Here’s a poem I’ve been working on for a couple of months. I hope you like it.
Nathan went for a walk in the rain,
Felt the cold drops sting thrown by the wind
Like thoughts flung at him.
Often he felt he could disappear
Given the chance,
Less than a ghost,
Scared by its own haunting.
Often life
Really was too daunting.
Hands thrust in pockets
He would stand under the
Limbs of a tree
Whose skeletal branches
Silhouetted against an overcast
Battleship sky
Seemed to him
The jagged black lightning
Of negative storms,
Moments of joy nullified,
Time turned inside out.
Even this tree, one day,
Would fall and rot,
Not even a memory.
Custodians of masculinity leer in with
Jeering grins,
Jagged claws soured with the blood of souls
Too weak to join the cultural dance,
Maps marked not with routes
But the chaos of headstrong toxicity,
The violence of difference,
For straying would be a calamity
And only a fool would sheer from the path
And be rightly and soundly mocked.
Nathan went for a walk in the rain.
It’s hard to explain the indefinable.
It’s easier to be a man, and stamp down emotion,
To be one of the lads and aspire to such,
Show no fear, stick up two fingers at pain,
Don’t be weak, don’t be spineless, don’t be gay
And don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it,
And if someone does then don’t listen,
For god’s sake, don’t admit that you’re lonely,
What kind of man does that?
Nathan went for a walk in the rain.
He watches the puddles circles with heavy drops
Falling like abandons ideas or dragon tears.
No time to explain, just a walk.
No time to talk, never time to talk,
No time to listen if he needed to talk
And what could he possibly explain?
Nathan went for a walk in the rain.
Robert Garnham 