the heart laid bare

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VERBAL PORTRAIT OF A CAT OWNER
Unanswered
Bedtime
the one time
prisoner
iris
adore
delicate
Untitled 10
never him
lockdown
procrastinating
advice to the imaginary man of my hypothetical dreams
the tenth month
purple hearts
vigil
a glossary of terms
a week forever ago
The sixteenth
the curse
Under seige
Beyond the blues
Introspect
Balloon
push
a strange distance
SWIMMING ALWAYS DOWNWARD
A ONCE-FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
No Apology
the thunder
tinder
critical shortage
the sky we thought we knew
CIRCA SOLEM
almanac
baby
dearest orlando
FIVE MONTHS
A LETTER TO THE UNDESERVING
cactus heart
would we
the fall of giants
paradise lost
Dad
after you've gone
time
a smile from the eyes
trepidation
why so cold
fix this
swallow me
untitled 8
insular
cry alone
robin
quicksand
laces
D.I.S.C.
stripped
waving goodbye
your open eyes
enemy within
mortal
untitled 4
sleepless
OUTSIDER
untitled 9
come dream with me
in the face of adversity
one word
the dark of the night
untouchable
one and one makes two
you burn me
see me
this shaken core
my lover
helen
my room
his words
foolish
rita
chalk drawings
the longest night
stupid skeleton
CLOTHES MAKETH
FIRST LASTS
STELLAR
TODAY
I WATCHED A MAN DIE TODAY
THREE WEEKS
this slippery slope
untitled 5
Arrows
First Kiss
The Talk Of Love
Nicotine
Blackout

the curse

This is our curse.
 
We bleed.
 
Every sob from your lips is a wail from ours, of heartrending sorrow or blackest despair.
Every cut is an evisceration, gouging deep into our innards.
Every pinprick a mortal wound,
Each scratch a scrape across our bones that leaves fragments in our marrow.
 
We are conduits of human emotion;
We exist to channel those things you cannot say,
Shape the things you cannot yet recognise,
And through our fiery souls reduce them down to a milder form,
Fit for general consumption.
 
We are the ones who lay on muddied ground,
With the things you dare not think soaking into our coats,
So that you may step over us without soiling your shoes.
You may stand in the gallery with head cocked,
Assessing the sound, the meter, the patterns left on canvas by our tattered hearts
As they were kicked across the floor.
And you may smile, faintly understanding,
Or shake your head and say
“That is not it at all.”
 
We bleed, over and again,
And we wear out our shoes from kicking,
And our eyes from crying,
And our coats from soaking in the feelings of others.
We bleed out.
But we bleed better writing, better art, better music.
 
This is our curse.
This is how we serve. 



© mjc 07 October 2017

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Biography

Daughter, sister, aunt, godmother, friend; self-confessed hermit, confirmed cat person, sporadic baker, irreformable yarncrafter, voracious reader; occasional wit, voluble shower vocalist, frequent sacrifice on the altar of brain-to-mouth filter fails, unrepentant purveyor of puns and dad jokes, writer and poet.

I have always lived by the theory that no matter what you do for a living - if you are compelled to write, if you wake up in the night to scrawl the contents of your dreams on a notebook beside the bed, if no event in your life seems complete without you recording it, if you are drawn to comment upon the world - then you are a writer.

These are my words.