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StitchesStitches

Her name is Stitches and I love her.
She doesn't believe that - she says it is an improbability.
She doesn't say impossibility and that gives me hope.

No one but me knows why she's called Stitches.

I've run my hands over her soft white skin,
Flushed with the fevers of midnight.
I've touched it.

I've let my fingertips explore the hitches in her skin,
Where her body couldn't quite heal itself.

Old memories of gaping holes and vicious lies.

From her shoulder to her wrist,
From her knee to her ankle,
Any where she can negotiate a knife - she is Stitches.

It makes her cry sometimes.
She says she doesn't like being a rag doll any m

Hard.On days like this it is hard to move
It is hard to dress myself.
Blouse a chest plate; dress me in chain mail.
- with the helmet on it is hard to see
it is hard to open my eyes, or lift my chin.
On days like this, it is hard to be human.

It is hard to raise my hands, to button
or to brush my mangy hair.
It is hard to construct the image of a person
out of these destitute materials.
it is hard to pump clotted, crumbling blood.
On days like this, it is hard to be human.

ParchmentI speared you with a   black-ink pen.
I tried to balance    the weight
of our weare-worn shoulders.
Tried to counter   it with beauty
and hopefulness , with my hopes,
persistence &   with my dark love.
They came to see it in hundreds,
Droves, of   similarly seeking
hope and a reason to continue.
Reasons to love, even when it
hurts. Reasons to try when the
vast weight of differences 'tween
us can't be fixed by adding
a single strike of strength
through the middle. Our love
wasn't strong enough for poetry
to save. It crum

Rock BottomThey say a rolling stone gathers no moss,
so when I shudder to a halt
The rocks in my feet continue to grind.
I feel the sand in my lungs
and the regretful mist silting in my heart
as the waves come back in
reaching eagerly for my legs, spooling, churning
over me. Rooted in my misery.
I know the rocks in my feet will help me drown.

HAIKUWRIMOCOMPLETE 2013

February 28th, 2013

Dire desperation
A feeble whimper for help;
roar of these raw times.

February 27th, 2013

Gluttonous ash cloud
sucks the moon's blood
and swallows the night.

February 26th, 2013

Bark! An explosion!
Angry bodies escape the
network of lung cells.

February 25th, 2013

Silently cloning,
multiplying, honing in,
determined to kill.

February 24th, 2013

Tea and sympathy
readily available
for my dear sister.

February 23rd, 2013

I will hold my breath
as the north wind does the same
waiting for your love.

February 22nd, 2013

He hovers behind;
Hamletian apparition.
Always following.

February 21st, 2013

A lo

GrowthI remember the day I caught him 'gardening'. His cheeks stained cherry with the brisk wind that trotted beside him up and down the smothered garden path. He dropped a seed as his feet brushed past each other. Up and down he walked, a solemn lieutenant. I asked him what he was doing and those wide sky eyes reflected the ice as he told me he was trying to grow flowers for his mother. I looked at the seeds spilt on the snow and told him that they could never grow in these circumstances. I will never forget the clench in my heart when he responded, with a child's tongue; "I know".

In absence of a poem.I chewed my pen to the nib
and swallowed the ink thoughtlessly,
but no matter how long I thought,
I couldn't say what you mean to me.

I tried, I tried and I tested,
every word in my diminutive range,
but I screwed up more pieces of paper
and happened upon something strange;

I noticed words, which have served me,
for all of my formative years,
had no power to convey my gratitude
for the times that you dried my tears.

Whenever I doubt myself (often),
You're the one who tells me I'm wrong
You lift up my chin and remind me, wait
for the good things that will come along.

I can't find a way to express how
you are the saving grace in my head.
So

Sometimes, it's the little things.He always told me I was deep.
An unfiltered distillation of a humanitarian ocean.

He accepted me, gills and all -
He knew that I needed my eccentricities to breathe
under the seascrapers of pollution
that hung over my head.
Or he said he did.

At the end of it all,
he tugged the gills open to expose me;
my innards trailed across the coral reef
as I swam trustingly forward, hoping for the best.
I tried to believe.

I believed him, gills and all -
But eventually, he left me, with holes in my sides
Where he had spooned out my intestines
To tether them to a boulder.
I tried to breath

Never The Gold.I want my silver back,
I need to melt it down and forge a new connection
With someone else.
I want all the precious bits of myself
that I so willingly quarried for you.
I want my silver back.

A chance secondI lie awake, staring at the cornices.
3AM: my fingers worry at the corners of my sheet.
My anxiety worries at the corners of my rib.
I bite and tug and huff out my misery
As the silence keeps me awake.
I lay with pressure of your absence
Pressing down over my nose and mouth.
A soft asphixiation of the heart, of the sanity.
It is a hot grey night in London.

You are awake, startled by the sunlight.
7AM: you can't lift your weighty skull from the sheet.
The day sirens, but you stay, settled,
Under the weight of your shroud, your loss,
Only the silence keeps you awake.
Unknowingly, for the first time in weeks
We are unintentionally in sync;
Laid

OIt permeates everything
It is the cells. It is the cell
in which I am rotting.

The sheen over my eye,
the flesh I rip from the side of my nail,
the teeth I grind it with.

The tears, blood and sweat.
It is below carbon and hydrogen,
embedded in the air I breathe.

It is sleeping under my fingernails,
It is the undeniable, genetic, atomic truth.
Oh, my oxygen permeates everything.

It is the cell.

You'll Never DieHear me read it!

They say that if a writer falls in love with you then you never really die.

Instead your body is laid out in its funerial shrouds and moulds are made. Soft impressions of you to be pressed onto the blank faces of future loves.

Every time I write of taking comfort in a safe place in a storm, it will be your forearm. Every half-made smile will be on your lips, and every touch will be constructed from the residue beneath your fingernails.

When I metaphise of trees' blood, the leaves that give the energy so that a willow can provide shade for those in need, it will be your blood, it will be your light drenched kisses.

Every

Sleeping soundlyHe's talking in his sleep again
And I can't help wondering
If he's saying all the things he feels he can't say
When I'm (not) listening in the day.

BuriedUnder the paprika house,
are the bones of my father
and nestled between rib
and reason, is our love.

AfterIt follows me.
My silver skeined ghost.

An almost imperceptible thread;
only visible when you shine light
directly upon it.
It follows me.

It rides the underground.
It hides under bridges,
Under trains.
It is woven into the spools of tar
that form the roads between.

Inevitably if I walk too fast
it reminds me -
Like the tug of stitches in your cheek
that reminds you; you have lost your wisdom.
It reminds me.

It trips me in doorways,
when my mind is elsewhere.
If I look away from it -
- it slips round my neck.
Another knot to throw over the beams
it mauls me without a fair chance.

I tried to sever it. I can't.

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More from `KathrynODriscoll

Sleeping soundlyHe's talking in his sleep again
And I can't help wondering
If he's saying all the things he feels he can't say
When I'm (not) listening in the day.

Brooker, G. 1.2.2013. #2340820-2007She swirled the coral liquid around in the glass, pausing periodically to sample the bouquet with her tiny nose. With one excited whirl of the glass the precious liquid broke tide and crashed over the glass wall to spatter over her chin; she laughed delightedly and used many body parts to lick the peach squash off of her skin. It seemed every limb wished to be involved, her fingers, shoulder, wrists, tongue and even her nose scrunched up to help save it. Eventually the giggles deflated to a placid smile at which point, as if prompted by the vacancy behind her expression, she remembered the game.

She jumped onto the glass and lifted it again,

HAIKUWRIMOCOMPLETE 2013

February 28th, 2013

Dire desperation
A feeble whimper for help;
roar of these raw times.

February 27th, 2013

Gluttonous ash cloud
sucks the moon's blood
and swallows the night.

February 26th, 2013

Bark! An explosion!
Angry bodies escape the
network of lung cells.

February 25th, 2013

Silently cloning,
multiplying, honing in,
determined to kill.

February 24th, 2013

Tea and sympathy
readily available
for my dear sister.

February 23rd, 2013

I will hold my breath
as the north wind does the same
waiting for your love.

February 22nd, 2013

He hovers behind;
Hamletian apparition.
Always following.

February 21st, 2013

A lo

Mother EarthMy body is the earth;
See how under this bruise
A seed of malcontent sleeps.
See what grows out of each pore
As the pain pours over again.
There is rust in my fingerbeds
That poisons the roots
Of all good that hopes to grow here.
I am the convulsing, revolution
of the convoluted Earth...
I am the tectonic blades that clash
and shout when I curl up and hide.
You will feel me when I tremble,
and fear me when I explode
for under the magmanimous skin
There burns a core of hate
That can't be marred by human hand.

I will remember for youDo you remember;
It was September and I was seventeen.
I was gnarled into the corner of a bus
Mithering away at my gloomy mood;
Trying to shake the oppressive landscape in my mind.

It was unexpected.
A blow,
A shock.
It was unexpected to see you there.

You were folded primly onto a bus shelters seat
With her hand enveloped in yours
You both lifted your other hands, synchronised,
And waved to me with your familiar smiles.

I was surprised.
Was stunned.
Was overjoyed,
I was surprised to see you there.

Your grey hat tipped so rain slipped off
And her glasses whitening with the steam of her laugh
I just looked at you, gluttonous,
I absorbed ev

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Shockwave

by `KathrynODriscoll, Feb 7, 2013, 7:28:28 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Foetal
Trying to fold the pain up
To trap it between the paper cut limbs.
Curled up
Protective
But the shockwaves come
Pulsing from inside
Destroying cells
Radiocactive
Curled up
To trap it between the paper cut limbs.
Trying to fold the pain up.
Foetal.

Shockwaveby `KathrynODriscoll

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2013 `KathrynODriscoll

So muhcpain

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~Athazagoraphobias Mar 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

This was rather intense. Well-written, to say the least.

I hope the pain has subsided.

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`KathrynODriscoll Mar 10, 2013 Student Writer

It has for today. Thank you

Reply

~Story-of-a-Mind Feb 21, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I marvel about how you utilized the structure of this poem to trap it between the ink made limbs of reversely repeated lines. And how the shockwave, pulsing form inside, is in fact in the middle, the inside of the poem.

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`KathrynODriscoll Feb 21, 2013 Student Writer

I marvel at how you see such detail right away!

Reply

~Story-of-a-Mind Feb 24, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

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*nightshade-keyblade Feb 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

The pain we feel brings out words that we can't say

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Feb 15, 2013 Student Writer

Nods sadly

Reply

*nightshade-keyblade Feb 15, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Reply

*0hgravity Feb 7, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

this really gives the sense of being tightly coiled.

and after 'shockwaves' it felt like an explosion on the inside but the energy never escapes it just sort of tightens the coil...

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Feb 8, 2013 Student Writer

It hurt a lot yesterday

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