My Children
My poems are my children
Seeds
Deep inside me
Fertilise
Develop
Emerge
Part formed
Wholly dependent
Noisy and vulnerable
I worry
Petrified their fragility
Will kill them
Guard them with my life
Most survive
A few don’t
I nourish them
With an organic balanced diet of
Adverbs, adjectives,
Appropriate poetic devices
Emotional development
A serious matter
Can’t be rushed
Time and space
To understand
To express
Their own feelings
I want them
To feel safe in my hands
I want them
To bring out the best in me
Maturity
Responsibility
Compassion
I want
To guide them
On their journey
While protecting them
From my overprotection
I love them for themselves
I don’t compare them to other poems
I don’t enter them for competitions
I don’t have permanent favourites
I encourage them
To feel attractive
Confident
Reluctantly
I accept
They often disagree with me
My poems are my children
With heavy heart
I release them into the world
To make of it what they will
I release them into the world
It makes of them what it will
My poems are my children
May they educate
Stimulate
Spread love
Fascinate
May they seek the truth
May they speak the truth
May they believe in themselves
The Top Floor
On the top floor
The air is thin
Unsurvivable
The Death Zone
Where every two weeks
I find Mom
Mind ascended
To the heavens
Body discarded
To crouch cramp
Another season
Mom
Whose greatest expressed regret
Was she never learned to swim
We sit
Amongst the gravestones
In their high-backed chairs
A few neatly tended
Most faded to oblivion
My favourite
Pacing the corridor
On an endless country walk
With her soft toy labrador
The one I’d choose for myself
If
God forbid
And the carers care
And the cooks cook
And the visitors visit
And I make my lame excuse
Kiss her rigor mortis hand
Mom
Never easily fooled
Creaks her head away
I descend
To base camp car park
Key twitching in my hand
Turn
To see
Mom risen
At the window
Not waving
Drowned
Stigmata
Yesterday evening
I went blackberry picking
In the filthy alley
Behind our house
Defiant
Amongst the detritus
Of the dumpers
Rows of jam bushes
Bursting
For the intrepid
There were snags
Clothing caught
And a stranger asking
If the nearby houses have cameras
He said he needed to know
Because he was burgled last week
Being the distrusting kind
I gave him nothing
Not even blackberries
I continued
Then saw
The plumpest fruit
Ripe as inkblots
Under armed guard
Trick or treat?
Both
I got them
Emerging with my pen hand
Smeared
In nettle rash hives
So I keep on
Harvesting my poems
Mildly irritated
By indifference
And
Occasionally
More deeply stung
By patronising
Reassurance
Conception of a Caring Child
Let me lick your wounds
Let me soothe your burns
Let me erase your marks
Let me end your start
Let me cleanse your sin
Let me unlock the gate of guilt
Let me flow rhesus positive
Let me sow seeds of hope
Pinhole Heart
In the dead of night
Soundness sleeps
No distractions
From my anger
Red-eyed
Dead-eyed
Focus
On the pinhole camera
Of my heart
Darkness grants
The necessary permissions
To expose
The hidden
Not my fault
Still my problem(s)
Self-therapy
If you like
If you don’t
Family snapshot
Not
Sepia tinted
Just faded
Marriage
Much clearer
Definition
Yet
What
Inflamed
The pinhole
If not
The barbs
Of negativity
Superimposed
Over everything I do
(I do it for you)
Daytime
Laugh it off
Not really about me
I know it’s you
Night
There’s no you
Pinhole heart
Broods
Glowers
Infra-red
Burn myself
To spare you
You
And your issues
Of you own
As with me
Not your fault
But…
All I know
Is
I’ve the strength
To process
Ask the questions
Act
For all I know
You may ask
Yourself
Questions too
For all I know
I lie there
So truthful
I tremble
Totally unsupported
sinking
Would I swap
To the left side of the bed
No
My pinhole heart
Is my vital sign
Stay angry
Stay vital
Stay alive
Andy Conner is a Birmingham (UK) based poet, activist and educator, with a long track record of performing his work nationally and internationally. His work has also featured in numerous publications. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His credits include BBC Radio 4, Jaipur Literature Festival and India International Centre. He has also conducted workshops for The British Council.