Content Warning: allusions to self-harm

Jamie Woods – Three Poems

Threadbare

don’t hide the sculptures cover the paintings

no long-sleeved concealment the lost mess of a boy

who once lived in this tissued pale chiffon skin

years of intricate collagen weaving

left arm lines blistered circles

faded to whitewash shame glistens

cotton threads barely there

Only visible to a sensitive seamstress,

or under ultra-violet light,

or those times when I follow their trail

with my right index finger

because I must never forget who I was.

#CC0000

Once you've seen the red
there's nothing else
a field could be full of sheep or cows
and you'd still only see
the bunch of red petals before a stampede
it's a hard-wired colour awakening
of traffic lights and overdue bills
of coke cans and slutty lingerie
of blood spilling, scaring and stained.

Lost

Suspending disbelief is hard enough
watching TV.
I can see the wires, the green screen,
I think I know who survives:
send apologies like prayers into a void.

Didn’t mean to make you watch me losing,
lost to self-destructive naivety.
No breadcrumbs spilled,
no cookies dropped,
but he would find me.

He used to make me pull my sleeves up,
Now I hope he'd be proud of what he’d find.
No angels, no heaven,
here we’re judged only
by our own fragile, fading ghosts.

Jamie Woods is a writer from Swansea, with work published in Poetry Wales, iamb, and Lucent Dreaming amongst others. His debut pamphlet "Rebel Blood Cells" (Punk Dust Poetry) deals with the impact of his cancer diagnosis, treatment and aftermath. He is poet-in-residence at Leukaemia Care UK.

Photograph: Rose by Andy Aspen

Andy Aspen is a spoken word artist and occasional photographer from the UK. You can find him at https://www.andyaspen.com/