Poetry Pals - Week 18 - Friendship (of the lost kind)

About the pain of losing a friend and not knowing why

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Hello poetry people,

This week over at

Poetry Pals

we have been looking at writing about lost friendship (or if wanted good friendships). Now I was cursing Nelly this week as as an autistic I find friendships hard and difficult and don’t manage to keep many going, (Hi Alison and Linda) . So I cursed her, out loud, whilst reading sat in bed with a cup of tea, nearly spilling it, and making my husband a little worried. Luckily, once I explained he shook it off as my usual weirdness and went back to reading about sport.

Write a poem about lost friendship.

This could be any style of poem on any different aspect of friendship lost but if you find this a little narrow or the whisp of an idea arrives on anything at all to do with friendship then do chase it. I’m certain this won’t be the last time that we head in this direction either way.I started thinking about things that are beautiful and noted down those that to me are the most fulfilling, those that makes me smile inwardly. I did consider many things but noted mainly those that were of nature. It’s definitely nature that soothes my soul.

So, as I said, my first thought was fuck that for a game of soldiers and immediately wrote this rebuttal

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Friendship

Go the fuck away.

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But of course that wasn’t a sensible response and I ended up scouring my notes for something to use. I didn’t want to create something from scratch and that’s what notes are for surely. It was a really good morning and I wrote 3 poems, 2 about friendship. I’d told Nelly et al that I would be vitriolic in my response so one was and the other less so. Both are based around a real friendship I had that floundered for no reason. One day I was a friend and the next dropped, in the days before ghosting and when you live only a few doors from each other on an RAF base it’s difficult to be in that situation but I was ghosted, in the Mess, in the school playground, any time I saw them and that was apparently all my fault when I asked why, in fact even asking why was considered incredibly rude of me. Go figure. All I could think of was that I’d turned down her husband when he suggested we ‘swing’. (It was surprisingly (for me) rife in those circles - but probably a tale for a different day.) It was 20+ years ago now and I’m still rankling. So . . . first poem the nicer of the two.

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Flourish

I have this strange desire to write, 
with a flourish, 
in emerald green ink,
on beautifully handmade, 
mulberry petal embedded paper,
the simple words ‘Your Friendship’ 
and then hand it back to you.
A symbolic end to your reluctant friendship. 
Sad and melodramatic, I know, 
but it would make me feel better for a little while. 

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I actually did write it out in real life but only on boring paper and I never gave it to her. I crumpled it up and threw it away instead, not quite so melodramatic but still quite cathartic.

The next one is more my anger and although the situation never really happened, it’s an amalgam of various noticings, reflections, and situations, it’s still about the same person really. It’s funny how these situations follow you through your life when you really don’t understand what you did wrong. I’m not sure if that’s an autistic trait of not. It’s quite long, sorry.

Photo by Viktor Forgacs™️ on Unsplash

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A Worms Revenge

You played well until your fall. 
I did not see the traps you laid but I felt 
their gradual creep towards me 
naively unaware of their use or need. 
It was a good ploy but not good enough. 
You failed spectacularly, 
unable to control your feelings 
in order to complete your plan. 

You are full of holes, 
you leak confidence and courage, 
spilling love on the ground to seep away,
unable to give it to those who need you. 
Your child grows crooked in spirit and heart, 
pained by a cold mother
she is nearly broken. 

You try very hard but I am steel. 
I only let in those I chose and 
I recognised your ‘type’ straight away. 
It is typical that you did not expect me to realise.
In your eyes I am the lowly worm and 
you are the bird to pluck me from the ground. 
Your plumage is faded though
the lustre sucked from your feathers 
as you try to suck the life from everyone you meet. 

You are fragile now and  
I am no worm and have teeth.  
I blaze and glow. 
You trip yourself up with lies and conceits 
and lay waste to your own traps. 
You have failed: oh, have you failed. 
You cannot outwit me.
The mistake was glaring. 
Those poison dripping sentiments will not work. 
I cannot be placated!
It will not be long now, 
your world will crumble, and I will gloat!

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Ah, well now, that was quite cathartic and a bit of fun. Letting the dark side escape for a while. Till next week, peeps.

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