Poems about family

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I was born and imprisoned
to free myself so I could liberate
those who arrested me.

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They didn't raise me.
I became the lowest of the low.

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Inability

I expected my parents to be happy for me.

I didn't put the fact that they were unhappy

into the equation 

before I blamed them for neglect.

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Mum

You become so happy to see me
because you think I'm looking at you.

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I waited daily for your attention,

but you just let me be abandoned by dad

and criticised me for everything that wasn't like you.

When I gave up the hope of ever being seen and heard,

you started to listen, but then you were already dead to me

and when I forgave you for your debts 

there was nothing left between us.

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Yes mum I'm sick,
because you have spewed 

all over me.

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Angel tears runs down
soft, round cheeks from big eyes.

A beldam had hissed bitterly.

Tiny steps on the pavement
with lumpy shoes.

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You were under bitter water
when I stretched my hands after you.
You pulled yourself up with them
and dragged me down simultaneously.

Your insults speared my belly
like poisonous spears.
I tried to spew up the poison,
while I was ravenous for your affection.

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Mum rebuked.
I puked.

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You drove me crazy.

Out on the highway

where I was run over

by people in a hurry

and depressed into the asphalt

where I got stuck.

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No, I can't collect myself.

I am a soup mum threw out the door 

where a door mat should be

so others could walk all over me.

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You throw my thoughts back in my face
and my emotions freeze to my flesh. 

I need you, but you don't nurture me.
Just let me down to my sickbed
with words cold and heavy.

Unless they are like yours 
you tolerate no move,
but out of sight you don't care what I do.

Happiness is strangled in these dark rooms.
Craziness can fill the sphere,
but nothing can bloom.

I have to shake it off to God
who burns it with His wisdom;
The crazy thoughts, the dirt from you;
Such dark, dumb criticism.

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I felt far from inadequate as a child.

I stretched so far I tore apart

to come close enough to mum 

so she could reach me,

but she never popped into my world

before I passed her pushing further,

this time hoping to impress her.

We never came together.

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How can you look down on the self destructive?
Don't you know the cause is degradation?

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You couldn't put up with me
because you never put yourself in my shoes

and you didn't get me.
You kept seeing you.

You never held me
so I had to cling 

not to loose touch.

You didn't stand up for me.
You looked down on me.

You upbraided me
so I frayed.

I was too much for you

so you belittled me.

You don't put up with me.
You only know debasement.

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If I am to starve myself
until it shows how little you can see of me
I would only be a porous skeleton,
you see right through, as if I was air.

I want you to be able 
to see me behind the surface,
but because you can't
I have to decompose my body.

I know you can not interpret this,
but if I use words instead you won't listen
and if I show emotions you feel no sympathy.

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Her heart was occupied

so I got obsessed with her,

but I didn't get one session.

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It wasn't agreeable to clean mum.
To scrub away scorched scraps from a life
out of a pot with steel brush and knife.

She looked like a hag with burning rage
when I scraped and scraped
and she thought I was the devil itself
when I hacked the evil out.

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You say I have become too thin and ought to eat more.

Can I really be tiny enough for you

who wants to fill all the room for attention?

How can I change my eating pattern
when you don't wish the natural for me;
To be alive or dead?

Therefor I live in limbo
crammed in between two walls
as the isolating filling material.

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How can I not get insulted
when your word-arrows
penetrates my organs?

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I'm not in your path.
I have my own
so you don't have to shove me
in the ditch.

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Your stuffed doll

Scorned I gnawed over the knots
to undo the threads you had tied me with
and get rid of all the rubbish
you had stuffed me with.

You called me unseemly and purl,
but I'm not the costume
you tailored too tight.

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If the woman you have helped a thousand times

calls you unkind when you for once say no
she reveals she was never thankful

for the times you helped.

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What lingers in my heart tells you nothing.

It doesn't express words, but blood of pain.

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Deflated

My abased mother became stuck-up
by jabbing her child with a shepherds crook
when it expressed itself. The air went out of it
and only the skin on the ground remained.

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Dear mother, enemy,
my shadow you carried
until I was freed
from servility.

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You drove me crazy

out on the highway

where I was run over

by people in a hurry

and depressed by the cars

into the asphalt

where i got stuck.

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I became a fighter

to stop a monster

within my mother

and teach her goodness,

but when the job was done

the fighter in me

could not be undone.

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I wished you put yourself in my shoes,

but in your darkness

you couldn't see my navy blue.

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Daddy

How astronomical you become

when God is so atomic in you.

If you dared to be petite

God could contain the big bit.

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My defence mechanism has been to hold myself up 

with a tight grip around my ribcage.

A grip like my dad had

when he stumped my feet on the floor,

like a cigarette

he couldn't extinguish

and I also felt others had on me

since his grip was ingrained in my body.

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When you pulled away

my heart was pulled out as well,

but you didn't bring it along with you.

It hung in the air somewhere

as if you were still shaking it loose

from my body like you used to do.

Flat as a leaf it fell from the tree

down in an empty water well 

made of hearts of stone.

Sometimes a rumble behind the wall

threw me up in anxiety

so I from above could see 

my life was a prison.

Was it Jesus knocking 

on the other side, maybe?

To wake me up from the dead?

Too depressed to open up to people

I had no other choice than to pray;

Lift up the heavy manhole cover of pride

and crawl up through the content of my mind.

Jesus came down and told me the way out

and in pieces with heavenly influence

I got my soul back from His Father.

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My son

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A glowing lump of wax is growing in me

to a black pointed mountain spearing the ice.

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My baby is the feeling

after making love.

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You meet me with pollen

falling heavily through the sunlight

and down on the moist ground.

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Every unexpected sound

pushes forth the absence of you

and it is so empty without you here

you fill the whole world around me.

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The little, dead bird on the pavement

is as stripped of meat as I am of yours.

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I wander the streets looking for you

even though you are miles away

because there is nothing I can do to see you.

This restlessness reminds me of 

my biggest heartache.

Just the sight of a frowning face

brings forth pity.

If only I had a shock absorber man

whose stomach I could lie upon

I could free my tears

that are drowning me.

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I feel your deep sorrow.

That ocean is the only thing

connecting us now.

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A crow walked outside the house hollering

as if it was proclaiming

somebody has treated you and me unfairly

and made us very unhappy.

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Mum started crying when she heard 

what you had dreamt,

but I will not jump from the roof.

I don’t want to wait more than necessary

to be able to hold you again.

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Without your voice here

this house has become

a contemplative monastery.

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It is raw outside

so the best is to in your snug bed lie.

Our pet sleeps under the blanket with me

while you have to sleep with your enemy!

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To have a son

evened out the loss of my dad

as a child.

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You are so soft

that you are unbreakable.

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The woman's wounds
gives blood to the child.

Suffering is the price
for the gift of love.