I hold the needle, paused above my vein
pump a fist to watch it rise and bulge like
hungry goldfish lip-quivering for a grain
of tetra flake craving; a perma-blight.
What night-terror stands naked in the hail
leaves me gill-gasping, ravening for you
a gritty fix for this rapacious frail
Body, that yearns for something like the truth
Yet all I feed myself is empty lies –
False hope, false love, false joy, false everything –
A twisted ugliness that aches and cries,
Leaving me yearning, lost and grimacing –
My face and body coiled in painful bitterness
Empty of fullness, full of emptiness.
Jilly asked us to complete a sonnet, which as any fule kno goes abab cdcd efef gg. I’m not mad keen on sonnets – it’s that punchline thing which I struggle with – but I made an effort for Jilly because she is great. This is for the October casting bricks thing.
Sarah writes poems 
You picked up the gauntlet well and delivered it in an ebony box. Brava! 👏👏👏
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Thanks, Ellen. I really struggle with sonnets – it’s those last two lines – they end up sounding like a punchline to a very convoluted joke if I’m not very careful.
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Better than I … I actually hide from Haiku *gasp* freeform for me.
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Now I’m giggling! Haiku is like the gateway drug for poetic form. Get in there!
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*Quivers behind the couch*
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Like the small boy in the Marmite advert “I hate it I hate it I hate it”
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Nice one, Sarah! I especially liked “empty of fullness,” which I think sums up the junkie’s dilemma. And for the record, I did not hear anything punchline-y in the last lines.
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Thank you! That’s very reassuring!
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LOVE this, Sarah! ‘yearns for something like the truth’ speaks volumes because you didn’t say yearns for the truth – just something close. The closing line is an amazing juxtaposition that turns around on itself with such strength. I really love the way you carried the voice into so much realism of what this person is experiencing.
When it comes to sonnets, I greatly admire poets like Yeats & Neruda who broke from the rules and ran rebeliously into something fresh and new. Fear not the sonnet; you are its master!!!
(Re: your conversation above, I, too, tremble at the Haiku. I always manage to mess it up somehow. I don’t do the ‘season’ or fail to make it connect to our reality. I am Basho bashed. My favorite Haiku appears on T-shirts: Haikus are easy/ but sometimes they don’t make sense / refrigerator.) LOLOL!!!!
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