So many words,
fuelled by everything,
filled with nothing.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 31 January 2021
Miscellaneous
PUPPET
Here comes the addiction again, its
whispering lips disguised as passion, the
touch of its hidden hand tap-running
way beyond the weave of my skin
and I
soaked to my core, allow it to wed me:
these buckling knees and paper mâché vows
impressing the addict impaled inside, and
while it listens
eyes necking everything in raised pulse
it rolls them back with slack-jawed possession
and I move aside
host to a beaten heart that will not commit to stopping
– a puppeteer’d shell in this limbless silence –
running far without a single step
both of us
gambling with a satisfied purr that only I
once combative
now frail
know as loneliness
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 9 October, 2019
SOMETIMES IT TOUCHES
They all write of love.
But true adventure lay between a
frozen boundary of
stony words; between a synchronism
of dishonest friendship
and the cowardice of being alone.
Poetry is animal without tongue or limb
and it bellows wildly in dormant pursuit.
It flowers only to write of
hand grenades that fall like alphabet stars;
pollen, like acid rain.
It flourishes in drama of silent depth
as wound commits to scar.
Sometimes it touches
and perhaps we might call it rape
but all it ever seeks is our forgiveness,
an atoned pardon for not arriving
– for not stampeding us –
any sooner than it had.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 8 May, 2018
WHO ART IN
I might have confessed
were it not for the blanket
of second chances,
assumption oiled at the hinges
by forgiveness –
a permanence arriving
to shuttle me beyond
the gates of my first
Suddenly, it’s stage fright
that trumpets me an usher –
it bleeds me
a carpet call of thin red lines
and I tamper with the packaging
of cause and effect –
two quality seals,
the loose embodiment
of error and apology
I might have confessed
were it not for the bible’d cancer
of my second coming
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 29 April 2018
SMALL
I am the starved sanctuary for unformed words and
by I pass the feverish wind that recipes its way
beyond my teeth to mix another spoon of
awkward with a sifted pound of nervous laughter,
folding and kneading a cavernous desire
that piecemeals its softened voice
into any semblance of oral freedom
my selfishly shy lips will dare untangle.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 12 October, 2017
THIS POETRY LAY
My poetry lay hungry,
over-indulged on missing vocals
and absent sound,
under-fed from swallowed emotion
and buried tears –
throat-lumping in the name of opinion
better kept to shadowy under-jaws
and burbling stomach acid;
cocooning noisily with butterflies
of rage whose lead-heavy wings
and straight jacket veins
pin themselves to freedom
with only my dry throat
a means to escape.
My poetry lay hungry
while I feed on its promise
to blanket my attempt
to make it known.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 12 October, 2017
ORIGAMI
Your lies are like Origami –
they all start from the same
shape
but take many
forms
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 3 July, 2017
DIVERSION
Sometimes I lose myself in you
whilst wondering
how I ever survived
without your distraction
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 3 July, 2017
HOW DIVINE
How divine
that thought can both
dress and undress the mind
without even leaving it
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 11 August, 2016
KEYBOARD ASSASSIN
I have, once more,
jailed my vision,
splicing diamond-cut thoughts with this
cross-bred and violently bleeding doubt that
feeds from the stomach and shreds the sanest of minds
It is here this rampant indecision
squawks in wordless tongue,
lashing its disposable fancies
(arrow-tipped precision)
at my shaking core,
bowels emptying
alongside any creative thoughts of semblance
All that is left to bear witness: a sweaty palm or two
– and silence –
as the webbing of my fingers um and ah,
hovering, like midnight fireflies
over the speech-impeded womb
of my QWERTY keys
And, inside, I hear laughter
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 13 June, 2016
THE MOUTH OF SILENCE
Fluid
the mouth of silence
while the drowning poet
writes to starve the
mind of words
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 22 November, 2015
OPIATE ONIONS
Opinions
are an
opiate onion:
they sting
they burn
but they taste
oh so
delicious
on your tongue
when you speak them
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 17 June, 2015
STUNTED
Where, I ask, exhausted, did my creativity go?
Was it shadowed by my many burdens
and finally let go?
Did I forget to save a seat for it
while I rode the highway of life –
carrying every ounce of every day
in a heavy sack by my side?
Did I leave my creativity far behind
and outside of the boundaries
I once hungered to avoid reviving in my mind?
Or has it leapt ahead of me,
light-years away to a time
I could never expect to write or reach?
And will it only greet me again
in the next life
in shoes that another more
worldly and traveled other would wear
better than the ones I, alone, attempt to fit?
Have I,
just a here-and-now speck of dust
that tumbles aimlessly along,
reached the limit I somehow self-inflicted
earlier on
to stop me from rhyming more
about what I might never know,
or perhaps, am never meant to find?
Shall my questions be the soothing pets
that follow me like loyal friends
but somehow stay an arms length away
and whisper secrets I could never
– even with a stethoscope –
allow myself to hear?
Knowing what I know, would I detain them
to keep them near?
Shall I, neither ancient, nor elder,
try to understand the heart-beat silence
that, like a disease,
runs impatiently through these veins?
If it returned, would my creative other
fall like pounding rain into my arms and
dissolve itself of any sin
by becoming,
yet again,
a part of what it once was in?
Would my creativity starve, or feast,
by sinking and syncing deep within?
If I handed it the keys, I am certain
we would both deserve to win;
but neither I can, and neither it will,
because without each other
we simply
– both –
are frozen, less, and still.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 26 October, 2014
TO HAUNT
These long silences
used to haunt me –
now every ghost
of every memory
comforts me wisely
instead.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 3 March, 2014
I HAVE LOST
I have lost
you: lost myself
in the search
to find us both.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 21 May, 2014
VOCAL
I can be silent
but vocal
if you only had eyes
to listen.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 18 February, 2014
ENDLESS PATH
concrete emotion
part water – part sand
stiff and retrodden
imprinted by hand
unbroken dazing
obsessive addiction
weathered disfigurement
stolen ambition
frozen with purpose
externally veined
denied all surrender
exhausted terrain
captured in burden
expressionless pain
mindless estrangement
decisively plain
distantly suffering
obsessive beliefs
helpless remorse
escaping relief
painful receding
numbless appeasement
gone now, the bleeding
here, quiet, the easement
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 3 May, 2014
MAD
each of us
as insane
as the other
– you, more so than I –
we both repeat
at once
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 9 December, 2013
HALF WRITTEN
burning
these eyes
fear what I see
– incomplete poetry –
a part of you
unfinished
yet alive
becomes lost again
half written
this Frankenesque fate
seals your mystery
locked within
a writer’s typed notes
– and unaware –
I sense you feel
the end
once more
encroaching
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 11 January, 2013
RUSH
The school girls
with the messiest hair
are my daughters
The ones with the
fallen socks
and the untucked shirts
So concerned are they
with getting there
so they can come home later
That nothing but
Armageddon
can stop them in their tracks
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 11 August, 2011
PENNED DANCE
Barely living,
one’s dance
doth animate;
one’s words,
rhythm providing,
doth speak.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 22 June, 2011
BIPOLAR
Standing here
I stood my ground
floating
closer
than the distance
Further
than ‘ahead’ I saw
me
fighting for resistance
Fast
unmoving
– not alone –
with only me
I stayed
Fumbling
– screaming loud –
to hear it:
. . . silence . . .
yet I disobeyed
Cocooned in air and
muffled
by these fitful gulps
I dared not breathe I
marked out time
in vacant space
I owned – yet
not yet: not for me
Thinking hard
I cleared my mind
– illusioned, lost –
yet
memories traced
Would I
(should not) leave
I’d try
The where?
Just ‘some’
to
ANY place
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 30 October, 2007
THE MOON
As I watch
the moon slowly
vanishes
behind the clouds
to appear again
in someone else’s vision
all white and shiny
and virgin.
© Tamara Natividad | pisceanesque.com | Written 26 May, 2002
