Sleep: Poetry Rehab 101

Sleep now, little one
In your makeshift cradle.

No blanket to warm you,
Only Belgian mud
caked on your clothes
to keep out the cold.

So peaceful, like you didn’t
feel a thing,
when the shell fell down,
ending your fitful waking hours.

No.

Too young to imagine
You are gone forever.

I’ll see you again,
I know.
But not yet, not yet.

When we both awake,
in some other, better place.
When our fight is over,
and the war is done.

Then shall we two meet again.

Sleep now, little one,
though you’ve not
seen enough of this world.

You’ve earned your rest.

Shoutout to Mara Eastern and her Poetry 101 Rehab as always.

Poetry Rehab 101: Away

Away

Away, away
Have to find a way
To express how
I feel when you’re
Not here.

Away.

Such an innocent
Sounding little word
But the source
Of so much pain in
This world.

Away!

Absent fathers,
Missing mothers,
Children gone,
Friends forgotten and
Loved ones lost.

Away.

Don’t go,
Stay here
With me.
We’ll face
The fear
Together.
Don’t go

Away.

Once again, shoutout to Mara Eastern, who organises these wonderful prompts.

Poetry 101 Rehab: Dark

Afraid of the dark?
Don’t be.
If anything,
you should be thanking it.

The dark  keeps us sane,
It is the black envelope that rescues us
from the boring, repetitive mundanity
of life.

The great unknown that stops us
from becoming robots in our own skin.
The night and its terrors make us human,
enable us to feel even while daily repetition numbs us.

Even feeling that fear,
at least you’re feeling something.

So, next time you find yourself bored and alone,
Don’t look for something to do.
Turn out the lights
And let something find you.

A response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab Challenge

Poetry 101 Rehab: Recycle

Emotions,
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Words.
All the things
I recycle
Just to
Get through
My day,
My week,
My life.
Better that,
Than to
Discard them
And leave
Part of myself
Behind.

A response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab

Poetry 101 Rehab: Sugar

Sugar

The sun smiles down on me,
Inspired by my own mood.
There’s even a spring in my step
As I go about my day.

The luckiest man in the world,
That’s how I feel
When I think about
Having you by my side.

Maybe this is all too sickly sweet,
Full of clichés and
Too sugary for my
Bitter taste.

For once, though, I don’t care,
Because this time,
This is for you, not me.

Two lives intertwined
With a spoonful of sugar on top.
To me, that sounds ideal.

A response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab Challenge, go check it out!

No: Poetry 101 Rehab

Written in response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101: Rehab

NO

no job
no prospects
no money
no plans
no matter,
as long as you’re here.

Home: Poetry 101 Rehab

This poem is a response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab prompt Home.

Home

Walking around this empty place,
The one I called my home.
It somehow doesn’t feel the same,
This house I used to know.

These walls that used to keep us safe,
Right now they look so weak,
Crumbling away to nothingness,
As floorboards snap and creak.

This house I used to call my own,
That made me who I am today.
Now it serves no purpose here,
Just sits and waits as it decays.

Poetry 101: Rehab- End

Slightly delayed this week as I’ve been very dramatically away from my computer without internet, but once again this has been written in response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab challenge.

The End

Staring out
On the wasteland,
Wondering how we let it go
This far.

The last vestiges of
Civilisation
Wiped away by its own
Greed.

She looked,
Her gaze unbroken,
At what lay before her.
And she wept.

It ended not with a flourish
But with barely a murmur.
How did we let it come
To this?

Poetry 101 Rehab: Thaw

Again this poem is part of Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab, which you can find here. I actually wrote this before seeing her prompt, but it fit so well that I decided to just submit it anyway. Hope you enjoy it.

The First Day of Spring

Just as in Winter
Even the prettiest flowers whither
And die,
Longing for the summer sun
That makes them whole.

As they wait,
So I wait for
Your return.

Knowing that until that
Beautiful, joyous first day
Of Spring,
I will never more
Be all that I can be.

Poetry 101 Rehab: Right

Shoutout once more to Mara Eastern and her Poetry 101 Rehab section, which you can find here http://maraeastern.com/2015/03/16/poetry-101-rehab-right/. This week’s theme is ‘Right’, and you can find my effort below.

Right

Their words washed over me,
Ever since I first understood them.
Almost everything I have heard
Optimistic, supportive, loving.

‘Life is what you make of it.
And you, little one,
You can be anything
You want to be’.

Now me, I’m not so sure.
I don’t know if I believe in
Their loving deception,
Their little white lies.

But there is one thing
I do know.

For the very first time
In my limited life,
I am utterly terrified
That they are wrong,
And I am
Right.