Photograph by Denise Bourassa
A diverse range of poems this week, some romantic, some medical. Poem 3 grabbed the majority of votes so congratulations go to Daphne Milne for a poem titled PATIENT NO. HR39571. Soundtrack was also popular and came second. This was by Valerie Morton.
Thank you to everyone who entered even if your poem did not appear here. This was a popular week and attracted a lot of entries.
Poem 1
Soundtrack
I came across my broken heart
under a dust-coated box
finger-scrawled with your name.
Untouched for twenty years,
it shocks with its hardness,
its corkscrew shape and colour –
grey with the decay of wasted time.
Only now can I touch it, run
my fingers over its shrivelled
surface, feel a rhythmic pulse flutter
through each tiny capillary,
echoing long-forgotten music.
Valerie Morton
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Poem 2
Heart wrenching
It was a bad line
when they asked for it,
they tested it and took it.
You were dead.
Not a word more
-not a thank you,
so much for organ donors,
just don’t ask me again.
Angie Butler
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Poem 3
PATIENT NO. HR39571
The heart surgeon’s cuff links have the image
of a heart engraved upon them
a Christmas present from an Aunt.
Does he need to keep this diagram on hand in case
he forgets the intricacies of valve and chamber?
How does it make the patient feel?
The stent is failing
He leans against a filing cabinet too busy to sit down
preserving the sharpness of his trouser crease.
He talks probabilities
casually mentions surgery.
Evidently Mr. Whosit’s heart is purely functional.
The mitral valve is not too good
Aftershave too subtle for anaesthetic properties
makes me sneeze
meriting a distasteful glance
the production of a pen to scribble
incomprehensible diagrams of my insides.
His white coated Registrar
makes urgent notes
Triple by-pass.
Daphne Milne
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Poem 4
How long since we changed the oil?
When I seizure, I’m confused. I
never told a soul until I met you. I was
afraid of small towns; by force
of will I begged sometimes to be
excused. Grand mal. you said, it
sounds so lovely; it sounds like
a painting Sargent might make
of Venetian canals. Let’s walk
starling, you said, and if
you drop, I’ll stop mid- flight
to dip in foam.
Charles Bane Jnr
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Poem 5
My forgiveness pot is a jar
That lives inside my heart
Filled with all the forgiveness I have
It looks like fairy dust, glittery and golden
When someone needs some of my forgiveness I take a little from the jar and give it to them
Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot,
Sometimes more than I feel they deserve
The jar is refilled by the forgiveness others give to me
For I too need forgiveness sometimes
But right now my jar is running low
I have given away far more than I should have done
And to people who I think should receive none at all
The cutting insults he made
The selfishness she showed
Were two biggies this week alone which took over half a jar
I am now wondering what other peoples jars look like
What shape, what size, how empty, how full
And what colour is their forgiveness? Red, silver? Gold like mine?
Do some peoples jars never open?
Sealed forever, never giving, unable or unwilling to receive?
Do some people really not care about the importance of forgiveness?
I care
I take care of my jar
Maybe when it is almost empty it will fill back up with
The forgiveness others do not want
I like to think forgiveness isn’t wasted
Finds a home, a jar somewhere.
Amanda Clement-Raygill
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Poem 6
Beneath the Waves
“Can you hear me?!” she screamed,
Her voice rippling across the upturned sea,
Vibrations shook the ground a split,
But they could not awaken love in me.
Her crimson nails tore at my prune like skin,
Their watery scrapes denoted futility,
For it was not my life that ebbed away,
It was my heart that had been lost at sea.
The rhythmic thud, the layering beat
Smashed off my metallic coating,
The tin man in all his glory,
Content in this immersive floating.
Her dewy eyes were wild,
Her oval mouth frozen in dizzying dread
But I drifted peacefully in sunshine’s calm
All in all, quite brain dead.
Sarah-Jane Coyle
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Poem 7
Medical History
Over my medical history the doctor goes
On this visit for something minor, as if he knows
Something about me, which of course he does.
It is encoded in the folded notes, the tests; it was
Building up over the years; the colds, viruses, those
Occasional fault-lines that, I suppose,
To a trained mind accumulate like pus
In a wound – my whole life a wound. And thus
I sit here trembling, wondering if it shows –
My medical history – the secret I am guilty of, whose
Consequences I now face in this rebellious
Attack of cells. Genetic? Environmental? Cause
And effect are lost in fifty years. Either way I lose.
Nothing to do but wait and see what he will diagnose.
Michael Docker
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Poem 8
I Carry Your Heart (after ee cummings)
This is you
standing by the bay
the wind through trees
in the streets of a town
pedalling the old bicycle
singing as you cook
reading on a train
counting crows
sculpting stones
listening for weather
blowing dandelion clocks
swimming in the sea
naming stars
falling like leaves
between worlds.
This is me
searching for home.
Eileen Carney Hulme
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Poem 9
Discarded Heart
You’re done with me. I can tell
by the way you fail to move.
We used to slot together,
You and I, like a jigsaw –
The only puzzling part
is why I stayed.
You’d beat me with such regularity,
it became a bass-line in my ears.
The nights I prayed
for brakes in the record
so I could find the spaces
between the words you failed
to hear.
Then there was this night last week;
You wildly took to me –
A hungry bear in the woods.
like there were no tomorrows
and if there were,
you would simply drown them
with your tears.
And you were going at it,
thumping away whilst I bit the pillow.
music in the background, tense
beneath your muscles.
You groaned –
A spasm jolting you
out of control.
Now you lie awake
hooked to wires.
Your presence marked by
every breath you take.
I lean against these lemon-soaked walls
monitoring when there will be nothing
left for you to say.
Hannah Teasdale
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Poem 10
In Need of Care
My heart
Weakened and cold
It beats without purpose
Scarred by loneliness, left empty
No soul
My heart
In need of care
Could you awaken me
Renew my vigour and rescue
My soul?
Emma Power
