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Grace Helen Poem
The lit wick broom bud,
Yellow flame beneath the pines-
damp moss breathing green.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
It's a cold dark objective fear.
His face loose folds of jowls,
a sagging half squinted eyelid
and a lopsided woeful expression,
that hides cunning manipulation and brutality.
It's a rancid stench of flies
and faecal matter and musty mothballs,
that clings to the throat and nasal passage.
Entering the box white cottage,
one up one down, dark steps into
an eternity of mundane atrocities
and mass genocide of blue bottles.
A frozen winter, but not bone cold,
the neighbours say he starved and froze,
ate soil with his hands,
stripped wood panels from the wall.
His bulky frame denied starvation,
insanity maybe, greed undoubtedly,
as his hands grasped screw driver, plant pot
and bread knife rapidly stabbing,
bludgeoning, punching with frenzied violence
the face of an old woman.
Force and trauma and a wad of cash.
Now three square meals a day,
a warm room and cigarettes.
His lopsided blood hound face stares blankly
from BBC news.
I think of him at night,
walking across the lawn from his house to mine.
I think of him in the barn,
dank, dirty, a lonely space in time.
The darkness of man gapes,
and sits comfortably outside the window.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
Erasing half of you into another
Merging like flour into water
Swaddled in comforting love.
When alone damp and bone chilled
Staring through rain slicked woodland
Alone with the unknown world
Of leaves and fungus and dark earth.
I am something I was not alone.
There is no fear just grief,
I have forgotten my face, my voice
Is half of you and none of me.
A dogs muddy paw stamped on my calf,
A red robed monk speaks to me
Carrying a bucket, a pot?
My version of reality crumbles
If alone I cannot retain a self.
Crumpling embarrassment,
Effacement of self, of I .
This was me before and now minus half
A soul, a face, a brain, a body.
Your hands that know my body
Better than I do are like my hands,
Used to hold back darkness and fear.
The death of an internal monologue
And safety in solitude or selfishness,
Be consumed by another body,
A Siamese twin.. I never wanted agency.
Alone I forget to eat my mind
Wanders, I make fires, cat lazy
I walk, I doze, I shower,
Warmth is comfort, safety.
Unending rain is a reminder of
Loneliness and others rained on,
Stuck inside. The dogs shuffle
Rearrange their beds, the cat follows
Me, sleeps in my bed.
You cannot live alone for yourself
You cannot live for others forever.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
Hands tapering down to fine wiry wrists,
They were strong and straight.
Footsteps left empty along the cleaner than before
Floorboards.
The ancient sounds of cats scratching over them gone.
Dust settles and falls from no-ones skin,
Just the walls, and ceilings stretching out.
Creams and eggshell blues, soft pinks and mauve paint,
Is the only trace of her.
Her delicate hangings made from saris stitched together
Piece by piece, are packed tightly in boxes.
The bright mosaic coffee table
Stands empty but for a wilting chrysanthemum,
Sitting alone in the centre.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
Sitting in the frigid chapel every Wednesday morning,
Three hours of numbing speech and staring up
At fragmented glass and intricate light.
Talk of people peeling themselves apart,
Shattering themselves from bridges over water.
The boy found unconscious in the cemetery
A trail of clothes and paracetamol packets.
People plummeting through water and onto tracks
Used to flow through my dreams, cracking
the surface of sleep.
Today only the icy weight
in my chest and nausea
To hear words unfaltering spoken
of broken things;
Abusive fathers, prisoners,
strangled toddlers,
Scissor stabbed hands and
insects creeping beneath
the surface of skin.
But we sit in the chapel
And clasp our hands
Against the cold.
I tell myself,
It is a story
Or something
seen through distorted glass.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
Harsh sunlight simmers my arm to redness,
Poplar leaves rustle and pixilate,
Seen through his view point it’s a lit screen,
Sending him signals and refracting back
His own thoughts, emotions and subtle commands.
He tracks his fingers through greasy locks
And I see the muddy smears on his ankle,
Maybe from a walk or the root vegetables,
He scatters about his flat, beetroots beneath the bed
Parsnips under the sink and shattered mirror.
His forearms are bare, white thick lines cross
In uniform patterns up past the elbow.
He can feel something, inside the neurons,
Scrambling the chemicals, reacting and flowing
Down his arms, he demonstrates rubbing his hand
Up and down the length of his delicate arm.
But it’s stuck somewhere, the chemicals are lodged
Somewhere in the blood and need to be flushed out,
It could be, it must be, seething below
The surface of his skin, he feels it there writhing.
His eyes fall heavy downwards,
Deep opaque amber and he’s squinting at me
Pain crumpling his face like a puppy,
Kicked in the guts.
“It’s better, I’m better.”
His heart shimmering and translucent, it could burst
Through with its desperate beating,
The alchemy of dread and panic,
I see the heart bulge,
His phantom chemicals blocking it up.
His hands hang by his sides as we say goodbye,
Wanting something to hold,
But we’ve nothing to offer but appointments,
A free gym pass, a bus pass and a chat.
He walks into the midday sun,
Leaves quivering,
Chemicals surging the brain.
A stick figure in black,
Stumbling on.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
Grey,
Is the colour,
That follows me.
A trail in the rain
When you walk behind.
But ahead it gathers
Muted and stiff,
I do not feel the
Red on white of pain,
Not the sharp arrow,
The galloping horse, the red eye.
I am the dull thump of boots,
Steady, then petering out,
Dropping off the edge
And effacing the self.
No will of my own. No will of my own.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
We shuffle through the gorse tunnel,
Harsh underworld of impaling thorns.
The reek of alcohol is rising from your back
Like steam that twists entangling my thoughts
With gut twisting clarity and certainty that
This things is upon you,
this dark thing.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
I thought I saw
The stones almost breathing,
Trembling above an archway
in perilous union,
Gargantuan slabs of slate sit
Atop rotten roof rafters
Splintering through their wormy hearts
And weathered walls.
The beating wind
That grinds and gnaws,
The pock marked surfaces
And goat licked canyons
Caving in like Las Medullas,
Termite mounds of rust
And phantom limbs of chestnut trees.
Abandoned but for tourist click
Of shutters decaying inwards
To shadows cool with piercing eyes,
& the goats rest on the broken
Blue balcony, looking out,
To bright clear heat rising.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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Grace Helen Poem
The Japanese cherry blossom
Trembles beneath my window,
I think back to when
I thought I saw god in the bloom.
Walking the mile
To the locked up church,
Bolted fast, heavy oak,
My stomach churning
With apprehension,
And disappointment
At finding its emptiness
Laid bare in the sunlight.
Copyright © Grace Helen | Year Posted 2017
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