Please note: These poems may be triggering. Please read with caution.
Poetry
Copyright © 2008 by Kim and Survivorship. All rights reserved.
You may print out one copy for use in your own healing.
Who am I anymore?
Kim
I stopped being me
and nobody noticed
I switched once again
cause I needed a friend
I trigger once more
cause he opened the door
and now I don’t know
who I am anymore
Copyright © 2008 by Julie and Survivorship. All rights reserved.
You may print out one copy for use in your own healing.
Untitled
Julie
i have a mind
that was built for thinking
and scholarship
and research and a bit of teaching.
i have a heart that was made
for listening
and ears for feeling.
i have eyes to amplify my ears
and a few skills i keep
on the shelf
in my attic.
i have rage that sits under the bed
and sticks me in the foot when i try to sleep.
i have horses of the mind
and am rich in ancestral lands which i shall never
ever touch and my deer run free
where my feet will never laugh.
i have a detection system that can find pain
anywhere on the planet
and a built-in scrambler
that blows everything all to hell.
i dissociate.
Copyright © 2009 by K. and Survivorship. All rights reserved.
You may print out one copy for use in your own healing.
Undisguised
by K.
Late walk on a wild night. As the wind
flows past my face like water, fast and
soft, pressing my skin, tugging on hair,
I am thinking of Need, the dark green
tendrils of intense longing that I curl
towards then around new souls in my life,
like a baby’s fingers that grip hair or
hands, whatever she can reach of
her mother / carer / god. Her need
to be loved so fierce, vast as her helplessness.
I’m feeling the baby I was and still am,
gathered in my belly, arms, fingers,
mouth, within my ribs: hopeful, timid,
patient — with the patience of a womon lying
on her kitchen floor, her hip broken,
her brain foggy with pain, slowly calculating
the hours till her book club friends might
arrive on Thursday evening, and can she last
till then; with the patience of a small
body bleeding in a crib, wearing a crooked
wet diaper, choking on her harsh sobs.
What she needs just then just now is so immense
so necessary so impossible, that something folds up
inside me like an origami swan, pale, mute,
unmoving, small. Her gestures as she
reaches, grips fast, holds on to hair,
hands, earlobes — startle, frighten, and push
away. I need you, she howls inside
as people scurry away. Please don’t
go! I unclench her fingers over and over,
lower her voice, step back slowly & but she
only howls harder, grips faster,
reaches sooner, fights for love as for survival.
She’s immense, and strong in the thickness
of her scar tissue. She is a loud
bell sound, a bright light poking the eyes,
a bramble bush. I try to pretend away her
need and desperation, but we are not fooling
anyone, it leaks plentifully like milk, and soon
people run alarmed. Only the wind
handles me with grace, only the dark green
trees sough “yes yes yes” in the darkness
when I approach them, undisguised longing
spilling onto my face.
Copyright © 2008 by Q and Survivorship. All rights reserved.
You may print out one copy for use in your own healing.
On Men In Black Shoes
Q
dark suits
muffled voices
brisk handshakes
their black shoes depart
his stay
he sits on the bed
loads his gun
eyes me over
his shoulder
and leaves
Sunday morning
a dozen donuts
the smell of
stale cigarettes
blood speckles
on his shoes
I set out
black polish
a shine cloth
my nutty donut
sometimes
I drink milk