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Poppies

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

With respect to those who have served our country in the armed forces, especially those who have given their lives.

Today is Remembrance Sunday here in the UK. Poppies are laid at the Cenotaphs around the country to remember the fallen.

My son, who is autistic, stood beside me holding my hand, in a rare moment, and respected the dead and those in service. I was so proud. I wrote this poem…

Poppies

Our two hands, entwined.
You don’t often grace me with your silence.
But today, ten million poppies bleed.
As they died,
these heroes of men.
In fields of fortitude and flowers.
With wives and mothers.
Sisters and brothers.
Children.
Lovers.

Today,
scarlet paints a promise
on our hearts.
You stand there,
in the image of your soldier father.
All gallantry and valiance.
And my heart defies my eyes.

I never asked you to stand beside me.
‘respect the dead’, you said.
And you did.
And I wept.

Our two hands, entwined.
You don’t often grace me with your silence.
But today, ten million poppies bleed.

Sarah Drury 2020

Stigmata.

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

Spoken word poem. Because biology shouldn’t be shameful!

I was only a slip of a girl.
With my hand sewn, bargain basement, maroon skirt.
My eyes were flashing bright
like pound shop, hazel fairylights,
and the next generation fishwive wannabees,
knew how to dish the dirt.
I was dicing with crimson and scarlet,
and hues of red were my dirty sins.
I drank the tea and spat out blood.
The teacup cracked with the weight
of the shameful, tainted leaves within.

It was art that day.
Male teacher, testosterone on display.
He didn’t know that aunty Rosie had come out to play.
Hand sewn, bargain basement, maroon skirt.
Dreams that often kissed the muck on the dirt.
It hung like a hungry lion around
my skeletal body.
Waiting for aunt Rosie to surrender and say she was sorry.
To show her heartless white flag.
Back in the days when girls were ‘on the rag’.
And fearing that the boys would
call me a dirty slag.
I played it steady.

Art class
and a thousand puberty heartbeats thumping en masse.
I painfully birthed every second and minute that passed.
My flesh were stigmata and my clothes were a looking glass.
I woke up in a coma that only screams pass.
My uterus had cried in scarlet tears.
Flowing from stigmata in my eyes and ears.
Childhood was laughing at my womanhood years,
and I hopelessly drowned in a womb full of fears.
I froze like a cadaver in a cryogenics lab
Ice danced in the heat of my sub Celsius stance
and I felt with my shame for a martyr to stab.

And all the jeering eyes.
Do I burnish them with the scarlet surprise?
Let them touch my stigmata flesh with their cutlass tongues.
I didn’t want to be a victim,
but blood washed skirts were so much heartless fun.
I waited for the sun to phone the moon.
And I let the sky paint dusky colours over cerulean shades of blue.
They’d been sitting there like vampires,
and there I was, a gift of a victim,
and they hadn’t had a clue.

I got home that day.
I wandered through crimson pockets of shame
and feelings that at that age had had no name.
And the curse of puberty, and the feeling I have to blame
my body.
And stigmata weren’t for me a blessing.
And it’s not that I’m regretting being a woman.
It’s not that I’m ashamed of being a woman.
It’s not that I hate red…

Sarah Drury.

Two Wonky Wheels

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

I grew up on a council estate in a deprived area. We didn’t have much, but we were happy, and we made the best of what we had. I had a wonky old bike which I thought was the business! It inspired me to write this spoken word poem.

Two Wonky Wheels

Two wonky wheels,
clattering over dirty pavements.
Muck covered, muck covered.
Grimy hands,
grimy knees,
grimy faces,
market clothes,
kids in droves,
snotty nose,
Ken Loach prose,
playing on the council close
with their car boot sale toys.

Two wonky wheels.
Buckled like my affluence as a kid.
Fags in the gutter, fags in the gutter.
But I didn’t give a shit.
What you don’t know,
isn’t in the conscious show.
We weren’t fancy.
But the wheels kept turning,
the kids kept learning,
the loans kept sharking,
and I wasn’t yearning,
for a life I didn’t know.

Two wonky wheels,
and no iPads, no iPads;
no posing lads
on Instagram.
No girls with fancy iPhones,
no parents taking extortionate loans
for their little darlings’ Xmas.
No Facebook,
no Instagram,
no Twitter,
no Tik Tok;
no screen time ending
when the clock
said two hours up,
now knock it off,
or I’ll ban it.

Two wonky wheels,
and we fought over marbles;
Action man, Action man;
Kiss chase AND –
the odd fumble behind the
derelict land
on the building site.
Giz a fag,
don’t tell yer ma,
have a polo
you nicked from the spa;
you came in when the streetlights
danced with the stars
and you travelled by foot
and not by car,
for your parents weren’t
minted.

Two wonky wheels,
two tired legs.
Oily ankles, oily ankles;
Didn’t matter to me
that my street was the dregs
of my council estate.
Cos we were content.
All the comics I lent,
all the cops who were bent,
all the errands I was sent
for my parents;
twenty Benson and Hedges
and a bottle of pop
to keep the kids happy.

And we WERE happy.

Sarah Drury