There’s a constant anxiety on those tables
A perilous way to deflect the world and all its problems
A kind of insidious joy in collecting
All these miniatures, minuscule and exquisitely crafted figures
Bothered by life in their stillness
Like little swans and princesses
Lingering in a silence which is sacred.
These tiny clever ones
Shuffled on slightly scratched wood,
Wear their days like a cloak of doom
And push each other
Like Londoners out of the tube.
Fearless, little monsters
Repressing their hunger,
treading over the borders of life, they enter
forests from which no escape is granted
Where awakens a desire for mutiny,
From the abnormal perfection
Smothered under ceramic faces.

A bedside table full of whatnots
Doesn’t shield you from bad dreams
The little shepherd lies smashed on the floor
And no one’s going to cry for him.

To have all you've known tumble down
You're sole existence starts to drown,
You're watching as you hold your breath
Count to ten and try to forget

Forget your worries and your woes,
Life's unpleasantries, all you know
You know nothing, not any more
You watch the slowly closing door

It's closing right before your eyes
You've lost the keys, there's no sunrise
Closing in, surrounded by dark
Darkness consumes your breaking heart

It beats one less than once before,
You hold it tight and hope for more
Pain you feel is out of this world
Hope that someone undoes the spell

The spiders web that's spun for you,
You're fighting, trying to get to
The place once loved, you thought you knew
Too scared to trust, too scared to move

You're slowly crawling through the dusk
In hope that soon you're good enough,
Enough to walk back to your home
To open arms - the ones once known



© Karen L Hamilton, 2013

When your finally out of my mind
I could leave my stress behind
I cared so much about you
more than you ever knew
I will move past these moments
And I will surpass the broken
I became someone who was not me
This was a disgrace to be
I am now a ******* a new path
now you do the math
To be me, I need to forget you
I'm sorry for everything we went through
But now I'm gone
And will continue to push on

Layers of steamy pick ups,
rejoined a staggering crowd
behind the bar,
(who put that thought there?)
I partitioned that wall
for me to bump into,
as if it weren't there
just moments ago.

A shifting maze,
my mind,
it's labyrinth
ever changing,
rearranging,
scratching the interior
of my scull,
fingernails on chalk board
grind stone
against stone,
making my teeth
ache
until I,
I pull them one by one,
like red angry children
lined up for you.

I offer them to you,
without their fleshly clothes,
roots showing as a forest
of ivory trees,
wearing true colors
on bare bleached sleeve.

To whoever this concerns:*

I'm gay.
I hope you won't
hate me,
and I'm
very
sorry
for what I've done to your
expectations,
but I can't bring myself
to ache for the
soured taste
on your
tongue.

Behind the mirror is a girl
Who looks a bit like me?
But I’m a bit more real
And darker inside, see?
She smiles, you would never guess
That inside she cries
And screams and screams in silence
As she lies and lies
Her skin is scared like mine
With deep rivets in her side
The freshest one day old
The hardest one to hide
But no one seems to see
Or hear her as she cries
As each day she withers,
And ever slowly dies…