

but we would only squeeze tighter;

we

communicate through slight of hand and wayward glances that no one

else but us can understand.

they can do their worst, we think, but they’ll never have what we have.

and they’ll never have what we have to come.

we thought forever would feel like this

and the wind would carry our laughter through the season,

rose-tinted football fields where we laid our heads and

wished that this feeling would last forever—

— one day one of us wiped the lens.

like blood on fresh cotton, her tainted body sat limp on a bedroom floor,

already regretting the ripples from what she thought was a silent, solo act.

it takes a certain stoicism to inflict pain on oneself without expecting anybody to notice.

and how we mourned! how we weeped! we held her until her mother came home,

and we said ‘you can tell us everything’

and we said ‘you can tell us anything’

but secretly we squeezed tighter and stole secret glances at each other whilst her head was down

and we were all silent on the walk home.

the sun had never set so early all summer.

our mothers snide “what does she have to be so sad about? you’re only fourteen”

but we teenage girls carry a heavy burden

you can never have back what we had

and you can never have back what we had to come

that summer lasted forever

until one day i had to go home and scrub the grass stains out of my jeans

This next one is in a very specific poetic form called a ‘Golden Shovel’, whereby you take an existing line from a poem, or a quote you particularly like, and the end word of each line of your poem is a word from your chosen line. I picked my favourite ever quote by Sylvia Plath, and my poem is kinda about the all-encompassing nature of crushes. Because of my OCD, I always say that I’ve never felt anything half-hearted, my emotions are so intense that I can be super happy, or super sad, but there never tends to be a just okay point.

“I don’t know what it is like to not have deep emotions. Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely.”

— Sylvia Plath

do not alter your chosen path say i,

don’t allow your impassioned thoughts to wander awry, don’t

allow the scales to become so delicate that it pains you to not know

every thought behind each wayward glance, and what

you have to do to ensure it

is in fact you who he is

longing for. it’s like

death to

want, it is not

a light affliction to have.

it lodges in your stomach, a deep

empty pit in which to dispose of all these useless emotions.

do i deserve this, is this the price i pay for love, the universe getting even?

tell me how i escape unscathed, how i pull back from giving, how do i know when

to quit? because i lie awake at night, memories dancing through my head of you and i,

but you’re sleeping fine i’m sure and then i’m upset all again. tell me how not to feel

and maybe i can put an end to this godawful nonsense. tell me how to feel nothing.

if this is all manufactured, handcrafted by me, and there is no you and i

why does my entire body light aflame when i can feel

your eyes on me. i want you and i want it

completely.

This one is about mothers and daughters.

bad apple

bitter to the core

the apple didn’t fall far

i’m my mother’s child

bending down i caress you

tender hands meet hardened flesh

this is not eden and i am not eve

i know better than to tempt fate

by us becoming too close

too entwined.

you’re bruised and uneven

but i do not care

a mother’s love supercedes all

but i will never love you in the way you wish me too

you will do as you want

you will be invincible

but

beneath your smooth exterior

is the sense of being doomed to the same fate

because one day

when each of us rots and decomposes into the soil

your seeds will sprout and grow

and the apple never falls far from the tree

Sometimes you forgive bad behaviour because you have fond memories with someone, but the minute you come out of the misleading cloud of memories and can view things objectively, you will see what you most likely couldn’t before.

skin

we share an umbrella and laugh about how we’re still drenched

your hand isn’t there so i sit with my fists clenched

clumsy knees touch beneath a pub garden table

i’ll be swallowing down your name with salt and lime as long as i am able

searching eyes in crowded rooms, you’ll find me when i need you

i know far better these days than to bite the hand that feeds you

you tuck a my hair behind my hair i listen like a child

the pedestal i held you on has long since been defiled

i pass you now and then, your eyes glaze over like i’m see through

but in seven years no part of my skin will have been touched by you

This next one I tried to turn into a song but I actually think I prefer better as it is. It’s about a confusing time.

untitled

ur like the part of me i can’t address 

but ur still the first thing in my morning head

i feel like he’ll strike me down if i profess

but i’m not a saint 

god i’m a mess

i wish it was this easy

i call you mine and you call me yours

you dip a toe

i’m knee deep

but i don’t think i’ve ever been in love before.