Sorry I'm so selfish
All the time

I just don't like the way
You look at her

As if she's the one who fixes you
As if you don't even need me

Sorry

I have never thrown
A stone at two
Birds

I'm not without
Sin, this house
Is all glass

And besides, who
Needs to **** anything
To multitask

Give him a toy gun
He pretends to be daddy
Who far away is fighting
In some far and distant war
But then in a child's eyes
See the hidden tears
When you have to tell him
Daddy won't be coming home

Momma always keeps her safe
Showing her warmth and love
But she knows Poppa will be back
Smelling of whiskey and angry
And in that child's eyes
She will watch him rage
Punch Momma in the stomach
Because his dinner is wrong

All around this world
We never see the truth
Because the older we become
The blinder we seem to be
And in the children's eyes
Their innocence is seen
But they see better than us
A future that is not meant to be




copyright Chris Smith 2010

Poetry is like gusts of fresh air
Harbinger of the soul’s catharsis
Flowing emotions through the pen
Concealed pain written across the pages
Healing the pain which was long buried

You hate my poems
You say they take me from you
that they're pointless
a waste of time
maybe you're right.
You read them,
just the words as they fall,
and say you get nothing
just syllables.
I have lost count
of the sighs and eyerolls,
the you have no talents,
they sit in a memory box
along with the times you've asked me to stop.
Stop.
Just like that.
Stop pouring myself onto paper,
Stop looking for beauty in darkness,
Stop healing.
You prefer me broken, fragile, dependant,
the girl you took from nowhere to god knows where
a once pretty, broken thing
to hang silently from your arm
while you talk proudly of the soul that you saved.
You fear that my writing will end us.
I fear that my stopping will end me.

death is a silent guest
sitting round the table
waiting in turn

I'm still stuck in day-drunk unemployment.
A millennial with eyes to a screen,
adopting a science
in a bedroom whisper for Gaza.

Now a writer of pretty words and clumsy verse,
there's no place for happiness
in forcing poetry. There are ribbons and bows
around the fenced-off trees,

there are notebooks of unfinished thought.
I'm searching the skies for a scrap of movement,
for some coded message
to **** the engine of war.

There's a wedding in the morning,
and there is somebody who still believes in love.
Rainbow confetti will kick in the sky,
a dandelion is born in the skull of old Palestine.

I'm still stuck in this new-age desperation,
a constant plea for peaceful completion.
I'm changing address
for a clean way of living,

in your sweet floral dress,
let this be the beginning.