Not a Love Poem

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Category: Poetry

Published: Sunday, 29 August 2021 05:54

Written by B.Y. Penman

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if I wrote love poems
I would write of your eyes
how they spark a warmth
and draw me into your soul
or how they crinkle with kindness
and speak of the wise man within

if I wrote love poems
I would write of your quiet
way of being
how comfortably you fit
or how you move me
to move myself
and rub words together
until they catch

but I don't

(for Alex with love)

B.Y. Penman 2010

When I was 5

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Category: Poetry

Published: Sunday, 29 August 2021 04:43

Written by B.Y. Penman

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when I was 5
and alone
a handstitched, felt puppet
wrapped in red tissue paper
tied up with string
was all I had 
to cling to
at Christmas
in the foster home
where they sent me
when you went away

a small, scared child's hand
reaching for forbidden comfort,
"It's not Christmas yet." they said
but it was all I had of you, of home
a tissue-wrapped present
hid beneath a strange bed;
I touched the crinkly paper
and thoughts of you flowed
along with the tears

a man with missing eyebrows
and burned fingertips 
looked at me
across a cold-Formica kitchen table,
"Don't be afraid." they said
"A gas explosion took them"
I grew up fast
and hard
when I was 5
and alone

B.Y. Penman 2021

Pain and Cigarettes

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Category: Poetry

Published: Sunday, 29 August 2021 05:06

Written by B.Y. Penman

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when I was 21
I let them
take chunks
of flesh from me
with their sharp words,
tongues cutting like
a surgeon's blade
deftly reducing me
to a perfect size 7,
a model
of what they wanted
me to be;
starved myself,
existed on pain
and cigarettes,
slowly shrinking
into a sliver
of silence

B.Y. Penman 2021

The Phone Call

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Category: Poetry

Published: Sunday, 29 August 2021 03:46

Written by B.Y. Penman

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sometimes
the words
pull
at the scars
on my soul,
rend them
open,
gaping
wide wounds
that weep,
nerves
laid bare
stinging
in the
evening air
silently
thrumming,
reverberating out
into the night,
pulsing
with the pain
of unshed tears
that will not
come,
no release
indulged

this iron skin
slowly knits
together
as I sleep,
soul scars
shielded
once again,
in the
morning's light
I am
renewed

B.Y. Penman 2016