Category: Uncategorized

Inhale

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

I have been embracing my spirituality lately and it feel so good. I love the Buddhist teachings but also love astrology, oracle cards, and Western and Eastern philosophy, so am a bit of a spiritual whore! I meditate every day and am already reaping the benefits.

I’m cultivating a lotus
from within

Inhale, Exhale
Each breath shapes
a sigh of a promise
A birthing phenomenon
grips my throat
like fingers around a
pessimist’s neck
Squeezing the negativity
like some kind of cosmic toothpaste

Oxygen tangoes pirouette on the tongues
of the would be Buddhas
Leaving behind the
hate and the frustrate
and the wicked glimmers of
acid lipped negative
Psalms and hallelujahs
ring out to Jesus
Whilst the mantras of monks
whisper to miracle of enlightenment

Each mindful moment
dissolving on my mind
Teasing on the point
of nothingness
Looking between the silence
to find…the serenity
seeping into my sanguine senses
To suffer is to die
Whilst to live in peace
is as empty as infinity
With a compassion fuelled heart
and a mind as awake
as a songbird singing sonnets
in a summer dawn

My life is a pavement
My heart is a flower
Seeking solace between the cracks
and refuge in my inner power

Existence is a privilege
we often denigrate
With our pills and our knives
And our poison dart words
echoing in chasms of dissonance
And now I must regenerate
integrate
embrace

Miracles can shine through
the darkest twilights
Each point of consciousness
a birthing star
Each glimmer has a home in faith
My consciousness can reach as far…
as eternity

I’m cultivating a lotus from within

Inhale, exhale
The shoulds and coulds
shout their moralistic monologues
holding me hostage
at the tip of a therapist’s theorem
My contradicted spirit
I did, but I didn’t
I can, but I can’t
It is, but it isn’t
And I’m doing my best
to assimilate the notion
That meditation can
spring into motion
transformation

And I am a thoughtless thought
Drowning in a spiritual thirst
My darkness a candle that’s flickering and dying
My light a torch setting fire to the world

I’m cultivating a lotus within
Inhale, Exhale
I am
the stillness
within

©2020 Sarah Drury

Black

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

It was a black day
and it was a BLACK day
I, the newly widowed
clothed in blackbird feathers
Shining like a mirror
reflecting fallacies
not faces
Swathes of blackish sorrow
consumed my
eiderdown of grief
Whilst collective tears
pooling
at my crushed stiletto feet
like seas of emotional
effluent
How many truly cry
when others
snivel in consolation?

*

Coffins muffle the
sonority of
grieving mouths
Damping down the
exaggerated pulse of
blood red hearts
Barriers to paradise lost
remind the dead
not to breathe
For death is
breath without lungs
and mortality is life
without living

*

We didn’t have a church
for you would turn
in your fire-ash not-grave
Phoenix smiting from
the flames
the Godly fallacy
Singing godless psalms
of Elbow
and Eva Cassidy
I wished I’d listened
to your heart
for the reggae in your soul
I painted on my face
of have no feelings
Cherry lips set in
a rigor mortis pout
Spider eyes kept dry by
waterproof mascara
Emotion
Emotion
Emotion
Less

*

And my love is
ash
I am married to
a brown plastic urn
And the wedding rings
don’t fit anymore
Me with my
disconsolate finger
You with your hands
busy playing harps
in Heaven

©2020 Sarah Drury

Stacey

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

My name is Stacey
I am hard as the knuckles
on my father’s hand
When his gold sovereign ring
kisses my lying teeth
With a glint of what he calls
tough love

And his Doc Marten feet
dance on my nail-hard flesh
Painting green and purple
masterpieces with
splashes of red
A canvas of abuse but
he says he loves me
And love is precious

And his eyes cut into
my heart like a surgeon
nonchalantly considers
a newly deceased cadaver
I have to look away
or iron palms will smart
my punch bag cheek
But love is like that

I think my life is tough
But at the end of the day
it’s for my own good
My father says
I’m a fucking little bitch
But he will break me
and make me

But he’s birthed a monster
with his fists of fire
and his hands of hate
and his feet of fury
and his temper of turmeric

I am Stacey
I am hard as the knuckles
on my father’s hand
And I am as broken
as the glass greenhouse
where my father
shouldn’t throw stones

©2020 Sarah Drury

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Compliance

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

I owe my life to two things: my son and a drug called lithium. It is not an easy medication and comes with some harsh side effects. It can also be lethal. Here is my experience:

I chew the cud of psychological
plaster casts
A cow crudely masticating broken dreams
Oh, white lithium
Not so refined
as to be spherical
Choking the resistance
Laid dormant within me
Valiance succumbed by
radicalised defeat

My glazed eyes from
days of psychiatric praise
My mouth parched
Drinking deserts
Spitting out the camels
Yet feasting on the humps

I may be as animated
as a corpse
Chasing heaven
Yet pursued by fallen angels
My limbs may tremor
Swathed in tsunamis
as they tremble like
leaves tossed meaningless
in a merciless wind

And in my darkest days
I will be penning eulogies
Darkness clothes the weary
in roseless thorns
Yet when the leaden clouds
disperse
Joy becomes an ecstasy

“Euphoria”, sings the blackbird
delirious on Puccini
Taking flight on wings
of obsidian promises
Just as my mind
Grazes the stratosphere

The steady choke of conventional
pulses through my veins
A military equator
uniformly bleeding
regulated nonchalance

The tick tock passage
of the anaesthetised psyche clock
whispers in demands of compliance
And I dot the i’s
and cross the t’s
As the lithium punctuates my life
into fairytales
Not horror stories

©2020 Sarah Drury

Image by jessica45 from Pixabay

PRISONER

Published on by Sarah Drury2 Comments

20 years ago, during a manic episode, I was restrained and forcibly sedated, followed by a 6 month section. This is how it felt…

I was not a statistic
White walls close into
Slave shackles
Reflecting on a fallacy

Warmth slips frostily
Grasps futile flesh
Whales thrashing
Senseless oceans, mercilessly

Perambulate privilege
Calling out to
Decaying calla lilies
Freedom demise revenge

Harsh cuts its acronym
Empty ears swallow cries
For mercy but echoes
Resound upon ignorance

Snowdrop in a summer’s
Blazing serenade
Snowflake is a pot
Calling the kettle black

©2020 Sarah Drury