This poem was written many years ago, in between jobs, one dark (in more ways than one) Friday night. I think it’s safe to say it’s one from my window period

This Town.

So cold, the moon wears a scarf
Of cloud, bombazeen in mourning,
Quarter of her gone as if by cancer.

The sky drips spiderthreads, not water
As such, just so much as a lover might give
Of tenderness before a quarrel.

Belisha beacons wink, not for traffic
Or children, just the night – met by silence
And a vigil of criss-crossing darkness.

And such silence, the gleams
Of wet light on pavements, the blood
Of a Friday night, in this town.

Yet again I find myself returning to my poetry blog and another year has passed without updating it. It is not that my life stagnates, it is that so much happens! The last year has been a time of constant re-awakenings, and re-negotiations with life itself. I have completed one year of my journey into becoming a person-centred counsellor, only 2 more to go, 3 if I include the Master’s Only recently did the idea of bringing my writing into the therapeutic arena emerge, and only recently was I able to to consider this in a pure sense – not, look at me, see how I write, but “I write rather well, how can I use this therapeutically for myself and others”. I have been on a journey. Scrub that. I have just begun a journey. Not that this post is anything to do with that – I wanted to post something, a poem, and dug through the rather sparse output of the last couple of years. Not the most noble of subjects – I was ill, and wanted to write. I had forgotten totally, that I had written this. Hopefully, I will write more, as it looks likely I may be running a therapeutic writing workshop over the summer

It

It grows in me,
symbiotic after a fashion,
shall I watch it,
pretend to accept its presence,
its slick motion through the gut,
its reproductive rumblings
as it appropriates my body for its ends?

It’s a life form, that’s all,
bacteria or virus, I evolved from it,
I share its cells even though I grew
to know a pain it can’t imagine
in its simple divisions and multiplications,
ignorant in its blissful simplicity.

It does not strive, it just is, then is not,
without fuss or ceremony or worry.
It has no face to lose, no memory,
it is just cells, a set of building blocks,
passing on its form, its structure.

Shall I watch it, let it use me up,
accept our symbiosis, its invasion?
It will not let me be, I heave again,
slave to its ignorant, ingenious persistence.