Poem: Churchyard

CW: sexual assault, gore, animal death

 

I have a not insignificant backlog of poetry; I got into the habit of writing fairly regularly when attending monthly poetry open mic nights in Swansea, but they've obviously been cancelled since February, and it feels weird to like... send them to people I would want to share my poetry with out of the blue, though friends and fellow writers have always been supportive. I'm in a poetry group, but it hasn't quite been scratching the itch; I've considered a few times doing YouTube readings, but I've survived this long without a YouTube account, and also like... again, sharing them, weird energy?? I can nag people to read my book and like its FB page, but hey asshole watch me bare my soul on camera for six minutes? Hm.

So, I'm going to start uploading them here. This is my writing blog and it already has two poems on, so f*ckit.

It feels weird to start with older poems when I personally see a quality increase over time, but also a lot of them follow a narrative and recurring themes, so I probably am gonna start a while back and work my way forward. Dates will also like be on a lot of them, and maybe (but probably not) minimal context. Some of them are about people or feelings that are no longer around or true, respectively. But some of those are the best ones, so hey.

Anyway, they'll all be in the "actual poem" tag, and most of them probably won't be advertised directly onto the Sylvestus Facebook page like most other posts are, so idk. Subscribe or w/e.

I'm starting with Churchyard because it's probably the first one I was really, really proud of. Interestingly, it features multiple examples of imagery which also appears in Sylvestus. I honestly couldn't tell you which came first - a little bit of both, I think.

As the content warning above states, this piece heavily features sexual assault, as well as graphic gore and mild animal death. It's dated 16th May, 2019.

Churchyard:

I look like shit,

A migraine in my temples from crying all night,

Hair too mussed from one too many weeks without a haircut,

Shirt the same one I’ve been wearing non-stop for three years with

A smell in the ‘pits that won’t wash out no matter how much

Vinegar I add to the detergent.

My friend tenses as I’m halfway through telling a lame story about

Dylan Thomas,

Cutting me off like a cliff edge with the fearful jerk of her shoulders.

I turn before I can help myself,

Recognise his silhouette,

His stupid black and orange shirt,

The arrogant way he stands to make up for his

Crooked excuse of a penis,

Before I see his face,

And…

I don’t remember what happens next.

 

My body becomes wrapped in darkness,

My head filled with a messy sweaty bed,

His aftershave and the sweat underneath it,

Five Nos starting firm and fading to a whisper and

Five Ssshhh don’t talks growing more insistent every time and

One long silence

That becomes my face for the next six months,

My knees buckling when the disciplinary officer –

Who tells me that, just like the last five people

I begged to help me, he can’t do anything –

Turns away and can’t see my weakness,

Even as a hornet’s stings grow in my heels

So that next time I can kick,

Because that’s what he told me, right?

That if I really didn’t want it,

I should have kicked;

My hands twisting into claws

Breaking through the skin of my fingertips

Ready to slash and cut,

My mouth torn open by the jaws of a bright burning tiger forcing its way through,

A scream so loud the corners of my mouth split open and run all down

Through my body

Until I am nothing but claws and fangs and fire,

Untouchable,

Slashing and burning –

 

But I am not there.

 

I am three hours later,

When the play we have gone to see is finished.

I tell my friends I’m going to walk home alone because I need the air,

And they fret and worry but I slip out between their fingers

Before they realise I’m already gone

Because if my body has burnt up

What can I be after but the smoke that’s left?

 

I do not know what I do in the meantime,

What motions my body goes through,

Whether I finish the lame story,

Whether my smile is the maniacal grin of the tiger

In my throat

Or a weak whimpering wash of fear.

I know that it is never right.

Somewhere the contact my shoulder makes with

His friend’s back when they don’t move out of my way

And my rigid body shoves past

Rings in me,

And I hate the pettiness of it,

The way their all eyes will be on me,

Laughing at this pathetic shit thing,

Still wearing that same old t-shirt and the same

Old silence,

Pushing one of them out of the way because it’s the most their lame misery

Can do.

I know that they will watch me, and that if

I dare to not smile for a second,

They will be gleeful that I am suffering as much as they think

I deserve to;

And if I keep smiling, keep that corpse’s rigor grin

Locked onto my ash-burning face

They will laugh at how pathetically I try to prove

I am happier now.

There is no way to show them

I am grown, I am improving, I am loud,

When just seeing him out of the corner of my eye in the interval

Sends me spiralling back into the darkness where I silence

The scream so hard I tear my own jaw open

And I know this,

Know that I just have to focus on

Being myself whether that self is happy or not,

Loud or silent.

But it’s difficult

When I’m two hours later-

 

Stopping abruptly in the street,

Pulling my headphones down to my neck,

Phone almost slipping from my fingers,

Because there is a pigeon dead in the road in front of me.

 

I am not yet fully in my body. My body

Is still burning too hot

And I do not want to lose any more of myself

Into smoke.

If I burn away my body every time I get lost

In the helplessness of being pinned

Beneath his Ssshhh

Perhaps I can get back the 70% water that

Boils off then condenses again

But I will lose that 30% that cannot come back from the fire

And I don’t want to lose any more of myself

To the silence he places into my mouth.

 

So I stand over the pigeon for a while.

To my right is a bar, doors open in the warm night and

Drinkers laughing. To my left is the car-empty road.

Behind me, he could emerge any second now;

I left before he did,

Smoke vanishing through the cracks in the door,

Pretending that I am not ashamed of myself

For running

When my body is still there

Screaming into his face until my voice tears out his jugular,

Forms its own jaws,

Lacerates his throat and closes on his spine,

Drags him down the eight inches to my level,

Reaching up through the mess I have made to tear out

His tongue with my hand made of claws,

Ripping him in half so that I can dig into his chest and cut

Away his lungs with my claws while my

Hornet’s sting heels stab and stab and tear open

His stomach and legs and crooked excuse

Of a penis –

Covering myself in his gore, rip him open while

My friends and his friends and the elderly patrons

Of the theatre watch in horror

And his new girlfriend wearing the face of my denial

Recites yet again her ten-minute lecture about how

Feminism should be more welcoming of pretty straight girls

And their boyfriends,

Until not a millimetre of his skin has not been lacerated,

Until not a millimetre of mine is not covered in his viscera,

And then ripping myself open

From the inside

As the tiger in my chest tears its way free

And all of us

Are burned

To fucking oblivion.

 

But I am not there.

I am now.

Standing over a dead pigeon in the road.

I am not present enough to try to fathom how it died –

All I know is that

Soon, this street will be filled with drunk students on their way to

Student night at the club,

And a girl will scream at it,

And a boy will laugh and kick it into the gutter

In the hopes of grossing her out enough that she’ll

Suck his dick later,

Because what else are we supposed to associate with

Taking him into our mouth but disgust

And silence?

I clutch the crystal I’ve worn at my heart for five years now,

Send it a prayer,

Keep walking.

Hesitate.

Keep walking.

Stop.

Turn around.

There’s a group of people coming from the theatre now.

I don’t look long enough to recognise his

Silhouette or his stupid black and orange shirt

Or the arrogant way he stands;

I drop to my knees and dig in my bag,

Wondering whether I can pick it up

With my bare hands

Or if I should take off my jacket

Or sacrifice the new hat I just bought

To pigeon blood and mites.

Just as I hesitate again,

Aware enough now of the people staring at me

From inside the bar,

Of the group coming from the theatre towards me,

That I begin to think apathy

Might be better for my mental health,

I see a hat

Discarded on the pavement

Unwanted or lost

As dead as the pigeon

In the road.

 

Five minutes later, I’m on my knees in the churchyard

That was ahead of me the entire time.

I lay the hat at the base of a tree.

Unwrap the pigeon.

Rest my brow against the bark.

My prayer does not have words this time,

But inside my chest

A tiger settles,

Perfectly aligned with the angles of my body;

The flames do not go out,

But burn gently within my skin,

Soft in my palms like a holy light,

And I imagine that the kindness in my hands

Glows like the halos in the window behind me.

I hope Jesus isn’t mad

That I left a bloody mite-infested pigeon

At His door,

But I don’t think He will be.

 

I am not ashamed of myself for not consuming his heart

And burning out my bones.

Everyone I have ever met has told me my heart

Is a bonfire,

But I would rather roast marshmallows and strawberries

Over a bonfire with my friends

Than burn alive in one with my enemies.

And I think that next time I do,

The sparks will rise like stars

Above a churchyard.