Verse 1
Away, with the needless self-hate
Whose disdained, grievous face oft embraced
On a daily basis, the soft plains of
My mind frame; it’s okay, to have weight
I satiate myself,
With this usefully, uncrude food, for thought
That as of late,
Strengthens the tensions of my emaciated chest-plate
Each day,
Although my self-gaze keeps these fears,
And ideas shelved inside the scarred bars
Of this bard’s rhyming mind,
It’s also full, of culled quotes; you see
Of TV shows… sometimes, the golden lines of
Abysmally
Fictional hands that’ll never hold mine.
I imbibe these lines I write with breaths
Of hope, that although a misanthrope,
Despite the lying wishes of my anxiety
Ill-advising me to believe so,
My lips don’t provide death kisses
Under mistletoes
I see through, with a breezy ease of attention
The hard, facades my felt depression
Dealt me, suggesting, the regressive
Wretched lies of me; that I was a Black Ram?
You see, in a blink,
These grams of insecurity made me forever;
Measure my worth on a failed scale
The self-made results would never exult,
But each day, I’d feel it like braille
As it sealed my fate
So, I expunged mirth, or worth
Internalized stereotypes
That gnawed, for sure
Inside my mind, were corrosive,
Spurred on throes of neurosis
Of me; hating where my nose is
Verse 2
These times, I’m
Alive and kicking,
Despite my blistered waltz,
And collisions
As an infant with the false saviour
Of Mr. Razor, that left me a
Stoically perplexed
Emotional wreck, I’m twenty
What a blessing, so these weary pennies, are the
Sorted, disgorged thoughts
That pour, like ichor
In this rhyming metre
Before such a time
As I’ll return to the ether
No longer in a side-tracked
Circumstance,
When this pen of zen interacts
With the
Autodidact’s pad’s blanks with ease,
The hearts on my sleeves suffer a cardiac,
That arrests
Places me under duress
Although each day,
My shrewd, mangled moods will continue
to fluctuate
Like scramble suits; from clear, to opaque,
Pupils will die-late in the assorted,
Wallowed halls of the
School of thought that is my mind,
Like Columbine,
To deter the yearns for a Wesson,
I’ll swallow the essence, of mean Fluoxetine, as;
These distilled rhymes spill from my mind
Into the quill fast,
My glass becomes half full
Not negative, you see; the pith herein
Of these sentences
Have a positive charge, self-libation
That creates cations
I’ll surmise;
Although, I know
I’m destined to meet my demise,
My drive to survive is so strong,
For real, I’ll ride it so long; won’t stop
Until the wheels stall
Or they fall off
No longer, letting the tinge of depression impinge
Upon my mission in life;
Not a regular, competitor in the human race,
Where I go from this day is up to me;
It won’t be a breeze, even though
I’ll always feel woe, it’ll be less like Poe
You see;
I’m suited and booted in peace and
Esteem, so
Imhotep’s steps move through my
Veins in spades, now endowed
With the pride needed for a lifetime;
‘‘Black and proud’’ is what I espouse,
From the cracked ground, to the
Palatial castles of my astral travel
Above the clouds
Words : Declan Woodward-Brown
Photos : Elizabeth Corrall