I Still Survive

I survived a drunk father
Who tried to beat me to his will;
School bullies tried to knock me down;
But life found me standing still.

I wondered at my difference then –
But I knew it couldn’t be a flaw;
If I was honest with myself,
Who cares what another saw?

I saw the death of those I loved;
Life tried to crush hope from me;
I stared death twice in the eye;
So she smiled and let me be.

Still she had her due and
Yet she takes; but I know now:
While life rests in my heart,
She’ll stay content on my brow.

So I give in to life each time
And i let love love him so;
And death reaches in deep
When he watches love go.

I survive the parting.
I digest all of the pain.
But I know I am human;
And it’ll happen again.

So, as the sadness envelops,
Every fibre of my being,
I know I still survive, for
It’s in me I’m believing.

Reeling

Most nights I find myself wide awake!
There is this end of a world feeling
That takes over sleep and suffocates rest
And sends my mind reeling!

Thoughts and memories of what we were:
A tantrum thrown; a mock wrestling match;
A joke on shorts; a song we called our own;
A kissed bandaid put on a scratch.

I become Taylor Swift, who narrated
Personal loss, pain and bullet holes;
Or Adele’s soul, in royal Albert Hall,
Proclaiming love’s future goals.

When night passes and morning comes to spite –
I quietly shut the windows on its face…
I switch on some numbing porn, or maybe
Write a poem – to fill the sleepless space.

These lonely nights make me think and yearn
Of how he (probably?) is fast asleep,
While time holds me in such a fucked-up flux,
Wherein I can’t feel, much less laugh or weep.

Moths

When we are unthinking moths,
Lives depend on certain shields,
That cover the dazzling flames,
Calling us from open fields

The paper or glass protects
Our anxious, wispy wings,
From the promises of fire
And other such man-made things.

Sometimes we breach through the light
And we, fluttering, burn;
Because you didn’t screen the glare
And we could never learn.