Tag: poem

The Department Store Tower

(Warning: Poem makes reference to child abuse)

She taught me how to stay out of sight
the women who worked the candy counter

Dragged my fourteen-year-legs in beside her
as management brushed past, oblivious

Stick to the aisles and passageways, she said
Make sure you are always busy.

She couldn’t say the words that burned on her tongue:
He’ll follow you into darkened corners of the warehouse
He’ll lock the doors and tell you it’s all your fault

No one talked about what this man did,
five floors beneath the department store opulence
While people shopped, and ate, and bought

The wheels of consumerism, well-oiled
stuffing our consciousness with lies and deceit
the vulnerable confined to shadows and margins

But some of us will never forget
Innocent fragments haunting locked corners
Ensuing rage still railing against the injustice
That puts a pedophile in charge.

(Image my own)

Facades

Somehow I knew his mask was porcelain –
impossible to hide the soul’s light
reflected in troubled eyes…

I played along though,
humoured his self-deception
nodded at assertions of calm

Knew that one day the facade would crack
the mask would slip and the rage escape

Why I didn’t run; I do not know
Maybe it was recognition –
my own countenance a carefully construed lie

Maybe I needed to prove to myself
that no matter how violent his storm
this time I would emerge triumphant.

(Poem inspired by Sadje’s What Do You See image prompt.)

Rebirthing

It came in the peak of summer
that most optimistic time, when
sunshine equates with health
and bodies glow with exertion
fit and in their prime – it came

with all the fury of a winter blast
harsh and cold and unyielding –
wrestling me from my complacency
annihilating vibrancy, self-definition
de-leafed, rendering me raw, exposed.

I clung to the darkness, blanketed
against the harshness of light,
the impossibility of sound, or scent –
was de-shelled, ungrounded, ravaged
by volatile nerves and misfiring impulses

praying for the certainty of death…
but it is spring that follows winter
and in time, restlessness set in –
the dogged whine of hope willing
my mind to stretch, my body to try

spirit, tired of withdrawal, pushed
against the wall of dysfunction,
bolstered by a shifting acceptance
found roots in an unspoken faith
and I felt possibility, like a tiny sprout

reaching for the sunshine,
ventured out of my cocoon –
still alive! Redefining purpose –
still precarious, highly vulnerable
but optimistic for the return of summer.

(Rebirthing first appeared on One Woman’s Quest II March, 2018. Image my own)

Mouse Massacre

There are mouse bits
splayed across the sunroom
stuck to my favourite throw rug
and great globs of glue

The trap my husband set
to catch the recent invasion
apparently lured the hunter
for she, stiff legged and
face matted, is skulking
elsewhere

I stepped on a gluey bit
eyes not yet open
before noting
the disarray

Hard to concentrate
when a tail detached
from a thigh (foot intact)
lie stuck to one’s rug
and entrails drip down
the freshly painted
off-white wall.