poem – Page 2 – Clan Witch & Word Refinery

People Pleasing Massacre

A poem

From this tomb
I look at the massacre
I’ve made of myself
Taking in every ripple of depression
The marches of its succession
Binging and fasting like waves sloshing
Overwhelming loose skin
Drinking in the scars
Grooves deeper than can be seen
Slashes from the blade
Tracks worn into this sick façade
Embedded in the tomb
For me, there’s no room
Depression’s refusal to be released
Sagging waves of torment
Dropping into the scalding water
Reddening surface and silver deep
Lie back
Just lie back let it sink in
Conquer the concave slave
Drench black-eyed face under
Revell in the nearing thunder
I can see through my corpse to the decomposition
My life’s mission
Taking in their rot
I’m rotting alive
No need to be a giver
They keep taking
Clawing at the veins
Sucking my blood with straws
Lie back further
Steer across the landscape
It ain’t too horrifying from this angle
The sags tighten
Silver streaks lighten
Red fades to blush
Embrace the incoming hush
I’ll lie here
Lie to myself for a while
Let the silver lining twinkle
A perspective shift
A momentary lift.

One Last Time

Biding time until reaper's weepers dispersed
The mourning departed to spread grief song

I linger until silence befell cemetery gates
Beyond the ceremonial bound

In observance
Solitary silence
Spiritual widow
I’ve waited…

Making way across the damp green
Souls stick in the mud sinking
Making my way to you
One last time

Love out of sight
Residing now on opposing dimensions
Held in the brevity of penumbra
Lovestruck in shadow
Your dark spell, loves curse

By the mound afore you
I stare into your pit
Imagining the pits of your eyes behind the box
Pondering the transparency of your boxes of fabrication
Heart-shaped carpentry, weak to these sorrowful eyes

My love on a fine line
Kneeling with my hands in your mud bed
I climb into your grave
Lay atop of your box poured with flowers you hate

Deep in the hole upon my love’s burial bed
Breathing in the fumes of your death
Feeling deaths whispers swarm my head

Love eternally buried in me
Beyond the finite blood and bone
Can you feel the heat penetrate your cold corpse?
I lie in your pit
Widow death shroud 
On top of my love…

One last time


© Natasha Sinclair

Quick 2020 Wrap Up

Just dropping by with a quick 2020 writing (or more subbing) wrap up since it seems to be the thing to do!

On my first year actively subbing and writing for specific calls, this has resulted in 58 pieces accepted for publication. 42 of these have been published this year – 8 Short Stories, 13 Flash Fiction, 20 Drabbles and 1 Poem. The remaining 16 accepts will be out in 2021.

I have been lucky to have my work appear alongside some cool folk from around this wee planet. Thankful and grateful for the opportunities and encouragement from my friends, family and writing community. Writing wise it’s been a pretty fun year — I’ve learned so much and developed some new skills along the way.

As for the rest of 2020, it will not be missed!

2020 – that’s plenty, be on your way!

No Good Grief

Gnashing and gnawing at my innards
Viscera shredded; trauma tombs embedded
Stitch in bells, weigh down the nauseating flapping
Jangle a euphonious jingle
Steady placement of chinked shield
Conceal agonies.
  
U-bend blocked
There my guilt brims
Shame for wishing away rapid cell division
Liquor and voluntary scalding
Natures way away
Life folding poured out
Out of Order; terror of disorder
  
For two, a freshly dug hole
The morning after
Mourning follows
Nipping at heals with the snow
A hollow in another garden
There, a piece of my heart lays
A depression for my first’s succession
  
She wants to see my torment on display
To harvest in morbid grief games
Pretend she’s just the same
Catfish loss-mother
Conspiring tiring 
Yearning to reap from the suffering leaks of my soul
Observe my lamentations trapped in a fishbowl
To don a cape, be in control
Prodding my wounds, infecting
  
Imitation empath storing stories
Catalogued, indexed, held hostage
Latching of grief vampires
Sucking ephemeral life’s marrow
Chipping stones off my bones
  
An archaeologist scraping the shovel
No delicate brushing of bristles
Attention desperation
Desecrating my pain 
Self-appointed steward on my cradle’s grave.

Reluctant Reaper

Rolling rumbling tumbling of the muscle
Steadfast working out the dead

Waiting through waves
Expulsion from womb to world; inner-outer dimension switch

Existence given visibility
Life unviable; dead tangible

The ticking clock veiled agony; pulse-quickening within the neck
Swimming through minutes in viscous shards; stark, exposed in wait

A sudden burst to cemetery-serene-silence
Shock of expectations met, tension swells and pops within the void

Her body expelled, revealed
Limp, still, disturbingly perfect

Few eyes lay upon her — none with such desperate thirst as the child-loss-mother
Tattooing details to memory
Cerebral and uterine imprints
Memories outlived instantaneously

Tiny fingers, toes, torso, fused eyes, jaw, ears…
All except the beating of the heart
Virgin lungs void of air in this, her death hours stare

My pathetic heart beats so hard it chokes the throat
The muscle has pried itself from within its cage, making way up to swell in the gullet

Don’t take her away…
Emotion sickness swells drowning from the inside
Even dead, she’s still the baby; even dead, she’s my baby, still

Must give her honour of life…somehow
Gemini mother; creator, reluctant reaper

Now her death feeds life
Entangled in root tendrils within the earth
Forever reaching within and upward

The true heart of something that doesn’t have to beat
Her cycles visibly viable

Bleary eyes can’t always see their praise of stars
Despair wracked the heart for a time

Peace isn’t only for the dead…

She sways in the wind now; dancing grace
Energy shared, scattered through leaves and bellies of beasts
She worms and she soars through them

Not the life imagined; energy shifted, realigned
Heart-wrenching, gut-punching beautiful

Death Born Still — Lives

Written on reflection during ‘The Wave of Light’ 15th October 2020.