Get Your Premium Membership

Backhand

Poet's Notes
(Show)

Become a Premium Member and post notes and photos about your poem like Lady Labyrinth.


"Backhand"
You have turned me inside out, cut open like a tennis ball I used to beat backhand along with the racket hard against the garage wall To make sense of it all as a child, the grief stolen all too swiftly and replaced by the caretaking seeds planted where grew the weeds, to newly bloom the removed mind of an adult Too early What filled me up spilled out like a silent volley Re-visiting the past the future brings back The Lewis Trap, empty pockets a limp withered gun coins that glittered singing like honey bees jingling in a glass jar and all those pretty red and white hard-boiled striped lollies those powdery tablets of peppermint How ironic. The excrement. I am an empty cup no bounce left Blindfolded children have no choice not a peep, they close their eyes to keep the peace they go to sleep The escape from home eventually arrives where father is God to a strange place of revolutionary disposition to rebel with wild abandon in the glossiest, high-heeled freshest freedom The tennis match is made, the partner a cracked egg, bad, what a mess, scrambling for an alibi, lies loose the noose around the neck gone became the dream To be once blessed with the sound of beautiful crying, baby’s breath spilling milk on my breast a real peach to hold close A little bit of a dream for a short while stolen by the turn of the darkest dime the error of judgement the choices adults make there a war torn mother stole into the night away with that little jewel of you You watched her eyes leave bit by bit the life of it all, taken by the scavengers tattered to scat and rags The betrayal was kept blindfolded hushed and refined Marked by the unnatural turn of events in a man the ravages tear into the mother and child the vicissitudes of time buried under the rock with smiling spiders I marry the bed at night on my own in the childless silence I see the shadows on the walls now seeing in my mind all the signs I should have known listening and seeing with the hardened instincts of a child stolen in time left to survive on her own I was too soft a touch maternal and trusting ingesting all the do-gooders and Ne’er-do-well’s advice all their adult paranoia and f*ck clustering oh gee wells I am left alone with the nightmare remnants and the branding of another’s criminal conviction, not mine then - the rude awakening the business of another child stolen in time a child overturned with distance love lies wasting, missing birthdays and Christmas all the good intentions the years spent encouraged to relinquish what was once my heart my beautiful garden is just bare dirt vanquished to the false regent With its talons on a child the one that is mine hand me the racquet I’ll slam it harder than you backhand over the net one more time blue ribbons of silk kangaroo courts and flying monkeys what of justice? my cup is filling with fresh blood and words that cut the deepest blackest imprint a legacy staining the baseline with non-servile footprints Aces no point crying over spilt milk (LadyLabyrinth / 2021)
"Heart Shaped Box" / Nirvana https://youtu.be/by6lyNC3D9Y
“Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet Cut myself on angel hair and baby’s breath Broken hymen of Your Highness, I’m left black Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back” Kurt Cobain, “Heart Shaped Box” “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. (Dylan Thomas) https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night "Busy, with an idea for a code, I write signals hurrying from left to right, or right to left, by obscure routes, for my own reasons; taking a word like writes down tiers of tries until its secret rites make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS can amazingly and funnily become STAR and right to left that small star is mine, for my own liking, to stare its five lucky pins inside out, to store forever kindly, as if it were a star I touched and a miracle I really wrote." ("An Obsessive Combination Of Phonological Inscape,- Trickery And Love" - Anne Sexton) The Black Art, Anne Sexton https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-black-art/
Dylan Thomas https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night Anne Sexton https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-sexton Kurt Cobain https://genius.com/Nirvana-heart-shaped-box-lyrics Child Sexual Abuse: 1. KidsHelpLine - Australia https://kidshelpline.com.au/parents/issues/understanding-child-sexual-abuse 2. Bravehearts - Australia https://bravehearts.org.au/what-we-do/education-and-training/for-parents/child-sexual-assault-myths-facts/ 3. Interpol - Global, database https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Crimes-against-children/International-Child-Sexual-Exploitation-database Support/ Suicide prevention; Homelessness 1. Project Semicolon https://projectsemicolon.com/ 2. Homelessness Australia https://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/ 3. Mission Australia https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/ * other countries will have similar Support Agencies as above to assist with Homelessness. Support/Suicide prevention: Australia https://www.lifeline.org.au/ America https://afsp.org/ United Kingdom https://www.supportline.org.uk/problems/suicide/ International - All http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

Copyright © | Year Posted 2021




Post Comments

Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem.

Please Login to post a comment

Date: 1/9/2021 11:17:00 AM
Lord do you bring it when you write. Sometimes the meaning is imperceptible, but always your work requires a good and honest reading. This is quite the story the details of which some still allude me.
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/9/2021 8:54:00 PM
It ain't all milk n honey...poetry, life... for the people it was written, they will understand, decipher. I had a mean backhand at tennis when I was a kid. I don't usually like team sports. ;)
Date: 1/4/2021 11:20:00 PM
gvlm. "Most of all, I hope you always have the courage to be honest no matter how much it hurts. I dare you to be brave enough, mature enough, decent enough to be completely honest...no matter what. Even if it's going to rip someone's heart out, have enough respect and integrity, to tell the truth, no matter what." Bennett-Henry.
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/4/2021 11:23:00 PM
"We are often let down by the most trusted people and loved by the most unexpected ones. Some make us cry for things that we haven't done, while others ignore our faults and just see our smile. Some leave us when we need them the most, while some stay with us even when we ask them to leave. The world is a mixture of people. We just need to know which hand to shake, and which hand to hold. Afterall, that's Life - learning to hold on and learning to let go."
Date: 1/2/2021 2:34:00 PM
Subversive.
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/2/2021 2:34:00 PM
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/subversive_1170441
Date: 1/2/2021 10:34:00 AM
what an awesome write and I love how you have made it a bloody game of tennis - the cut ball beginning and that end is great...crying over spilt milk is a waste of energy if working on serving an ace and anger helps up to a point, then it becomes a handicap, so I keep mine close to get through some situations kinda like 'the count of monte cristo' Best wishes for 2021..here we go on another turn of the merry go round :)
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/2/2021 12:24:00 PM
Thank you. What one does Susan, is one gets their message out in whatever format they will to deliver their serve across the net to let the world know, as well as the daughter, that 'good' mothers have a strong spine and they never give up on their children (as do 'good' fathers). Wrong 'choices' in life are our lessons we learn as we move forward, which in turn is part of our dharma. Love is the Light and the Strength that will always pull a 'good' alienated mother (or father) through during the lowest moments in life/or when they are long gone from this existence, in their children's lives - to express their communications to their child/children. To the convicted recidivist and the Usuper (his barren sister, who should have given birth to her own child/children),
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/2/2021 12:17:00 PM
the "Truth" will win out always, and not remain hidden under their rocks forever. One writes, and one has been writing since 9years of age to get the message out about child sexual abuse, which has smothered 3 generations in a family in different venues and stages of their lives. If this poem assists any other 'victim' of child sexual abuse or hits a paedophile in the face with the accuracy of the serve - there may be more good in the world from poets/writers/musicians - than depression, which can eventually lead to suicide. Unfortunately "Justice" is corrupt in most areas of life, and the "good" don't always win their case - but the universal law of "Justice" through some form of stronger Light, delivers sentences in realms that deliver karma. This also applies to all alienated parents, who were always 'good' parents. All my Love to my daughter, and my sisters Karen and Melissa, my nieces and nephew. Much love to you and yours Susan, & all other sympatico writers/readers - for 2021.
Date: 1/2/2021 6:45:00 AM
You're a good mother x
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/2/2021 12:21:00 PM
Ten Star - Schmidt. She will work that out in her own way, in her own time.
Date: 1/1/2021 9:32:00 PM
"...who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Login to Reply
Date: 1/1/2021 9:23:00 PM
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/1/2021 9:27:00 PM
"When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to."
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/1/2021 9:27:00 PM
“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
Date: 1/1/2021 9:18:00 PM
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Login to Reply
Lovejoy-Burton Avatar
Leanne Lovejoy-Burton
Date: 1/1/2021 9:21:00 PM
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/fraudulent_1168251
Date: 1/1/2021 9:16:00 PM
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/the_boadicea_blood_cup_1002568
Login to Reply
Date: 1/1/2021 8:40:00 PM
"A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl." Anne Sexton
Login to Reply
Labyrinth Avatar
Lady Labyrinth
Date: 1/1/2021 8:40:00 PM
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-black-art/

Book: Shattered Sighs