Winter sun
kissed by the breeze
shakes the limbs
of starveling trees
wakes the bones
of each bare bough
and tells the spring
it’s not long now

Up through the ground,
kissed by the frost,
a tender bloom seeks
a light long lost,
with some gentle force
and quiet power,
hope emerges on the green
as a snowdrop flower.

But, if such a small
and fragile thing
can pierce the frost
to greet early spring,
then why can't we,
like a snowdrop stay,
to wake and rise
on a cold January day?

Our strength must lay
dormant within,
beneath the cold joints
that make us wince,
so, we must try to learn
to trust and be seen,
like the gentle snowdrops
growing on the green.

©️Lizzie Bevis

A fateful night,
I was restless,
Sleep fleeting my young eyes.
So I rose from bed,
And to my desk I sat.
My pen curled in my fingers,
I wrote.
I wrote of a girl,
Made of spare paper,
And discarded ink.
But never did I guess,
My writing would come true.
Yet come next morning before me lay,
A paper girl with inky eyes.

Maybe I’m too simple
or too shallow
but I’m not angry.
What’s wrong with me?

I was trying to think
of someone I hate,
Jews, CIS guys, republicans,
palestinians, blacks, democrats,
the left handed, authority figures,
central americans, parents, vagrants,
the usual suspects, but I’m coming up empty

Things aren’t perfect
don’t get me wrong
I’ve got a pug nose
a flat chest
a giant forehead
and too much work to do
but I’m trying my best—

Worse yet, I’ve no plummeting anxieties
no obvious neurosis
—that one could be a misdiagnosis
no painful hangnails
no sad life tales
no addictions to defend
or hated ex-boyfriends
I have no emo hooks to pin my verse.
no current melodramas to cozen and coerce
between you and me, I think I’m off the rails
It’s really no wonder my poetry pales.

Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with me.
.
.
Songs for this:
Gee, Doctor by Dimie Cat
Sweet Lovin' (feat. Anna-Luca & Iain Mackenzie) by Club des Belugas

I had gone in to write you a new one
a new poem about
something else, I can't remember.
maybe about your hair falling across my face,
maybe it was about your laugh ringing like a bell,
maybe something about that moment on my couch when i slid my hand up the leg of your loose trousers, on a quest to make you make more sounds and found delight in your gasp against my ear

but I was shot in the chest with a shotgun when I discovered , that it was the deadline, the dead lines of my poetry
buried in a cyber grave never to be uncovered, or read, again.
they were gone.

I had 120 days, they said, before they shut down my dot edu email account.
costs money to keep it open, I guess and god knows I didn't pay them enough of it

and the email was linked to some other app on my phone and when they took it from me, the evidence of the person I was 10 years ago, 12, 14 years ago

and the poetry was there.
it was in that stupid ******* notes app on my ******* Google pixel 4a 5g, ******* ****


I had written one about the tips of your fingers

and one where I delightedly called you my lover

and another one I talked about my friends at the party I threw to mourn the November election results and how beautiful it is to be ******* alive, it was going to be really good

but instead there is a strange angry emptiness inside that stupid ******* notes app,
strange angry emptiness
inside of me,
building like a jenga tower, soon to collapse
into tears
teetering



the poetry was gone from me for a long time.
I touched
no pens, no journal pressed open to worn pages

my ex's dog chewed up my last notebook, right after I decided I was going to write again. I had left it open,
mid poem writing, when I had to
stop
to take
a
****.

came back and pages were all over the yard, in that dog's mouth, torn to wet shreds my poetry, my
dead
lines


the universe is conspiring against me

and somehow I cannot
*******
stop.


my words simply seep out of me
like my period in the bathtub,

it's most inconvenient