Gullible

Smile, offer a word of friendliness

I will ease toward you like whiskey to water

Lie, betray me Judas

I will defend you as if you are family

I will forgive, if only you will apologise

Or touch my arm gently to say you're sorry

I will also demand an equal

Measure of your loyalty

This play goes on, act after act

The seven emotions flitting over our faces

Tears, forgiveness, happy. Repeat. 

Like a fingernail that meticulously

Chips down a piece of chalk

I will wait patiently 

Until you grind me down to the grain

Until you test my loyalty

So vehemently

That it stretches and breaks 

Like a rubber band. Snap. 

No going back from there, my friend

You jumped upon my trampoline of trust

I am flexible. 

I have a breaking point. 

Once shattered, my headstrong heart

Refuses to be mended by

Your injurious fingers

Your callouses have ground me 

Into an unfixable mess

Your once warm eyes now

Radiate scathing heat

Sink away into the abysses of my mind

I will shadow you into the past

Look for new ones to lay my trust upon

Search for new hands that will

Tear me into tinier pieces

And still tinier, the next time over

When will it end? 

When I have resigned to be soulless

Until then, I am gullible

To your sugarcoated words

--For every friend I ever lost.

Abstract Mind

Inclined towards the artistic
Fascinated by things mystic
Restless fingers, creating
Eager eyes, ever searching

For things unseen; they catch her eye
As a universe of normality passes by:

Delicate white lace in the breaking tide
A lost feeling in memory revived;
The curve of a hip in sand dunes
Silver fairy dust in craters of the moon;
The sweat of labour in melting ice
Twinkling diamonds in the eyes of surprise;
The stench of murder in a matador's red
Twisted lies in golden truth said;
The depth of the past in a bottle of ink
Desperate clasping hands in chain links.

Her senses, heady with fantasy
Experiences, severed from reality
Reason blind, straying from fact
Her mind, surreal, abstract.


P.S. This was one of the few poems I ever read out in public, at age fifteen, when I had far fewer inhibitions.