Submissions by Northern_Soul
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
There is a trick to get out of your skin 🖤
LOVE POEM
Published
12th Mar 2025 1:24am
12th Mar 2025 1:24am
Dedication Poeticus . (A closing response)
One For Now.
there comes a point
when every cloud bursts
blue streaked tears across
an empty sky
in truth, I didn’t know
how I felt, but I did
walk outside to see
children playing
in an unforgiving street
and wondered if everything
would be alright in amongst
the tattered threads
it didn’t sound much,
but it’s a pact I wrote
in blood-stained hands
that one day I’d write a letter
to tell you where I left
my...
there comes a point
when every cloud bursts
blue streaked tears across
an empty sky
in truth, I didn’t know
how I felt, but I did
walk outside to see
children playing
in an unforgiving street
and wondered if everything
would be alright in amongst
the tattered threads
it didn’t sound much,
but it’s a pact I wrote
in blood-stained hands
that one day I’d write a letter
to tell you where I left
my...
#DeepUndergroundPoetry
119 reads
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
3rd Mar 2025 4:11pm
3rd Mar 2025 4:11pm
Knock/Knock
it’s a
condition
to answer
‘who’s there’
instead of
‘no’
condition
to answer
‘who’s there’
instead of
‘no’
#humankind
#minimalist
#peace
113 reads
1 Comment
SELF POEM
Published
2nd Mar 2025 11:20am
2nd Mar 2025 11:20am
Dear Indestructible
undo the idea
that we must be fixed
to live the days we deserve,
that breathing requires bandages
as we suck down lungfuls of hope
into our last remaining fuck
healing was never the journey,
existing was
it was listening
to the blunt struck chords
of your nervous system
to hear distorted music
as you shuffled to the sound
it was the dawn silence
as you placed one shuddering foot
in-front of another, out of alignment
longing for the earthly warmth
of a prayer-soaked sun
...
that we must be fixed
to live the days we deserve,
that breathing requires bandages
as we suck down lungfuls of hope
into our last remaining fuck
healing was never the journey,
existing was
it was listening
to the blunt struck chords
of your nervous system
to hear distorted music
as you shuffled to the sound
it was the dawn silence
as you placed one shuddering foot
in-front of another, out of alignment
longing for the earthly warmth
of a prayer-soaked sun
...
#disability
#healing
#illness #SelfWorth
#illness #SelfWorth
116 reads
4 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
1st Mar 2025 00:48am
1st Mar 2025 00:48am
When I say “I’ll figure it out” I just mean I’ll adapt to whatever fresh hell is coming
I flick on a light switch
my ankle angles towards
the rest of my twisted body
and it’s been days now
sitting in silence
fighting off dense fog
picking up a pen
dropping it
unable to communicate
a goddamn thought in my head
because that’s
what a diagnosis is,
words that smother other words,
smouldering, wet peat thrown
aggressively over eager bonfires
as they spit out, howl,
flames screaming back
blistering
burning
just like my legs, my heart, ...
my ankle angles towards
the rest of my twisted body
and it’s been days now
sitting in silence
fighting off dense fog
picking up a pen
dropping it
unable to communicate
a goddamn thought in my head
because that’s
what a diagnosis is,
words that smother other words,
smouldering, wet peat thrown
aggressively over eager bonfires
as they spit out, howl,
flames screaming back
blistering
burning
just like my legs, my heart, ...
#confessional
175 reads
10 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
19th Feb 2025 11:17pm
19th Feb 2025 11:17pm
Replay
in the morning
it is easier to wake
after our skins meet
sun on amber sun
hot tea on stone
and whether I choose
to write the collision
your love is a drum
beneath beater palms
loud and rhythmic
as you compose
below my bones
noting nothing
silent ever dwells
in beauty, except danger
and our song that repeats
at least thirty times a day
it is easier to wake
after our skins meet
sun on amber sun
hot tea on stone
and whether I choose
to write the collision
your love is a drum
beneath beater palms
loud and rhythmic
as you compose
below my bones
noting nothing
silent ever dwells
in beauty, except danger
and our song that repeats
at least thirty times a day
#lust
162 reads
4 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
16th Feb 2025 4:14pm
16th Feb 2025 4:14pm
Gravity
not who you love
but how you love
with maddening hunger
until we are too exhausted
to fight the pull of distance—
until our endless space is
small enough to be necessary,
to hold ourselves accountable
for the explosion in our stars
not who you love
but how you love
suddenly, without warning
until our days thank us
for fighting back—
until our years tangle
amongst roots and wounds,
our sonnets becoming sand
under a catastrophic moon
not who...
but how you love
with maddening hunger
until we are too exhausted
to fight the pull of distance—
until our endless space is
small enough to be necessary,
to hold ourselves accountable
for the explosion in our stars
not who you love
but how you love
suddenly, without warning
until our days thank us
for fighting back—
until our years tangle
amongst roots and wounds,
our sonnets becoming sand
under a catastrophic moon
not who...
#confessional
231 reads
8 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
8th Feb 2025 11:29pm
8th Feb 2025 11:29pm
If you’re a word, I’m a word
It’s illogical, but why do I still
feel such suspicion when people
tell me they love me
as if I can’t believe they’d place
someone else over the wreckage
of themselves
your bones entered, washing black salt
from wounded questions, stitching
new answers on old cotton tongues
and I realise now, love
was never enough to make me
want to stay, but it licked
cold bile from my lips
enough for me to say, boy
you’re my glass, and I long
to drink until it stops hurting
...
feel such suspicion when people
tell me they love me
as if I can’t believe they’d place
someone else over the wreckage
of themselves
your bones entered, washing black salt
from wounded questions, stitching
new answers on old cotton tongues
and I realise now, love
was never enough to make me
want to stay, but it licked
cold bile from my lips
enough for me to say, boy
you’re my glass, and I long
to drink until it stops hurting
...
#confessional
184 reads
3 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
4th Feb 2025 00:17am
4th Feb 2025 00:17am
I choose my nightmares wisely
the doctor writes me a script
for one of the few drugs I’m not on
and I need them to stop this—
the silver shivers
the waves of nausea that journey
volatile seas in inadequate rafts
sometimes I wonder if life
would be different without pills
as I take stock of my body
how I lay at a 45 degree angle
feeling as if the bed is a millstone
nightly grinding away parts
of my life and my spine
how the atrophy in my muscles
is setting in, and I feel it every time
I...
for one of the few drugs I’m not on
and I need them to stop this—
the silver shivers
the waves of nausea that journey
volatile seas in inadequate rafts
sometimes I wonder if life
would be different without pills
as I take stock of my body
how I lay at a 45 degree angle
feeling as if the bed is a millstone
nightly grinding away parts
of my life and my spine
how the atrophy in my muscles
is setting in, and I feel it every time
I...
#illness
#nightmares
#SelfReflection #StreamOfConsciousness
#SelfReflection #StreamOfConsciousness
193 reads
4 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
16th Jan 2025 3:10pm
16th Jan 2025 3:10pm
Once Upon An English Hospital
I.
70 has been screaming
blue murder at God
since I arrived.
I tell her
she can’t take my stick
fuck that—
it’s the good one
this country can’t afford
ii.
39. Black. Floor length puffa jacket.
Stands on a waiting room soapbox
about how cops are out for his blood
tells me to look out for him
on social media
I ask him his name
he tells me it’s LeeRoy
I’m stuck between sympathy
for his mental breakdown
and the fact I’ve never met
a...
70 has been screaming
blue murder at God
since I arrived.
I tell her
she can’t take my stick
fuck that—
it’s the good one
this country can’t afford
ii.
39. Black. Floor length puffa jacket.
Stands on a waiting room soapbox
about how cops are out for his blood
tells me to look out for him
on social media
I ask him his name
he tells me it’s LeeRoy
I’m stuck between sympathy
for his mental breakdown
and the fact I’ve never met
a...
#Britain
#illness
268 reads
8 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
15th Jan 2025 12:50pm
15th Jan 2025 12:50pm
Night Watch
and just like the moon
I will be faceless, nameless—
a stranger in a blank sky
under cascades of falling stars
I will appear fleetingly
anchor myself to darkness
because that love is mine
in the cosmos of my all.
Sometimes I look to the skies
to ask for meaning, and they gift me
a pen made of night, so that I may write;
so that these galaxies make sense
because in me, there waits a little girl
with her telescope in hand, searching
for missing answers in this void,
this boundless,...
I will be faceless, nameless—
a stranger in a blank sky
under cascades of falling stars
I will appear fleetingly
anchor myself to darkness
because that love is mine
in the cosmos of my all.
Sometimes I look to the skies
to ask for meaning, and they gift me
a pen made of night, so that I may write;
so that these galaxies make sense
because in me, there waits a little girl
with her telescope in hand, searching
for missing answers in this void,
this boundless,...
#moon
196 reads
8 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
10th Jan 2025 11:24pm
10th Jan 2025 11:24pm
3
in honour of the third
crushed silver on a Thursday
beneath a flow chart, holding
do not resuscitate in its hands
in memoriam of the second
bones picked clean in a trailer
where an un-kissed mouth
holds no taste for the living
in anticipation of the first
water in gushing gutters
that knows no place—
humble, unfiltered, worn
crushed silver on a Thursday
beneath a flow chart, holding
do not resuscitate in its hands
in memoriam of the second
bones picked clean in a trailer
where an un-kissed mouth
holds no taste for the living
in anticipation of the first
water in gushing gutters
that knows no place—
humble, unfiltered, worn
#TimeHeals
242 reads
4 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
17th Aug 2024 10:46am
17th Aug 2024 10:46am
A word on footnotes
I run my fingers
over the spines of her library,
pull out books on fungi
& feminism to name a few
revel in the fact there is no dust
lingering between her books;
to be admired in a way
how she devotes to their care.
I pull out a poetry collection,
flick through its pages
recoil in horror as I find
pages smothered in annotations,
margins full of reading notes
highlighted passages
quotes underlined.
Every anthology I own is perfect
as...
over the spines of her library,
pull out books on fungi
& feminism to name a few
revel in the fact there is no dust
lingering between her books;
to be admired in a way
how she devotes to their care.
I pull out a poetry collection,
flick through its pages
recoil in horror as I find
pages smothered in annotations,
margins full of reading notes
highlighted passages
quotes underlined.
Every anthology I own is perfect
as...
#confessional
#depression
#LifeAsAWriter #myself
#LifeAsAWriter #myself
173 reads
1 Comment
DU Poetry : Submissions by Northern_Soul
