Kath Shaw
Breakdown and After
Broken glass, slivers of pain
that are clarity of feeling.
Enmeshed in fronds like seaweed
pulling me down.
Self-respect stripped naked,
all pride gone, lost, with my sense of humanity.
Despair, anguish, turmoil
of nights and days mulling into the same nightmare.
This is you, you fit in
to this slot we shaped for you.
I clung to my bed in fear and loneliness,
shot full of drugs.
Respite. I took the potter's wheel,
You told me of Findhorn,
helped me with my pots
and gave me some faith in myself.
You looked beyond my eyes -
tried to get to know me.
I remember you with fondness,
see your face in the eye of my mind,
yet I forget your name.
You were Ruth, Helen, Don
all rolled into one,
gold in my memory,
loving the one they believed I could become.
Page(s) 16
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The