NATALIE CRICK - POEMS

Natalie Crick, an English Literature graduate (Newcastle University) has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. Her poetry is melancholic confessional writing influenced by poets such as Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds. Her writing has appeared in various journals and magazines including 'Carillon', 'Cyphers' and 'Interpreters House'. Natalie is hoping to commence an MA in Poetry in the near future.

---

                                           For You
 

​
This month her depression began.
He obsessed her.
She tied her heart with ribbon like a present,
Licking his fingers and kissing his feet.
 
Words failed her.
She breathed him in like a terrible secret,
A childless woman beneath the ivory moon.
But what about his eyes, his eyes, his eyes.
 
Walking in the Winter trees
Were his shadows in the fog.
He was innocent as a lamb.
Sleep, my Angel,
 
Deaf and dumb
As the drugged summer sun.
My Love,
I want you.


                                                 Love Me



Two friends.
Chalk and cheese, gelled with want.
The shy one with silver sticks
That clunked on wooden boards
Skipped to a secret song.

And him, a gauzy giant,
The bitter scat his excuse.
It shines for special occasions,
Shouting about life of biting tongues:
I am history reinvented.

Blink twice. I am not out of the ordinary.
He tells me how I have a nervous laugh
And how nice
The mice looked, strung up in grey wire.
An easy spear through each socket.

Would I like to walk with them?
It would be like kissing the flute
With my eyes smoking and hissing,
Ash sinking in each pit.
Let me roll in icy pools.

The Other does that,
Hair wet and black,
Tossing acid.
Do you ever sleep?
He wants to be loved.

I do not react.
The sun lets them in,
The moon breaks in two.
Bell, once.
Bell, twice.

One is finished.
 
 
                                          Dear Sister
 

It is Winter here.
Snow has fallen.
“I am afraid”, said the moon.
She is beautiful tonight.
 
Now it is darker than December.
What is dead is a different colour.
My dead sister is neither a man nor a woman.
She is a ghost.
 
We do not speak of her
Anymore.
I turn away from mirrors
When I see her reflection.
 
The dead can no longer see
I no longer care.
O Lord of darkness,
I want my innocence.
 


                                         Night’s End
 


Snow had fallen, I remember,
At the night’s end.
Do you hear his voice?
I am never alone.
 
And at the end?
I do not live.
It is forbidden to die.
The winds are changing.
 
Our dead brother waited
Undiscovered,
But very dark, very hidden,
As the earth became black.
 
The field was parched and dry,
Filled with death already.
You walk through it.
You see nothing.



                                     Sunday School



Madeline loves it
And sits as Mother would.
The priest is like her Father
Dressed all in grey,

Palms fluttering with
Paper clowns,
Legs and arms spinning anti-clockwise
Like the priest's eyes slide

From side to side.
We are his for an hour
But he cannot touch us,
For we are jewels to be watched,

And, one day taken.
Nobody has ever held his hand
But Grandmother, with rings like
Little girl's warnings.

This is my house of God,
Rain thundering as
Unanswered questions.
Their faces are taught and chilled with frost.

He is the bee of androgyny
Thrusting candelabras as tusks.
This drone of activity,
It is all too much for me.

 Faces dumb as naked dolls.
He strips them, licking them with stars
Like potential girlfriends
Or meats to be weighed.
 
 
                                            Young Love



When you were five
And I was six,
We would hold hands
Just like this.

When you were nine
And I was ten,
We made a pact
To never tell, and then:

You began to tell me every word
That escaped from your lips, with cold secret stares.
A look or a glance through long
Fingertips. Your beautiful face.

I see you sitting by the stair, your body
Tight in hot sun, a sad lamb
On stage. And when I have passed you
Flushed red raw, I want to remember

How young we were.
Splayed out across the pitch
Like baby starfish, pink and pinched
As tongue's blood.

Our father and mother are in silent reverie,
With knotted wrists and electric hair,
Nodding and clapping, as dumb waiters do
To our games. When we are together we are together.

Today we are family as the ill
Walk in lines, with shaken smiles that marry us.
Mother, to me you are a figure of fun.
Father, you are a child when you wake up each morning.



                                     She Chose Red



It is Winter.
He dragged her through the snow,
Her heart in her hand.
She was trying to be special.

In her room
Is a barbed cage.
She made it herself.
She waits inside with a needle in the dark.

Exiled.
Chewing her own hair.
They don't talk to her.
Her mouth is full of hair.

She chose red.
Dreamer, how did you get so low?
Anywhere you go,
She will follow.

She is a slut called Jezabel.
There is sunshine in an empty place.
Her birthday: a black death.
The rush she gets. Machina.

Her cousin is a spider.
Withdraw.
Now give her an inch, a mile.
She is a beautiful liar.

Aphrodisiac.
She crawled out from the sea.
A horse drinks from the dark water
Dieing, vapourous.
 
 

                                      Baby's Breath
 


On rainy days
I give myself permission
 
To touch the glass
And see your remains:
 
Tissues, shadows,
All that is left
 
Of you.
Dancing with ghosts
 
Over dark hills.
Skylarks, old dear.
 
When I stand in your old room
I feel so sad that I masturbate myself.
 
Bees feast in tartan plumes,
Birds hanging on threads.
 
An old donkey hobbled
Into the mists.
 
Ring-a-ring-a-roses.
A pocket full of posies.
 
Your tiny hands tremble away
From my throat. Jack-daw.




                                                                  Seeing Things
 

My face is changing
And no one else can see it.
I am in an asylum for weeks.
And no one else can see it.
 
My face changes
Like a rainbow or a storm cloud.
 
I am a snake now
In the mirror.
We photograph what I can see
And talk about it.
 
My eyes are shrinking.
My hair is shrinking,
Growing longer today.
I don't know where it goes.
 
I think it shrinks away
Into my skull
Choking all of my thoughts
Until I have nothing left.
 



                                 God, He Is In The Air
 


God, he is in the air,
Rushing through the wind and
Over the hills.
Coming at her in waves at the seashore.
 
Grey gusts
Colour her cheeks crimson
As a bandstand balloon.
She doesn't know why.
 
Polka dot flags
Hang in the air
For Madeline to stuff into her pinafore
In handfuls.



                                  Secret Life of Life
 

I am a child
Thrust open and disregarded,
Trashing through corridors unchained.
The sound poured into me then,
Like birdsong,
Sweet and softly tapping
At my heels.
 
Short bursts
Of stigma
Are attached to this threshold.
I wandered out, caught
Between the lines of cars.
Such activity frightened me
So I died with leaves.




                                            The Secret
 

The words fell from her mouth
Like black snakes.
Hissss.
She has lost them all.
 
The secret!
A promise she could not keep.
Someone knows.
He lies in bed, the room growing dark.
 
It is the last night of their lives.
Take me there
To the beautiful people
Who run in the garden in long coats