By Julian Matthews
Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc
Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
Come loneliness
Sit beside me
Tell me why you eat at me so
You peck, nibble and gnaw
I would rather you swallow me whole
Like a tiny kingfisher I once saw
take in a flopping frog, almost its size,
down its gullet, legs still kicking–
Do you think you could give me
that honor, to lose myself so completely
inside your golden-orangey belly,
your shiny, cyan-blue plumage, reflecting
sunlight across a calm, windless pond,
a Nat Geo moment in slo-mo –
how tender and beautiful that end would be?
But you are no kingfisher are you?
More sly scavenger than agile hunter
You rather taunt and tease, stalk and creep,
steal into this house of hope, uninvited,
unannounced, bring your cousins
melancholy and misery over, let solitude
have one too many, make bliss drunk
with despondency, allow grief to dominate
and talk way too loud, down bottle after bottle
of your empty promises, wallow in the wretched
heavy air of deeply-felt absences, missing warmth,
pick at my living heart like it was carrion, my emotions raw,
worn and torn, wary and teary, let me bleed out, stripped
and ripped, nail me to a cross of intrusive doubts, overthink
everything and almost yield–but, wait
I shoo you out again, pull away from this phase,
slip under and over the blue haze – reclaim my truth –
and watch your dull-feathered, scrawny form afar,
perched in the shadows, cawing alone,
chewing at your own claws.
First published in Lit Shark Magazine, Issue 8, based in Europe and available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/a6Gb5CQ
