A Pinter pause

I’ve been holding out, turning the outside inwards

The truth is, I was (and am) trying to find the words

The right ones to describe what I feel

(Will I ever find them like I once did? I cannot say.)

 

Things without legs still crawling up and down my spine at night

They whisper things in my ear and fill me with dread and fright

I hum aloud and try to drown their voices and the noises

I scrub myself raw to wash off the feeling of them on me

 

I recognise the dissociation, the practiced breakaway

But haven’t you left bits of you in haunting places far away

Some distraction, some potion for forgetting

Some liquid courage, some warm body to lose yourself in

 

I’m a hoarder of memories of any and every kind    

They lie askance in the dusty attic of my mind

The proud stand centrestage; others lie shrouded like a life’s remains

That way I can like the world better, even like myself better

 

Poetry knows no pretense; these verses, they cannot lie

Thus do they betray me, leave me lying naked beneath the night sky

Like a great still lake, the velveteen expanse mirrors my darkness

Leaving me no place to hide, no place to run away

 

I don’t mean to eschew these feelings forevermore

Just some time, some silence to mend what’s sore

To take what’s left and start afresh, build anew

To reclaim myself, to be (maybe for the first time) whole and true