Content Warning: allusions to self-harm
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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/