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