Bella Isaacs

Bella Isaacs May 2020

Muse?

Muse, did you heed the government's call
For social distancing, after all?
I wonder sometimes, why you're not there,
Whether some of my poems are just from your whisper
Over Skype? I sit waiting for you to come online.
Impatient, I call. A tone. 5 minutes. It's fine.
No answer. You answer me less than I answer the man
I should be writing for, though I give you all I can.
Muse, you have me, my mind, my hands,
Ready to serve you, make you great to my friends, to art, to all lands...
What's that? I hear your crackled, fizzled voice across the line,
Once dulcet, mellifluous, I can barely make it out. "Buy a mic!" "No, you put up the volume!" It's fine.
Except it's not. Love me, or hate me, you're mine
And we need to work together through this
Because ink is my, your, lifeblood, words, a lifekiss
You tell me I can't force words upon a page
And in my childish, petulant, repressedly silent, still sage, rage
I tell you "It's all that some of us have right now."
You sigh. I sigh. "Do you remember, Inspiration, remember, how
One enlightened fifteen-year-old said
"Genius is the ability to create
Something
Out of Nothing."?"

Bella Isaacs May 2020

Sonnet on Stone idols

Pray, seek not glory for thyself for love.
Learn from the master: ‘Tis a waste in shame
To think the earth and sky and wills to move,
To think to make Heaven thunder thy name,
To think that falling stars are thine to keep,
To think that one converse with merfolk can,
To think thou know’st the place where fairies sleep,
Believe thou canst turn stone into a man.
If such, thy sweetest idol, asks for blood,
Wouldst thou grant it him, to appease his wrath?
And even if he asked thee to do good,
Look to his brow, if he a conscience hath;
If such are the demands that thou hast done,
Believe, he is no better than a stone.

#unrequitedlove #selfrespect

Bella Isaacs May 2020

When this is all over

When this is all over,
Assuming it’s nice weather,
Let’s take punt of some description and conquer the Thames.
When this is all over,
When we can meet together,
Let’s make all Oxford sick of our songs and games.
The air cries for youthful fun and folly,
The butterflies, birds and brooks are jolly,
I look on and I smile, but inside I’m glum;
Since this promising May
Makes no promise today
The date on which the end of this prison shall finally come.

When this is all over,
Let’s take to fields of clover,
Let’s tear down through New College Lane
Crying for the love of life though you’d think we’re insane
I’m tired of walking and having to feign
Being happy, when the secret to happiness shall always remain:

“Por sentir la gioia,
devi condividerla” - Mark Twain

#tohappierdays

Bella Isaacs May 2020

Almost unto dust

Messy ink, ragged paper, dust
I laid them down to gather dust
And came back to them only now
Sorting, sitting, wondering how
A few weeks ago these worksheets
Were my world, these were feats
Of daily effort to a common goal
Now, never to be touched by all of us at all.
And saying “To think...” to my sister, who didn’t hear,
And likely never will, I all but let go of a single tear.

My first A Level paper was due to be sat next Friday, and now that will never happen, and it is likely that none of my year will ever go back to school.

#carpediem #dayslost

Bella Isaacs May 2020

Let me not doubt myself

Though I may be laughed at for my simplicity
I’d like to assure, I still have the capacity
To learn
To earn,
If they have listened properly to my life and all its cadences,
Each of my doubters’ respects and silences.

A measured retaliation to being called "gullible" and being questioned on whether I could survive university abroad.

#perseverance #hitlikealadyandascholar #nildesperandum

Bella Isaacs May 2020

My chief fault

I am a girl, since in my soul I know no better, of curious notions:
I take storms in teacups
I collect them, and channel them into whirlpools
When my soul can no longer take the ups
And downs, when I no longer possess the tools
To build a façade, or can no longer hold them
I accumulate the dust from molehills
And make them into volcanoes, from which stem
And flow the plumes of fumes and spills
Of my lava anger.
And if my spirit intellect were stronger,
I would not bottle my emotions.

Anyone else like that?

#faults #pain #guilt #frustration #desireforchange