Human Too

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Category: Poetry

Published: Thursday, 02 September 2021 06:51

Written by B.Y. Penman

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I am a woman
but I am more
than just a womb and orifices
to birth and please

I am a mother
but I am more
sometimes, I don't want to talk
about your problems
again and again
it doesn't mean I don't love you
it doesn't mean I don't care
I hear you
but I am human too

I know I can't fix all that ails you
can't prevent every scrape and fall
but I can listen with compassion
until I must withdraw
and find beauty to wash me clean
so I may start anew

I am a wife but I am more
than hands and lips to wake you
the siren's call of the day
sometimes pulls me far away
and it's your hands and lips I need
to draw me back to now
when I am lost in the other
it's not because I don't love you
it's not because I don't care

sometimes being everything to all
breaks this body down
but I am learning to be enough for me
so I can still be here for you
I am human too

B.Y. Penman 2015

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

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