"I've been called ...

Dear me! Could I have been psychic?? This poem creeps me out a bit because I wrote it years before I actually experienced most of the circumstances woven into it. Part self-fulfilling prophecy, part vision? I was a very innocent 19 at the time. Okay, maybe not very. Relatively.

I've been called a princess
But it's only caused me shame
For to act without due dignity
Does not warrant such a name.

I've been called a friend
But it's only caused distress
When I doubted a friend's worth
Though I loved her none the less.

I've been called a daughter
But I've only felt regret
For a trust that I've betrayed and
They continue to believe in me yet.

I've been called a lover
And am filled with fear
At myself for the men I tossed
Without a single tear.

I've been called a slut:
My mistakes scrawled dark on a wall.
One name that came so close to the truth
Though I would not allow myself that fall.

I've been called a child
But I feel very, very old
For I have both known and not known who I am
And it leaves me drained and cold.

(written on October 8, 1984)

"Pain drips ...

I actually jotted down this poem almost immediately after the first poem. For some reason I had thought it would be more appropriate to date the poem the following day. And so, now in 2007, I thought I'd do the same again, although on the original Dear Me blog I had posted both poems on the same day.

Dear me! What an unnecessarily confusing paragraph that was. Pretend it never happened. Just go ahead and read the poem.

Pain drips
Like fluid from a lung
A slow stench rises:
Blood sweat dung
Dagger up your rib cage
Flames taste your arm
Blood running down your cheek:
bodily harm.

Pain clutching at your heart
Smothering your breath
Tears heartbreak vacant stares
Chalk one up for death.
Noise inside a vacuum
Silence in a crowd
Sit and mourn your life away,
nestled in your shroud.

(supposedly written on 17 October 1983 but really it was the 16th)

"Then and now ...

(My second blog, Dear Me, really starts here, with all the tormented adolescent stuff. As I've progressed through my old journals, I have discovered that I was apparently a tormented adult too. Currently, I am a tormented middle-ager - n2n, 15/12/07).

The first "proper" poem I ever wrote. I was seventeen. What I remember about this poem, written in Bahrain one afternoon, is that it was quite involuntary and unexpected. The girl I was put the pen to paper and watched the words slip out. She had never heard or thought or planned them this way. Somewhere in her head, someone had already composed it. She just wrote it down. On Oscar Wilde's birthday.

Then and now
Then and now
Winter summer spring and fall -
They come, they play
They take a bow;
But man from youth turns slowly
Old
And over age he has no hold
Live the passionate days, and live the cold:
You have no curtain call.

(written on 16 October 1983)

From the same palette as Mynah's beak.

(which, incidentally, glows translucent in the early morning sun .. there is so much to see if one just LOOKS).

Something new each time.
Today I learnt the colour
of Kite's feet. (Yellow).

Who would have thought it? But one kite flew so low overhead, while my head was thrown back in its usual One-Day-All-This-Sky-Watching-Will-Lead-To-Spondylosis position. Usually what I see is practically a silhouette, although at times I watch the kites turn their heads left and right as they scan below them, perhaps for prey. But this kite was so low, I could see its feet clearly .. and they were a bright golden cheerful yellow. It was like being let in on some big secret.