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Best Poems Written by Gracie Bawden

Below are the all-time best Gracie Bawden poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Don'T Tell Me I'M Beautiful - Recited

Don't tell me I'm beautiful when I've done something different with my make-up
Don't call me beautiful because I've bought a new bra and you can see it through my shirt
And never tell me I'm beautiful
Because I've lost weight
Tell me I am beautiful
When I am brushing my teeth
When I have toothpaste on my chin from trying to talk to you at the same time
And all you can think about the whole time I'm talking
Is how you want to kiss it clean

Don't tell me I'm beautiful when I've done my hair the way you like it
Don't tell me I'm beautiful when I'm angry and you want me to stop being angry
Don't tell me I'm beautiful because I look good in heels
Tell me I'm beautiful because I look like I feel beautiful
Because my vertebrae are aligned like stars tonight
And I can't, stop, looking, up

Don't tell me I'm beautiful to brag to your friends
Don't tell me I'm beautiful to stop me from crying
Don't tell me I'm beautiful when I'm drunk, when I've packed my bag, when I'm leaving
Tell me I'm beautiful when I'm reading
And the words reflect in my eyes like fairy lights
And there is nowhere I would rather be

Don't tell me I'm beautiful when the door is locked
Don't tell me I'm beautiful with your trousers around your ankles
Don't tell me that I am beautiful when I'm on my knees
And if I'm not
Don't tell me I'm beautiful to get me on my knees
Tell me I'm beautiful when I am on my feet
When I am on my feet despite these goddamn bags under my eyes
Tell me I am beautiful when those bags look like hammocks and all you want to do is crawl inside
And fall asleep with me 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk0e0L0v8ag

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Stretch Marks

A foot of water
Barely blurs them
The pinkish bruises
Spanned like hands
Across my hips

I press my fingers to them
Try to align them with the crooked broken lines
That tear across my body

They are violet roads
On a map that is me
Starting pale at the backs of my knees
Stretch to meet the butterflies
That touch and leave
And touch and leave
The tall tall grass

And they gently circle my breasts
Where I fold the grass
Beneath my back
Find eyes that aren't mine
And kiss
Kiss 
Kiss

And they wrap tight around my thighs
Leaving dark deep grooves
Somewhere dead
And new
Where his face is suddenly old to me

And I wash it from my skin
Wash it away
Away
Away

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

I'M Sorry I Can'T Talk To You Tonight

Let me orbit your eyes

Sunshine

Let me orbit those big brown eyes

Sunshine

Coz it's been a while

Since you've loved me sober

When the fizzy veins and warm bed sheets are over

 

And I'm sorry I can't talk to you tonight

Because finding words is proving quite a fight

As your words come tumbling though my phone

I can't seem to find the voice to say

I need you back home

I need you home

 

Let me rewind time

Darling

Let me rewind time

Darling

Because I never said goodbye

When you boarded the train

And left me here

In the never ending Cornish rain

 

And I'm sorry I can't talk to you tonight

Because finding words is proving quite a fight

As your words come tumbling though my phone

I can't seem to find the voice to say

I need you back home

I need you home

 

Let me live in your lungs

Sweetheart

Let me live in your lungs

Sweetheart

So you can feel me

Every time

You take the air inside

 

Hold me tight

And tell me

Honestly

Have you had enough of me?

Because I will love you

Eternally

 

And I'm sorry I can't talk to you tonight

Because finding words is proving quite a fight

As your words come tumbling though my phone

I can't seem to find the voice to say

I need you back home

I need you home

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Big Wheel

Big Wheel

I was draped in stars, and filled with whiskey,
When the operator stopped the ride
My head tipped back, drinking in the shadows,
Red beaded earrings swaying with the carriage

He was a caricature of himself
Nose reaching down to caress his greasy top lip  
Rubbery ears inflating with thick fairground music
One clamped tight with a brassy ring.

One more ride? 
He kindly asked my cleavage 
His fat hands wrapped around the bar across my thighs

I smiled 
And within seconds the wind was once more
Filling my skirt like a fat hot air balloon
The spindly strands of my earrings
Resting loosely on my lips-
The legs of dragonflies.

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Tie-Dye

This dress was ripe with stains
On the verge of being lost to last year
And its ambiguous grey-green shading

Last year's heart took my eyes and
Squeezed
The life out of them
Until they bled right over the sick-skin skirt

I released it from the shadows today
Took it firmly in my palms
Twisted handfuls into pink baby fingers

Wrapped them

So tight the string sliced my skin
I pulled it with my teeth
Wrapped it around my knuckles
A knot
In my soul as I held it close to me one last time

A drop
In a bucket outside the back door
No more rue or rose or dandelion
My dress is gladioli
Purple
Swimming in it
Absorbing it
Living it

Nothing but these dull peach rings
To remind me of last year
And her victim
And of why I wear my dress like this
Like a smile
And the proudest scar I ever saw.

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Today

Today
You should call your best friend
I know you haven’t really spoken much
After that weekend you let her
Stay in your room
And she screwed some guy in your bed
Until the paint behind the headboard flaked

But she loves you
And she came over the next day
With a first edition copy of Jane Eyre
And you cried because she couldn’t just say
I’m sorry.

Don’t tell her you want her to say she’s sorry
Because she’ll only tell you to grow up
And buy you pizza
Or that purse you’ve had your eye on for a while

Get high
Eat Harribo in bed
Nuzzle deep into eachother’s laughter
Let your toes touch hers beneath the duvet
Save sorrys for tomorrow

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Mdma Mondays

You love me because I live a 10 minute walk from your house

And I don’t mind when MDMA Mondays

Render you useless between the sheets

You love me because I nod in the right places and

Don’t tell your mother that you smoke

You love me because

It’s easier to love me than

To love no one atall

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

The Engraver, First Draft, In Need of Advice

It snowed the day my mother taught me to engrave
 
She held a waxy green leaf between her mittened fingers
 
And mapped each yellow vein with her eager eyes
 
All filled up to the lashes with yellow


Scraping away the green, catching it under her fingernails
 
She found my name like some ancient code in its shallow skin
 
White winter sun tentatively fingered the letters
 
And the wind took them elsewhere
 
Towards the great grey clouds above


Meanwhile our feet lay planted to the ankles
 
In something cold and heavy.

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Haiku 1

The sun rose for him
Burning, it lit the waves
That rippled to life.

Details | Gracie Bawden Poem

Sloe Gin In August

Round and ready
Fit to burst
They grow like grapes here
Cheek to cheek they bend the bones of the branches

Every year
Two daughters
A mother
A grandmother
Rid the jewels of their armour
Delicately balancing beauty between thumb and forefinger
Tough
Like compacted snow

I know

I know that one swift squeeze and summer would seep
Right through its purple skin

In the basket that lays on the ground
Their silver crowns reflect the sun
Straight up to our thighs and hips and cheeks
They proudly await their fate.

A drop in the deep
Bitter liquid
Three months of bleeding sweetness in the dark
The end.