The wilting hours now begin to yawn
between our parting looks
You’ll soon pose me in some gallery
or print me in your books
Strewn across the coffee tables
of all your literary friends
They gleefully rifle through the wreckage
as our love surely ends
It’s a responsibility you won’t accept
but there’s a cruelty inherent
owned by the one who wields a pen
the one who is the poet
I marvel at the shade of paint you mix
colliding all your thoughts upon our story
Your sensitivity truly is a gift
but do you not feel how it might hurt me
There are both perspectives to consider
two bodies acted every scene
you’re free to treasure each memory
but there should be some privacy
Turning your lost lovers into sculpture
some gleaming grotesque bust
You let strangers touch my hidden parts
they grope my flaws in their disgust
You walk tall, in some new jacket
signing all your pages
while I stare at my deformed reflection
nakedly measured by your gauges
Though you don’t mean to be
and though you never meant to
each line cuts so deep in me
your rhymes can be so cruel…
[2022]
Thanks for reading.
The Lighthouse 
I would love to know how this one came about, but only if you want to share 🙂 There are some strong emotions in this one.
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Bree, a great question 🙂 I recently discovered that two of my favourite songwriters (Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen) dated for a while in the 60s and wrote songs about the aftermath of their relationship. It got me thinking about the tightrope you walk when dating a writer; someone who is likely to mine every heartbreak for lines. And then, in the process of writing, the story always gets conflated, embellished, and tuned.
The resulting song/book/artwork lays bare the relationship while also presenting a distorted view of what transpired. I suppose I feel some guilt for writing about my relationships without the consent of the people involved. So, in this poem the person on the receiving end gets to have their say.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
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Wow, this is really great Tom. Love reading the origin story of this poem and your thoughts around this. Thanks for sharing.
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Strange, but before I read the comments I had already imagined Leonard Cohen singing these words. His life and loves make fascinating reading, as does this poem!
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Thanks for reading Peter. Oh, I’d love to hear Leonard sing this one. Let’s hope the universe will one day allow for such things. 🙂
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What a stinger! But if artists practiced privacy there’d be a lot less art shared around the world, so many less poems and love songs. But yeah, makes one think about the other side that often goes unheard.
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Absolutely spot on Kim, couldn’t agree more. Personally, I’d feel honoured to have inspired anyone to have created anything. Even a gleaming grotesque bust 😂 Thanks for reading.
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A lover is a natural muse. When the lover bit dissapear, the muse bit may get even stronger. Writers hold on things a bit longer than some.
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Yes, you’re absolutely right. And as much as we try to or try not to, we never write about things exactly as they were. It’s a diffused memento. But in 2022 (the age of consent) it’s a question to ask – do we own the strands of experience that inform our art? I think the answer is yes 🙂
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We own our reality. It’s unlikely to align with the reality of the muse involved, I have found.
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