Poetry With Young People

When I was in boarding school, we had a poet come stay with us - Gieve Patel. He made us listen to poetry and inspired us to write some too.
The following two poems are mine which were recently published in a book called Poetry With Young People, edited by Gieve Patel.


My Mother Before Her Morning Cup Of Tea

The eyes flash,
Like a lighthouse,
Against the expose of (her)the cheeks,
Her breath comes out short and fast -
A sea about to erupt from her bed.


Trapped

I stared at myself in the mirror,
Wanting to free (me)myself,
Yet, as hard as I tried
to peel off the layers
accumulated,
I couldn't;
(I was) Trapped
By my own biases,
And those of my peers.



These are the edited versions of the poems. The originals are slightly different but I felt and still feel that it makes all the difference. The brackets indicate what I had written originally.

3 AM Blues

I'm almost violently ill with emotion.
but still happy, sad, pleased, amused, longing
drowning in the pool of feelings,
gladly slipping away into the beyond,
my body and a part of my mind reacts normally,
and the rest of me is a purple and silver,
gauzy dress floating, in layers,
all around me, like a tent, covering me,
allowing my arms to slip through the sleeves,
my head to push through the neck of the dress,
draping me, becoming me,
but is that who I really am?
is that who I'm meant to be?
or who I long to be?
or will I wake up to another tomorrow?

Cinnamon Oil (In Your Eyes)

It's a golden sunset, pulling you under
It's Mondays child, full of wonder
It's liquid gold, a shimmering hue
It's a story untold, beckoning to you.

It's a candy coated dream, sugary sweet,
It's the soft rubbing of palms against your feet,
It's a handful of pills to put you to sleep
It's not looking four ways before you take the leap.

And when you feel you're a fraud and nobody cares,
When you feel like you're dead, but hope's always there,
When your eyes are burning with the sweet smell of spice
And when all you can rely on is the roll of the dice,
It feels like you've got cinnamon oil in your eyes.

It's the flame inside you that flickers and dies,
It's the spark inside you that kindles and incites.
It's pain and its joy, ecstasy and sorrow,
It's yesterdays dreams that speak of tomorrow.

And when you feel you're a fraud and nobody cares,
When you feel like you're dead, but hope's always there,
When your eyes are burning with the sweet smell of spice
And when all you can rely on is the roll of the dice,
It feels like you've got cinnamon oil in your eyes.


Song I wrote. Anybody got a tune for it?