Muse hasn’t left my bedside for days:
she races around
the garden when I sleep:
it’s the only time she leaves,
she’s so loyal.
A few days ago, I heard Muse barking
in the garden;
I knew she’d seen the woodpecker again.
I’ve learnt the differences in her voice:
this is what comes of weeks bedbound.
But when the sedatives wear off
I can do more than lie there:
I can feel the touch from my grandma,
I can smell last night’s family supper,
I’m lucid.
Yesterday, the electroconvulsive therapy shocked my brain
today, my muscles feel as knotted
as my oesophagus.
I’m on my back now; my only company
is the ceiling; not even
the canopy of stars I once gazed at with joy.
© Sia Jane
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 7:20 AM UTC
She was told from
an age so young
that she indeed possessed all
the magic she needed
within herself
to set
the world
to right.
She placed daisies in
her long black hair
and skipped to the beat of
the songs her mother
had sung to her
before she left
escaping
her father.
She was often alone
rarely with friends as
she found comfort in the faeries
she spoke and sang to while
the wind
gently blew
hair in
her face.
She giggled when with
her only little sister
the best part of her world
to whom she adored more than
the breaths
she took
each and
every day.
She stood firm at home
never allowing
her father’s drunken words
to penetrate her self made wall
of anger and despair
because inside
her mind
there
were angels.
She closed her eyes at night
wishing the demons
to disperse into the heavy winds
that howled through the rafters
reminding her
she was
in fact
alive.
© Sia Jane
May 14, 2016
May 14, 2016 at 12:43 PM UTC
Barefoot standing backwards on
the doctor’s scales; the weighing games begin.
I can’t make sense of how or why
I’m here; dragged from my mother’s car,
when only earlier I was dancing
at my ballet class; I slipped and fell
on the cold dance floor, and now
I’m under hospital arrest. All I want
is to escape; because I truly thought
this was all in my past.
But the Devil and God are raging inside me
all the time.
It began with only one pound lost;
a controlled experiment, one I thought
I could win. And now,
I’m barefoot standing backwards
on the doctor’s scales –
There’s only one way; Up!
No spiral down.
I’ve found my way back here, somehow,
and I’ll find my way out of here, somehow.
© Sia Jane
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 4:49 PM UTC
*Tell me where the children go
Tell me how they grow
Learn to occupy more space
And are expected to not trip
And fall all over their Saturn Return
Do they lose the innocence in their eyes
To the evening skies
Stars carrying them back
To their one true home
Or do they linger beneath our skin
Patiently waiting for us
To summon them in our time of need
A silence a presence then a whisper
Helping us remember they always
Keep us near*
© Sia Jane
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 7:23 PM UTC
*When you've lived between the shadows
Only awakening the true self
When the sky casts a dark net
Shielding any visibility
When you've not switched a light
On to the colour of your soul
Terrified of knowing
The vicissitudes of the seasons
Within your own heart
It takes a mighty girl to rise
To look herself in the eye
No longer whispering those lies
To face her own truth*
© Sia Jane
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 8:05 AM UTC
I feel so stitched together, like a rag doll -
not one worn down from being loved too much,
but one who has been ripped apart by loving too much.
And each lover picked me apart stitch by stitch – undone.
Then I’m left in threads: I am fully exposed.
How can that be, after spending years –many more all told –
sewing myself back together, my needle and thread fighting
to keep up. I naively trusted each lover when they promised
to mend me. What if someone had told me twenty years ago:
If you fall in love, never fully trust them, and ask yourself –
does he love me more?
I didn’t know then, I wasn’t so undone –
I could have stayed together.
© Sia Jane
Apr 9, 2016
Apr 9, 2016 at 3:32 PM UTC
For hours, I tried to sleep.
The rain drums down on the tin roof;
the demons are knocking.
I see their tears stream down the window;
a cleverly designed artifice to distract
from their true intent.
I ignore their subtle attacks, but they always
find a way back in.
I watch their shadows drift in through
the windows;
morphing from one shape into another,
hovering around me,
their whispered breaths cloud the air –
there is barely a space unfilled by their presence.
I can’t seem to chase them away, and I’m
wrapped up into their world.
Empty, cold and alone,
my reality remains stranger than any dream.
© Sia Jane
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 12:53 PM UTC
We’re looking into each other’s eyes;
it’s 4am.
We’re sat in a hospital room, I’m reciting your favourite verse.
You’re ragged and stitched together;
I just wish it was from being loved.
I just wish my love could make you Real.
I knew from day one, no one and no thing,
not even love, could take you away and finally
set your soul free.
So
I gave you all of me.
It wasn’t hard to give away.
Within moments of witnessing your smile; the one
held in your eyes widening your stare,
you crushed through my ribs with warmth and love,
held my heart in your hand, promising no matter
the distance and land between us, my heart would remain
safe – beneath your bruised chest.
Tonight, I’m alone.
It’s been 17 days since I last saw you.
I’m in the park where we always walked,
where our love was made tangible by etchings in wood.
The bark now crumbles
and the decay mirrors the gradual corrosion
of what was once, and will
never be, again.
© Sia Jane
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 2:36 PM UTC
Tomorrow night, you’ll sleep walk into your lover’s dreams.
You’ll open the gate to hell, where you’ll find the poor ******
souls of a lost generation. Their lust, recklessness & drunkenness
will come as no shock to you. You’ll find your people trashed;
***** bottles smashed & abandoned, intoxicated girls balanced
on their Jeffrey Campbell Litas floating through social groups.
Boys, barely men, will be seen beaten down to the bare bones
of their existence, cigarette blunts piercing their open chests;
stinging & burning, red & yellow ash sparking flames on
the black lingerie of their lover’s.
Tomorrow night, you’ll wish you were not sleep walking into
your lover’s dreams. In the days you spend there, you will not
find the lover you know. You’ll find a lover who is invaded
by body snatches; emphatically dominating every white cell.
You’ll find a lover, cast away with the ghosts of his past.
You’ll bear witness to pendulums of excessive desires
swinging to & fro – where time stands still, & not even
the ticking of a clock can be found, to count the days til
the grave he will fly.
© Sia Jane
Mar 1, 2016
Mar 1, 2016 at 1:12 PM UTC
There is no encore only a final curtain
For my former self, June 23rd 2015
Recently, I've been feeling this wave of nostalgia
As the rain caresses my skin and the wind howls past my ears
Every time I walk the streets to university,
Or watching the squirrels play around
The oak tree in the morning...
It feels like only yesterday.
And I count my blessings,
And I know how lucky I am to be alive.
And I look at a picture in this photo album of a younger me,
As I fake a smile to hide my pain.
I will never forget my former self.
And in my dreams, I am dying
I wake up screaming and shivering
With no one beside me, and when I close
My eyes again, there I am...
Stood on the bridge, drunk on starvation
Counting down from five to jump.
© Sia Jane
See Amiri Baraka "Preface to a twenty volume suicide note"
Jan 31, 2016
Jan 31, 2016 at 6:11 PM UTC