MAUDLIN MAWS▪︎Poetry (3)

40. Mother-Daughter portrait

Searching to mend something other than the healed wounds on my sleeve
Another burden to ease with the prick of a touch
Be useful_ needed
For the cheap sake of being wanted.
There's no punch line to the yelping compunction I keep
silenced in poetic turns and blistering imagery

I've acquired the fleeting knowledge of knowing that my hands are for disregard
Dwelling in inclement quiet shame,
My wells are dry
Coerced is the sent of pine, cedar from my leas,
I have nothing to give back but self-depracating elegies my mother had trickled down to me so gingerly;

At the novelty of age
Having nothing but my knees to scrape near the linden blossoming trees
My green heart yet frail to arcane entrails of vindictive maternal love
Stiffing the hymns of my childhood enthusiasms,
Rolling ash trails to my gaity timbers to be blackened tinders
And my skin giving away at the undisclosed fear_
Of seeing your mother at what she truly is

17/5/2023