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
By Julian Matthews
I did not know the crevices of my cerebrum
held secret scars of my past. How neatly they were tucked
in there only to be retrieved by the incision of poetry.
Hidden traumas tell no tales until tickled by fickle metaphors,
the vermicelli of similes, the pastiche of memories cooked
and strained in the colander of the brain. Pain is rinsed and drained,
slips away through the perforations. What remains in the end
are the sound and fury of things that came and went,
the venting of things long held within, rising in the sizzle of verse.
Vivid, visceral, vexing. A torrent of thoughts revived, reviewed,
re-versed on screens, pixelated pinpricks of the past animated
like lightning striking embryonic stem cells, dividing
and differentiating in a desperate drive to live, live, live!
Then the sweat, relief, soothing from the blood-letting,
the word-ache extracted, throbbing on the page like a ripped-out
appendix on a white sheet. The hole left behind to be cauterised
and closed for good. A heart still beating in retaliation.
First published in Men Matters Online Journal.
