One Way Problem

A flightless bird in a cage, high above the ground, “If you want to leave” they said “just take the key”. I looked around at the tight walls around me, then down into the void below. “I have nowhere to go” I replied, “how can I leave?”
“That’s not my problem” they answered, “you only said you needed to leave, I’m only stating you can, don’t think I’ll help you, that’s not real freedom, so figure it out”.

I sat in the dark for a long time, my muscles atrophying from the lack of space to move around. Then I started to formulate a plan; like Daedalus I slowly gathered feathers from the birds around me, I worked to get enough materials to scrounge up what I would need for my age-old invention. If I couldn’t be aided by those who were supposed to help me I’d find my own way out, before the air got so thin that I would suffocate. I was only missing one thing: a stable ground to land on.

I slowly tested my new wings, in relative secret, landing on rickety platforms before coming back to base. I got quite good at flying and the clean air outside made me a little stronger to endure the cage. Then one day I was offered a more stable landing ground, just as my cage ran out of air.

I flew away as the cage crumbled behind me.

All I wanted was to be free. But some chains still cling to me, bashing into my ribs as I flap my wings.

I just want to be free.

 

Puppet

You thought you would try a new thing.
Puppet master.
You took some basic materials,
Thread, cheap wood and a tin heart.
It was all you could afford.

You fashioned a puppet,
From what you saw in the streets,
In magazines,
The puppet became another reflection
Of the outside world.
Like so many others before it.

As you played with the strings
A wind stirred up from inside.
A new force started appearing,
Moving the puppet when you were away,
Trying to halt
Some of your actions.

You watched your puppet grow,
Never giving it “too much” freedom.
After all you had created it.
It belonged to you.

Rust started to form
On its tin heart,
The wood started to creak.
You had not built it to last.
You did not know how to.
You did not even see
It was falling apart.

Master I wanted to make you smile,
I only felt alive when I saw joy spreading out.
Tell me master
Why is there so much pain?
Why is it the easiest thing
For me to feel?
Master, am I dying?
Is this what death feels like?

I am afraid,
My body aches,
My heart is in pieces,
I do not know how to fix it,
You never left me the tools,
You have become cold,
I struggle to find warmth

I realise now how alone I am.

My strings are falling loose.
I am falling.
I wish I could go back into the forest,
To be a tree again.
You and so many others
Would not have it.
I see your tears in my dreams.

I move so that you will not cry.
I seldom see you laugh
Like you once did.
I have failed you master…

 

Sea

Branches with silver leaves

Swaying gently in the breeze
Behind it a blue morning sky, 
Announcing the day to come.
The smell of the sea stings a little, 
The sounds of waves crashing in the distance
Remind you of where you are.

And you hear something new,
A guitar, not far,
Voices singing with that morning dissonance,
Inviting heads to turn,
People to come out of tents,
Other morning voices to join.

For a moment,
Despite how
Tired,
Sunburned,
Mosquito-bitten,
Or dirty
You might feel,
It feels like you’ve found a patch of heaven on earth
In this moment everything is fine.
You start humming along to the song,
Slowly getting up from the place you slept,
And you feel like you’ve been here all your life.
You know these strangers by name,
Somehow in the night they became family,
Uncomplicated and open,
And you’re finally home.

 

Moving On

“As you all know,”
Said the big ones
“They’re selling the house,
And we’re making a list,
Of things you might want to keep.”
We looked at each other,
Reluctantly starting;

We wanted
The thick wooden beams
We would climb up on
And the beds underneath them
That we’d jump onto.

We wanted
The trees in the field
That would catch our footballs and rugby and tennis and golf balls,
And the big oak with the rope we’d swing on.

We wanted
The big old trampoline in the garden,
The basketball post and the swimming pool,
And the cherry tree.

We wanted
The big room
That found a new life when 16 cousins
Spent the night talking and hushing each other
On mattresses on its floor.

We wanted
The space under the stairs
Where we’d hide
And grab unwary feet.

We wanted
The big plastic boot
We’d stand in when were small enough
Or wear and try to walk with.

We wanted
The plastic stools and broken guitars
We’d do our private concerts with,
Singing at deodorants next to a pillow fight.

We wanted
The inn we’d created in the barn
With an old table and some crates,
And a few empty bottles to drink out of.

We wanted the grass,
The sun and the rain and the mud,
The rainbows and all the memories we’d created
Year after year.

We wanted the whole house
With its field and its garden and the barn.

We looked at each other,
The big and the small
And the in-betweens,
And we knew we wanted those things
Precisely because they were things
That you could never take away from this place.
They were what made it home,
And no-one would see it like we did until they’d grown up in it,
Felt the rain and the mud,
The sun and the dust,
The spiders and the flies,
The scolding because of dirty shirts
And sleepless nights.

…………………………………………………itsbeensolong……………………

I found this when I was looking through my notes and I just realised I never published it so here it is ^^

According to my notes I wrote (or at least last modified) this poem in march 2016 so two years ago

 

How I Was Made

My aunt always asked me how my ears were so flat… you always told her that they just were, but I realised that maybe it was from all the times that I clamped them to my head with my hands so I wouldn’t hear the yelling.

I’ve been trying to listen to what people are saying for years but even now I still phase out after a while and I have to concentrate on listening. I’ve realised that after a while I’d stopped listening to you when you kept repeating the same things and just expecting my answers to change.

I’m messy, I hate doing things I’m told to and I can’t manage to keep up with people’s expectations of me, no matter how benign. I knew that if I showed you I was capable of certain things like keeping my room tidy and doing all of my homework immediately you would only ask more of me. I tried to lower your expectations so that the pressure would become more bearable and I’d have some time for myself.

I’m bad at saying things, expressing my feelings, speaking my thoughts or ideas and standing up for myself. You would never let me talk back, I was only allowed a few words before you would yell again and they were almost never the right ones. I learned to stay quiet so there would be less reason for you to yell at me.

I’m trying to come out of my shell, I want to be affectionate to the people I care about but it’s so hard and I’m always being awkward about it. You were never very good at expressing your affection and the more time passed the less you tried until I stopped hearing “I love you”.

My friends worry that I’m always trying to help others but I neglect myself. But I remember you calling me selfish as soon as I took so much as a second for me when you or a little brother could’ve used a little help, or when I didn’t leave what I wanted for others when they might’ve wanted it.

I’m a good judge of character, I can notice small changes in a person’s attitude that could indicate that something’s wrong or someone’s mad. You were never openly hostile until you exploded from all the little things in your life that were going wrong. So I had to learn to notice the small changes and signs indicating that you were angry so that I could avoid you or try to soften the metaphorical blow.

You made me, with my strengths and weaknesses and all these problems. You had the biggest part of all in shaping my personality and temperament but we’re so different and we still disagree on many things.

I know who you are, but for all the influence you’ve had in moulding me you still don’t understand much about who I am. I only wish that you could clear your mind of how you think I am and see me for myself, who I’ve become, for once.

 

Christmas Miracles

Although it was only 5 o’clock, it was already pitch black. A chill went through the world. Small stars illuminated by the new lampposts fell from the heavens to purify the earth. Snow had always been beautiful. There were lights on the houses: shaped like sleighs or reindeers in the garden. Selena thought about Santa; how, as a child, she had dreamed of going in his magical flying sleigh. It made her laugh a short, sad laugh. She didn’t believe in anything now.
“Dear Santa, for Christmas this time, I just want a family.” Like that had ended well…

Two years ago, around that time, that wish had finally been granted: a family, with a mum, a dad and a brother had wanted her. She got to spend Christmas with them and get to know them: the mother was very perfectionist, she wanted everything to always look and be its best; the father was an engineer and his study was full of blueprints and models; the brother was 11 years old, 3 years younger than she had been at the time. He liked cars and robots and shooting and racing video-games: the best game was one where you could race AND shoot at the same time. Selena had been a young girl, happy to be out of the orphanage at last, with her own room and private space. But she liked being alone, she did art and read books (and wrote a few story ideas but they never lasted). Selena was an indoorsy person: she didn’t like going out and doing stuff.
Selena and her family turned out to be very different from each other and she could never be perfect enough for her very demanding mother: her results at school (though quite good) were not high enough, she didn’t spend enough time with her family preferring her room, she didn’t play with her brother (who, in her defence was 3 years younger than her (and a boy)), she didn’t go out with her friends (who were also indoorsy and they already saw each other every day), she didn’t have the perfect boyfriend (she didn’t even have a boy friend: she went to a girls school). These differences created a gap in the new family: a crack that got wider and wider until her mother finally told her that “the orphanage is a good place you know, you have friends there, people like you, who understand you. You don’t really belong here, I think you should go back” after which Selena burst into tears. All her life she had tried to be loved, to find a family who would care for her, to be normal, to belong. She hadn’t even lasted a year. It was so hard to be loved for what you were. She had been told that God gave everyone what they deserved to have, that she deserved to have a family and that she would get one. Selena stopped believing in God. And Santa. She believed in luck and at that point she believed that she was the unluckiest person in the world.
Paperwork was done and Selena was Returned. Back to the orphanage. Back to the people who had failed but by that time, it was this time of the year again, almost Christmas. She spent it with the care workers and the unlucky children, the ones God apparently deemed Unworthy, the ones who got to stay.
But things change and this year was different: this year she is spending Christmas with her best friends, the ones who supported her all along, the ones who go through the hardships with her, who help her with things big and small, who’s smiles are the first and brightest things she sees every morning and the last things she sees in the evenings, the ones who never gave up on her. Because, blinded by her selfishness of wanting to be be like others, she couldn’t see that God had already given her the best family she could have, and that she was the luckiest person in the world, she could be whoever she wanted to be. And she realised “I shouldn’t want to be like other people, other people should want to be like me”.
And so she laughed at herself, for being so naïve and not knowing that she had everything she needed. She smiled and sang softly merry Christmas songs and she didn’t feel the cold because the place she was walking to was warming her heart.
And so she sang to the snow and the decorations and the light, knowing that she was going Home.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I wrote this for my friend last Christmas, when my tumblr blog was not much and this one nonexistent. It’s not even on tumblr yet (though I only revived that today) but it’s near the beginning of the summer long waiting list of “things that aren’t on tumblr yet”. Hope you like it 🙂

 

Family Meals

Some families sit at a table,
Mind their manners,
Talk of grown-up stuff as if they knew everything about anything.
The kids or the mother (or sometimes even just the girls) get the dishes and clean up afterwards.

Other families take their meal in front of the TV,
Not speaking, not looking at each other,
Then everything goes in the dishwasher and not a word is spoken.

Some families each take their plate, like at a buffet
And then go to sit somewhere alone, do homework, watch TV, read…
And you can often find various pieces of cutlery, plates and glasses around their house.

Some families have the boring table full of grown-ups in the dining room
And the fun table of children in the kitchen: eating food with their hands, challenging each other to try to slurp their spaghetti without using hands, getting the whipped cream, ice cream and sugar out for any desert and getting some all over the place.
Then the children go to bed while the adults stay to tidy up and wonder why maple syrup is dripping from the ceiling.

Some families sit at the table and argue about everything,
They have such different views that the only way for the conversation to end is declaring a stalemate at the end of the meal,
Picking food from different dishes around the table.

My family…
We talk about “what did you do today?”
And then the meal ends with us poking each other, saying silly things, making funny noises and making faces across the table…
Washing the dishes takes place in good humour and songs we sing, my brothers and I and in these times I’m happy to be just who and where I am.