Sometimes, we find better selves like lost
toys, as if we’ve dusted cobwebs
to reveal old ribcaged hearts
garbed in younger, rawer
flesh that didn’t scar
didn’t callous
didn’t let
rot set
in.
In
those same
spaces, know
it’s not that you
have lost an anchor
gone to rust, decay and
atrophy like roots inscribed
with could and was, but realise
that rot can feed the germ of blossom.
Header photograph © Andrew Hall.
With a foot firmly each side of the Irish Sea, Alex Smith was raised in troubled Northern Ireland during the Eighties. Educated in English and Spanish, his work has taken him to some of the most socially deprived schools in England. His stark poetry has been published in ‘Twyckenham Notes’, ‘Tammy’, ‘Clear Water Poetry’, ‘Bonnie’s Crew’, ‘Abstract: Contemporary Expressions’, ‘Ink & Voices’ and ‘Coffin Bell’. He edits at ‘ABCTales’ and has a collection entitled ‘Home’ coming soon through Cerasus Poetry.
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