"recognisable" poems
What's happening to all of us? The so-called generation of tomorrow?
Don't you remember how we used to be?
Before we all grew up, swearing that when we're "big" we're never going to smoke or drink?
That boys were yucky and girls had Germs?
Remember how carefree we all used to be? It didn't matter to us what people said or even what they thought. We didn't care if our hair got wet or a stain got on to our clothes.
Now we've turned everything around, never meaning the words that we said. Its as if every memory of who we were, has shattered, into tiny bits of pieces.
Remember the dreams we had when we were young? The morals and virtues we swore we'd never rid of, holding on to these for dear life, yes still we threw them away.
The people we are, the children we used to be, now a totally new adolescent. A conjunction of minuscule parts of both our past and present.
Remember the days we all were friends, no backstabbing, no lies, and complete honestly.
Sharing the humour, not hiding the facts, lived life freely, what happened to us? What happened to the people we used to be?
The all grew up that's what happened I guess, but now barely recognisable. The little child still somewhere deep in the interior of the hard outside we've formed.
Making ourselves to seem like we're stubborn, matured adults, when that's really what we're not.
We're a mixture of what we all used to be and a huge part made up of what we've been through.
All our experiences, both good and bad. All our dreams, some nourished since we were young, and others newly spurted. Our decisions to give in to peer pressure, or resist temptation. Our choices. Our friends, the ones that uplift is and the ones that have torn us down. Our family, the ones who loved us and the ones who have hurt us. Our education, tons of learning experiences. Our relationships, that all formed our inner beings more intricate than all of the above. Our emotions leading us and misleading us to where we might or might not end up . Look, i'm not saying all these things determine where we end up but they sure do influence it.
And that's what happened to us.
That is what we've become and that's what we are. That's made up all the parts of who we really are.
What's happened to us, I repeatedly ask , though the answer, it seems so clear.
Hard to accept, what we've become and who we strive to be.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 1:01 AM UTC
Direct,
Physically dominant.
Unargueably aggressive,
Yet,
So unnoticed.
Recognisable colours,
Hidden behind,
Covering deceit.
Deceptive courage,
Fake smile,
Grimacing strength.
Cowering,
Submission is granted.
Obvious circumstances,
So misunderstood,
Retreat,
Access denied.
Apologies don't exist,
Escape artist,
Mascuerading as the helpless,
Only the strong,
Survive in,
Shadows.
Sudden movement,
Hard, cold floor.
Casualty,
More questions,
More lies,
No truth,
Is ever uttered.
Jan 16, 2012
Jan 16, 2012 at 4:05 AM UTC
Today I had an abortion.
I held the foetus in my hands, still hot, covered in blood, so tiny, yet so recognisable in its incomplete finishedness.
I was at a loss, it hit me slowly at first, then all at once, I started to cry.
It wasn't unexpected, I've been having this weird feeling lately, as if I knew that I wasn't going to see it live.
I felt like that from the start, to be honest, my stupid paranoid head couldn't avoid the thought, but why worry? Everything was going fine.
I don't know what caused it, if you ripped it out, if my body rejected it, or if it just wasn't the right time; maybe all these things together, in the end it takes two.
And so there I was, looking at this unborn being, staring back at me with your eyes, finally ending the dying life we put on it from the first moment.
The organs and the limbs all at the right place: I could see what they could have been, if they hadn't been so weak. It looked like that undeveloped Polaroid I took of you that still lies at the bottom of the drawer: I know what it is, but no one else can see it.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to let it go, I couldn't throw the remains away, not yet.
I put them in a shoebox, under my bed. I'll have a beer, sleep on it, tomorrow I'll see.
I have to get used to the emptiness first, I have to untangle myself from around your fingers, get some paracetamol for this ******* headache.
Oct 14, 2020
Oct 14, 2020 at 6:33 PM UTC
On the river Liffey
I walk the same streets,
The same steps,
Familiar faces and similar sounds,
The same buildings and surroundings,
The same noises and recognisable faces.
Deja vu,
As the days go by,
Nothing seems to change in this town,
But that's not necessarily true,
If only they knew what others have been through.
To get to today.
I know that smell and I've seen that smile before.
Reflections caught in the glass,
Perpendicular to the way the river flows towards the sea.
That's where I'm heading without breakfast,
To break this mould and cycle,
Just to see you again.
Something that's real and something new.
Something beautiful and something true.
I can't tell you how much I wish that something or someone was you.
I've been here before,
But not without you by my side,
I'd walk away in foreign directions and you'd come long for the ride.
Forbidden and forgotten we miss the sites usually spotted,
By those a little less in love than us.
For some reason, today,
It was so important see the sea.
I walk for miles with swollen toes and bruised and battered metersal bones,
Just to see as far as my eyes could.
Just to see a new combination of waves before they break again.
Never in the same place again.
Ever again.
I think about the notion obessively,
The ocean holds me close indefinitely,
But it's still not the same.
The same place and the same time,
The same me but slightly different mind,
Eroded in time.
I walked a long way to see the sea today,
I walked along way to see the sea.
Even though I remain true,
And the sea remains blue,
It's could never be the same without you x
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 6:38 AM UTC
he asked a question
and without waiting
for a response
drew three cards
from that divinatory deck
usually carrying as little
meaning as a tossed coin
scoffed at and swiftly ignored
this time seemed to tell
a recognisable tale
unexpected in its providence
a fortune perhaps
to favour the brave
the hanging man
with his eight swords
and his eight wands
these cards showed him
the start of a journey
not necessarily a life
turned upside-down
instead that a change
of perspective is needed
the octet of swords
unveiled his cage
of indecision
uncertainty and fear
a need to upset
the balance of the inert
a reasoning for destruction
in order to create
and those upright wands
carrying with them
such signs of movement
a willingness to decide
a commitment to progress
either that or
the pack was simply
reshuffled and dealt
again and again
until it foretold
that which needed
to be heard
Aug 11, 2023
Aug 11, 2023 at 8:48 PM UTC
Carstairs had been waiting for the boat for three days and there it was, suddenly appeared. He had dozed and it had appeared. He trained his binoculars on it, but it was too far away to be clearly recognisable. It seemed motionless, becalmed in a sheet of unruffled water.
He had dug himself into a bank in the sandhills. He still had a little water, some raisins; there was a final cube of chocolate carefully wrapped in the whole of its paper. It was the thought of this hidden pleasure that had sustained him during the hours of darkness when the slight rain and the chill of inactivity had forced him to exercise, to move about, though always afraid he would lose his burrow.
From the earliest light of dawn the day had been clear and still. The sea birds had muted calls, the sea itself more a presence than a sound. The tide had steadily retreated beyond his expectations. He knew he had to wait for the arranged signal.
Turning on his back he looked at the sky. A few clouds floated hesitantly in the glazed blue. He remembered suddenly a moment from his childhood, above the beach at Red Point. He had escaped his parents, his adored sisters, and hidden himself in the marran grass. He had lain on his back and felt himself levitate into the clouds. He had looked down on the whole scene, a waking dream. Those moments floating above the long Highland beach had never left him. Sitting in the examination hall for his Tripos that memory had come upon him; he had been paralyzed by it, unable to write or think. He had closed his eyes and strange geometrical shapes had ensnared him. He had felt extremely sick . . .and then very calm. He had returned to the task in hand, a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, that opening passage describing Eurus, Zephyr, Auster and Boreas: the four winds.
. . . he felt something wet nuzzle his hand. A dog, a black shape no more. As he struggled to move himself a larger shape obliterated the sun and shot him.
Jan 19, 2013
Jan 19, 2013 at 3:46 AM UTC
My face is the mosaic of time.
Recognisable but filled with defining lines.
I am motionless but watch as you stand on me.
Point, click, stare at my wonder.
I am everywhere but I am everywhere only where you are.
We are the same, but you cannot see from your perspective.
Colours bold but still faded over time, faded by feet, bared by tourists. Of my face.
So many lights by day, but night I can reflect.
On my own light.
I have seen how world's have changed.
But where I remain. I am untouched by history.
The mosaic is my mirror.
And it is yours too.
Mine imprinted in the ground, yours is just printed.
Are we different?
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 6:37 AM UTC
import: the northern tongue bespoke of the didgeridoo with the larynx as akin. północ ze mną... reszta gnije! a ja w twym oku jak dziób kruka wydłubie prawde raz - kraka - raz jeszcze na pokaz chociaż raz! bo ze mnie nie kura... jeno kruk! czemu? bo ty swym tłumaczeniem grzechu równasz gniew naprzeciw: w okolicy reprodukcji z tłumaczeniem orgnanizacji społeczenstwa jako wedle znaku (=) ktory też jest równaniem jako krzyż... a wiec jest naprawde wiarygodne to aby kontynuować wybaczanie niby grzechów i tak naprawde praw w rubryce niespełnionych pierw zamiarów?
why then peer into the past without imagination,
and try to peer within the present with memory,
surely the present will not conjure any memory
had the opaque past any imagination,
i’d swear the burnish bush be nothing more
than what could be imagined,
not excess of skin on my phallus
as the shaft known as the female circumcised bit...
but i guess truth sidewinds while lies have the fortune
of walking a straight path into nowhere...
if there is imagination in the past i find it hard
to conceive phonetic images, i.e. letters being allowed in there,
and if future forsee such circumstance
i find it hard to let the future project images
as recognisable without a - z being recognisable first...
in order that they might be used... in order
that they might be used for ignorance’s sake if only that...
man remembers skeletons easier in terms of usage
rather than fully embodied canves of a van gogh
to say **** all... as most men do,
dating their mistresses for the first time in art galleries;
the fault of the past is that in terms of imagination it
cannot be re-imagined... but the future can be twice
remembered... given holocaust deniers...
simple... it can be simply denied because
what imagination would have conjured
reality conjured too much iron acidity of what went on;
please be intelligent when you read this,
i don’t have many readers and it’s already insulting
to ask my readers for intelligence; sorry.
Dec 9, 2015
Dec 9, 2015 at 9:08 PM UTC
At the darkest end of the rainbow
It lies,
The balance of vitality gone askew
Unleashing its evil side,
It creeps slowly then bares fangs
With speed,
Potent beyond regulation
Its aberrant seeds,
That will grow into whatever they want,
That will grow however they want,
That will grow as much as they want,
Taking shapes of
Flesh and blood and bile and bone
And twisting their faces so
They're recognisable no more,
As if mocking us and our prayers
For Growth-
The immoral, the immortal side of the coin,
Cancer, the evil twin of Life.
Jun 2, 2018
Jun 2, 2018 at 11:43 PM UTC
omar loved his guitar.
he took it to pubs, clubs and parks.
he took it on trains, buses, to bathrooms.
he went to bed with it.
omar loved his guitar so much
that he cut a hole in it
so they could make love.
it hurt like hell, but
it was worth it.
three months later, omar
and his guitar, who was called
Vera,
had made love two-hundred and
thirty six times, and a
viscous mess lingered
inside her.
one day the mess
became sentient and it
slid itself out of
Vera's whole and onto
the carpet.
omar came home that day to find it
soaking up the linguine in his pantry.
within days it had doubled in size.
within weeks it had grown soft, wet arms
and legs
and fingernails.
after three weeks its form was fully recognisable:
a guitar, with arms, legs and a head, and
a thin sheet of human skin, stretched over
it.
on it's forehead were the six tuning pegs.
and strings were stretched from its forehead
to its crotch.
one time one of the strings snapped and omar
had to replace it with
one of Vera's.
it had a mouth.
when it was old enough
omar made love to it too.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 11:02 PM UTC
Do you think that when first presented with
that enclosed heaven above the Pope,
Michelangelo stopped for a moment,
then maybe a longer one, and still more,
as he attempted to count how many strokes
it would actually take to paint that sky?
How many times his arm would have to
conduct an arc, from down to palette,
back above his head, again and again
and again and again and again. Did he think
about how the brush would stay in his grasp?
The pen is slipping away from me into
horizontal weariness as I write this, contemplate
this one single, un-fluid flow. The autistic part
of me is not going to be happy until it can
at least guess some sort of recognisable
answer to such an insane question. We can
even begin to construct a formula: x strokes
per hour times days times years minus whatever
the assistants did. Haven’t you yet boggled at
the still way-off number this crude estimate
puts out? If I was a girl, I would always demand
a portrait. That’d be a real sign, true effort,
devotion; not just some words scribbled down
on a page while he’s probably thinking of some
other girl he’d like to write a poem about, in which
in which she’s having her picture painted,
her soul pinned.
Nov 23, 2010
Nov 23, 2010 at 11:47 PM UTC
I am here, I fear
More scared than sorted
More dandelion than burdock
Scattered silly
Metaphorically muddled
Mine's a messy mind
Attempting to arrange
A lifetime's files
In an hour
Each and every hour
Of every minute
I'm remanded in memory
A willing prisoner
Of the past
My hands are cuffed in air
There is no key
But me
And what is left
Has lost all recognisable arrangement
I'm pulled down deep
But holding on to stones
They keep me grounded
Drown-ded
Letting go will all but **** me
All but do me in
Everything but that
Letting go for Life
Shake it off
Your clothes are all wet
But you're not made of sugar
Your tears will not melt you
Your heart will not break
Let it be
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 12:57 PM UTC
Hand me a razor and I will hack away at myself,
Until it's not me that's left,
But another faceless, vulnerable canvas
And I will leave the skins I have shed lying in my wake,
All for the sake of acceptance.
I give you my autonomy, and in return you bombard me with images,
All of the same, dull, blank piece of moulding clay.
"Muscle is weight and weight is fat, lose it" and I try,
Holding desperately to the pieces me I have left.
And she tries harder still, and her health drains from her blood, until you tell her she has gone too far: "this is not beautiful"
And with that, you shatter her world: you taught her that's all there is to care about.
Show me a picture I ask of you,
and you show me a porcelain statue
"Bone is heavy and hard to touch. Where have the curves gone?"
And so she looks down at her body, shrinking in to herself, ashamed of who she was born.
Play me a song, I ask again,
But you show me yet more bodies.
More faceless aspirations you know I can't reach.
"Conform, conform, conform" you order, and I do.
You pull from my tight clasp the last few parts I have of myself,
Remove all with which I was brought into your world, and you show me a doll.
You cut, stick, sew and glue until she is no longer real. You cover her imperfections with paint until she is no longer recognisable.
You dress her in clothes too tight to be comfortable, in shoes too impractical to walk,
and then you throw her into the lion's den,
As she has to fight her way out much harder than any of you were made to.
You make her fight until her soul has left, and she will never be the person her mother made.
You tell me that this is adulthood, that she is a woman,
But you have taken the human out of her, and you have kept her corpse as a trophy.
This is a man's world, but I will not back down.
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 11:06 AM UTC
She sits alone,
on a cleared patch of road
amidst utter devastation
legs bare
feet bare
knees bent
hands clasped around her thighs
she has taken off her scarlet boots
and placed them together beside her
a tiny mark of order
it is all she can do
place her boots
side by side on the road
Apocalypse Now
reads the Headline
And this
I can finally comprehend
10,000 dead-
that’s my whole town
and 3000 more-
10,000 dead
is hard to grasp
but this one young woman
could be my daughter
or my grandchild
her hair dyed
fashionably orange
fashion mattered yesterday
to her and her friends
where are they now
did they survive
behind her
broken houses
twisted metal
a mountain of rubble
nothing recognisable
I look at this image
and I see her rocking
I see her mouth open
a wail of anguish
I hear her
wail
wailing is
the same in any language
needs no translation
palpable anguish
I hear her wail
she alone shows me
what it means
the agony of
10000 dead
what next
where
how
Oct 3, 2011
Oct 3, 2011 at 10:52 AM UTC
There’s a hole in the anticipation
waiting for the ground. It goes
beyond a moment. It appears
around the body, lying in the
corner. Hoping for emptiness
under the earth. Dreading
that it carries on into the
stuffiness. And people, no
gap left by the personal
space. Crushed. It’s more
than physically lost. I can’t
move. It’s a hole, I need
to get out. No, world. What
can hear me, I am forgotten.
The hole, another face in an
organised crowd, is recognisable.
Filled with dirt. Certain people
begin to speak but we feel
empty. They leave spaces behind.
New people arrive. Time
happens, which sets them behind,
apart from the rest. Like
the earth covers the grave,
so we, with a struggle, put
it from our face and minds
for the way back.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 9:42 PM UTC
The love of a mother for her child
is not the same as the child's love for his mother.
The love of a man for a woman changes
after they are married
from what it was before,
and her love does not correspond in all points with his.
Love between man and woman
is different from the love of boy and girl.
Love can be permanent as the tides, regular, unquestioned,
with no end and no recognisable beginning.
It can come suddenly,
violently,
as a thunderstorm in summer breaks
upon the thirsty earth,
short-lived
except in the memory.
But under any one of these emotions
what is there for us to say?
Only, I love you.
Thoughts can be subdivided, classified, clothed with words.
Words fit feelings only approximately,
and our deepest feelings must often go unclothed.
So when I say I love you
I cannot analyse what I mean.
I only know that I do love you
and hope you understand.
Jun 25, 2016
Jun 25, 2016 at 11:38 AM UTC
Orbital cycles continue in silence
Clues encoded below our surface
Assurances often issued in service
Expectations setting precedent
Placed in systems held with relevance
Are we persuasive to suggested events
Recognisable feelings sense ahead
Onion layers all revealing
Who are the fools inside of you
Step back into receptive thought
To make knowledgeable judgement calls
Dec 28, 2020
Dec 28, 2020 at 9:05 PM UTC
the glasses through which I see the world
are painfully smashed
I see fault lines wherever I look
the faces of loved ones
blurred into anonymity
my own identity
blown to pieces
barely recognisable
I am lost in my own skin
seeing no way out
only broken glass
and shattered dreams
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 10:11 AM UTC
They are ponderous,
real men, no, nothing boyish --
recognisable.
Dec 26, 2022
Dec 26, 2022 at 2:32 AM UTC
The love of a mother for her child
is not the same as the child's love for his mother.
The love of a man for a woman changes
after they are married
from what it was before,
and her love does not correspond in all points with his.
Love between man and woman
is different from the love of boy and girl.
Love can be permanent as the tides, regular, unquestioned,
with no end and no recognisable beginning.
It can come suddenly,
violently,
as a thunderstorm in summer breaks
upon the thirsty earth,
short-lived
except in the memory.
But under any one of these emotions
what is there for us to say?
Only, I love you.
Thoughts can be subdivided, classified, clothed with words.
Words fit feelings only approximately,
and our deepest feelings must often go unclothed.
So when I say I love you
I cannot analyse what I mean.
I only know that I do love you
and hope you understand.
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 8:50 AM UTC
this is my star, david can have his, this is my claim over anything of this world, a little spice, hardly a castle, or an empire, a harem or millions in the bank account; a private education or ancestry stretching back to the crusades in up-kept and tidy memory like some duke of Burgundy.
only today did i discover bohemian Istanbul
sitting in a kitchen cabinet next to
a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil...
barely drank... not to the palette of some,
anise, hardy recognisable in curries,
but infuse it with alcohol and the story changes,
Europe and the long lost history of
the Ottomans, and indeed the Turks,
Muslim, steppe people, and therefore drinking
people. bahramji & mashti playing
in the background, a shisha pipe in my hand
(portable)... and today's discovery... white
absinthe! the moment i realised, i was squeezing
lemon juice into the glass... and to my idiotic
amazement the potion started turning milky...
just like Hapsburg absinthe (98%, £40 a pop)
or la Fé(e)... oddly enough not all absinthes turn
milky if diluted with water... for example
Czech red and Czech blue and even green don't
turn milky... because the Czechs drink it like
***** in shots... unlike the other versions where
you take the sloth route and prolong the feeling
of the warming anise... that's because they contain
worm-wood. but this Turkish absinthe, i'm amazed!
small world in terms of bumping into people,
but an even smaller world to discover different
cultures in your vicinity... i should have come
across what i'm drinking sooner (it's called Rakı),
but since it's not mine i will not over-indulge even
though i know the owners of the bottle do not
appreciate anise on their palette, unlike
what diogenes the cynic said:
i like best the wine drunk at the cost of others;
me? i indulge in what i buy, because i own it,
as i can't over-indulge the company of others.
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 4:07 PM UTC
trust a german to imitate a mannequin
when saluting caesar
in terms of how long the hand is extended
into a recognisable fake
or the guaranteed salute - of the thus saluted entombed.
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 8:59 PM UTC
No aeroplanes should leave the capital,
incoming traffic should be diverted into hangars
loaded with soldiers of no recognisable denomination.
All passengers must surrender to security checks
at Gate 3, where security personnel will stamp
your passport for onward movement to selected
hotels on outskirts of city. Journalists are not allowed
to take pictures of cats and dogs without clearance from
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Men in un-uniform should not disclose their barrack
locations. If any passenger sticks a flower in your rifle
pull the trigger!
Foreign guests posing as tourists may be allowed
into city centre where the riots rage. They make take
pictures of selected zones where tyres burn and
firewood has, at last, come out of homes into the street,
to protest against the snow and icy conditions.
No citizen should have duck roast for a week
the president has just gone duck shooting and assures
everyone there will be enough left for everybody
for the coming festive season.
Real peace will be over in a week
and everything will be normal again.
The firewood may go home and all the cats
dogs may return to the barracks. An announcement
will be made when journalists , may, at last
photograph people at war!
( pssst, with their neighbours)
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
"hello, what is your name?"
the familiar vibration in my ears
that creeps its way into my blood
a buzz
a hum
constant
beneath my skin
when days were louder
like the crash of pots and pans
in my grandmother's house
where the ceiling was littered with butterflies
like the static from empty radio stations
akin to that of crunching snow
and the harsh grating of metal
they are the memories dipped in sepia
and overexposed flashes of light
dripping as they walk on
leaving footprints
a silhouette
it is the fear of our wrinkling hands that drive us closer to the edge
to the end
as the sun and moon rewind in a never ending cycle
a loop
right before a leap of faith
towards that never ending youth
the desperate sliver of summer at the end of a blurry december's haze
when nothing is recognisable
a restart
"hello, what is your name?"
Nov 8, 2020
Nov 8, 2020 at 12:56 AM UTC