Why do you hate me?

I hate you because I see what I used to be,
I hate you because I am weak and insecure,
Because if I didn’t.. love I might see,
Because my childhoods impure,

I hate you because I lashed out on others,
It burns and I try to help me, myself and I,
Shifting my pain to another,
Anxiety twisting my guts to cry,

The child who spit and bit,
Who tore emotions to shreds,
Always alone, in a fit,
Knotting my brains threads,

Suffered like my brother,
Abandon fills my soul,
Even when my hearts a flutter,
Relationships a fanatics parole,

Childhood lessons, are a lack of love,
Behind progress of mental bars,
Abandoned faith, in I and above,
Til all I taste is hell and fallen stars,

I hate that it’s unfair,
Irreparable damage, I’d rather forget,
A twisted, burning nerve to care,
Feeling, letting you in, I’ll regret,

Can’t help but feel,
That it’s all some ****** manic coup,
Always believe I’m letting myself heal,
I hate, otherwise I might love you.

At first you will love me
With an honesty and truth,
Before you learn to use me
And abuse my love for you.


After a while you will hate me
Everything I do will be wrong,
And no kind words will touch you
Or cure the ills I’ve caused.


Then one day you’ll meet me
As an equal in life,
And find you never beat me
Or turned my love from you.


When you become a parent
You’ll understand such love,
Given without condition
And more than you can tell.

Dummy turns a plastic cheek,
Ready for a drunk thugs slug of fist on PVC.

Father made dummy boy like some hurried Pinocchio,
But wood was too good,
Too alive,
Too sensing.

Plastic bends and buckles as the brutes words distorts a flexing mind,
Days pass and the dummy child goes to school.

A dummy listens but has no life of its own,
No words, works or wants,
No defence.

School boys laughs at the dummy child,
But the dummy has nothing to return.

Dummy boy leaves school,
Scared, scarred, plastic head stretched like elastic,
Tragic.

A dummy site in a window,
The object of passing eyes and self customised to court attention.
Plastic fool throws himself to the crowd and the whims of those who see his flaws.

She sits
Watching tv
Omnipresent being
Glasses on the end of her nose
Eyes closed

Sometimes
Lost in a book
A bit of a thriller
She could always detect a lie
Bad vibes

Dab hand
In the kitchen
Always something cooking
We’re the recipe for children
She made

Mother
Always at home
Waiting for our return
To hear news of great adventures, the
Nest flown

Our lives
Are souvenirs
She collects our memories
Travelling with us through our days
From home

A parent in a supermarket aisle
slaps her toddler hard and
the child screams in pain and shock.

A teenager walking along a busy street
drops the wrapper of his chocolate-bar
on the footpath.

A woman in a cinema-theatre
in the middle of the movie
calls on her mobile-phone
her son to tell him about the movie,
disturbing the other movie-watchers.

A man walking his dog along a street
takes his dog off the leash and
the dog barks aggressively and lunges
at frightened pedestrians.

If seeds don’t tend to spill far from the tree,
I just can’t help but wonder where I’ll land.
In shame, my poisoned roots conspire to plant
unstable footing: reckless destiny.
You, cold in slow-birthed pain, beg to be free,
away from grasp of rope-red harnessed hands
while I struggle to find my feet and stand.
A narrative intended to repeat.

Don’t touch me. It’s a trap. I’ll never grow
into a pretty vessel with a use.
Dead roots infect their damaged seeds: echo
through gardens, plant by plant until they choose
to drown it out, to let the system go
and cut unfolding lessons at the root.