Lauren M. Hancock Poetry and Prose

Tag: writing

  • Poem: A Little Crescendo – 30/01/20

    Poem: A Little Crescendo – 30/01/20

    Sometimes I need to realise that the wind
simply needs to unwind
to leave his breath upon the windowsill
and tangle within the trees.
The branches and he will create a mischievous dance
a mild form of light-hearted sorcery
as the magic weaves its language
strange capitulations together;
they succumb to each other
the swooning moments
it seems he’ll never leave.
 
I’m here watching o’er these two
it’s amazing to see,
precious to view because I know 
there is little fight left between this pair
they secretly cherish one another
they breathe through
air to wood
wood to air.
 
Sometimes the wind needs to cherish something
other than itself
blustering around something other than me
although I miss his presence
I know he’ll return when he deems it rightly so,
he’ll take his leave,
come back to me.
 
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: King Sunflower – 29/01/20

    Poem: King Sunflower – 29/01/20

    How we rise like sunflowers,
bright and blessed,
sunlight beaming on our faces,
glancing sideway-winks,
and hearts as heavenly warm as though heated by eternal caresses.
 
Held aloft by those firm stalks which holds our sway and
keeps us in place,
you, my wonder, are everything I wanted,
everything I’ve needed,
this should be all I need to say.
 
For your ostentatious yellow collar breathes around
the darkness of your pitted pollen which
pleases all the bees who wander hungrily,
flitting through the atmosphere as though they
have no other care
than collection
and collection for their hive,
to please their precious queen.
 
Am I your queen?
I ask of you, the head of the Sunflowers,
am I everything you dreamed of, wanted,
and needed?
 
My precious queries ache,
I sing them for you,
draw nearer to your flamboyant petals
which compliment,
which compel my gaze to come closer.
 
I grasp onto the stalk for stability,
a miniature sunflower crawls leaf and root
up until that shining face,
my dear, I have made it,
we are together,
and will you look at the smile upon your flower,
there’s no happiness going to waste.
(28/01/20)
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: Image by Couleur from Pixabay

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  • Poem: Marry Him – 28/01/20

    Poem: Marry Him – 28/01/20

    Will I ever find a place,
a home to rest my weary fingers and shuttered eyes,
my fingertips so tired from tap-tapping
emulsifying my emotions,
please don’t pry,
please, don’t.
 
I am so ragged,
wretched be my soul these past days, 
and I ache for somewhere to rest and be content,
paper smeared with pains of yesterdays.
 
I am tired, bone-tired, my muscles ache too, and the
inked crimson cavalries chant
Reign over thee, Reign over thee
they’ll take my energies most willingly.
 
I try not to let past events
get to me, 
to enter my dried-out soul that will ignite
with the slightest of sparks,
 
Beyond the moon is where my eyes are cast,
hoping to avoid inevitable decimation that seems
far too close
and far too soon.
 
When the firebomb hits,
set off by my innocent little soul’s notepaper,
I will dive with the rest of them
for cover and safety,
 
but my wordsmiths and bards,
where else we be if we didn’t already bear
ourselves wholly?
 
The paper in my soul takes on shades of aggressive red,
now blackness, the depth of my plaintive despair.
Some corners though, are hopeful blue,
and mangrove yellow in certain parts to be viewed.

This is but a fork in the road,
I will marry him, marry him,
marry who?
I have wedded the quill,
he is kind and reassuring,
and he doesn’t talk back,
he’s perpetually with me,
marry me, marry me,
I once begged,
we will make a life of our own,
he colours me all over, you see.     

© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: Not of This World – 26/01/20

    Poem: Not of This World – 26/01/20

    She is not of this world, 
borne of an entity and a place
where daggers and betrayal are commonplace,
inside her heart lies dainty ticking time-bombs.
 
In her world, featuring prominently, are those egos, egos,
ergonomic and plentiful,
potent in their intoxication,
and scents of creation,
fresh, tall and poplar,
she is not of our world,
she makes of it what she may.  
 
Tombstones rise within her vision
creaking aching monuments applicable
to her alone,
familial ties lay beneath the soft sandy soil,
petite, concerning, but never do they overwhelm.
 
She comes from a world unlike ours,
she seems as free as the clouds,
though on the horizon
lies a promise,
a blood-red warning,
that soon, she must start running.
 
The unspoken have their own way of speaking,
deeming themselves relevant 
on both ends of a spectrum,
highlighting what she will never say,
a deeply personal experience,
an explosive type of expression.
 
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: A Nightmare – 26/01/20

    Poem: A Nightmare – 26/01/20

    In the darkness, I can feel the heaving,
the staggered breath of something unearthly,
with rounded edges that pulsate eerily upon my fingertips,
da doom, da doom.

I envelope myself around this living catastrophe,
it’s begging to be tamed,
assumed,
taken over,
approached with the lushness of virginal buds of spring,
I can carry us under, and over,
and away.
 
Who explicitly states we must be separate — fools!
No allowance to be entwined together until the light of day?
Ne’er will their permission
come,
be saved,
in the trying periods when mess gets in our way,
shoved aside,
then hands and feet we crawl,
dragging through the thick soupy darkness,
only to again meet this being,
Thing,
it seethes at me,
I simply cannot allow myself to take it in.
 
There are too many possibilities to trial, you see,
too much future aggravation at stake.
 
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: Beacon of Hope – 25/01/20

    Poem: Beacon of Hope – 25/01/20

    A lighthouse up on the horizon signals
impending hope,
as a monument it shows that perhaps
Home is nearby.
 
Whose home, though?
Anyone’s, can be my guess,
mattering most is not whose ownership,
but the act of rescue by another,
of housing us,
encapsulation,
we’ll be welcomed after times of distress.
 
No need for self-destruction,
for surging waves of emotion to take o’er,
our boat will be held until its safe docking,
salvation is before our eyes.

And as we thank the strangers who pull us in,
their eyes wild with haste and pressure to correctly
drag our boat ashore
 
I silently thank the lighthouse
for shining unto us,
delivering exactly what was required during those moments,
to light our way and make explicit our terror to those
who happened to be within sight
of heaven’s raging crescendos.
 
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: shut-up prizes – 24/01/20

    Poem: shut-up prizes – 24/01/20

    Contemplate ahead of the moment
where precious jewels sparkle upon fingers of 
mad yet calculated women,
where even madder men will fight to keep them happy
but with their demands, ongoing,
complaints, eternal sufferings,
maddest men’s eyes look elsewhere,
for new hands to bear,
new hearts to win over.
 
The bejewelled, once beguiling women,
tap tap tap their manicured nails upon the sink,
waiting for their husbands to return late from work,
his inevitable sigh to engulf the room,
of his own self-proclaimed suffering,
and roll in he does, scented by 
the faintest lingering perfume,
she turns her face away, hurt, as though slapped but nothing’s said or done.
 
She will pretend she doesn’t notice,
this time, and the next,
because out of the slightest guilt borne from his activities,
he purchases her more jewels,
more gold, then an increase of her credit limit,
and she supposes this is all she deserves,
if she were to leave him,
she’d have far less,
in comparison it’d seem as though nothing,
so, gritting her teeth she smiles
when receiving the shut-up prizes.
 
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: Scent of an Aura – 23/01/20

    Poem: Scent of an Aura – 23/01/20

    I love the scent which surrounds you,
your aura glows with meaning,
permeating your outer shell with reinforced support,
reassurance and kindness.
You can try to fix my problems and aid my
floaty, fanciful dreams
but you know that this is not the right method for me.
 
You take my brokenness and allow it to be a beautiful view,
though still in pieces, you understand it’s my role
to rearrange myself into something more
positive, useful,
that to allow transmutation through your hands would be wrong,
it is for me to wield the vision here,
hold me close as I once more transform,
I love the scent when you hold me in your arms.

© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Poem: An Arresting Freedom – 23/01/20

    Poem: An Arresting Freedom – 23/01/20

    Teeming with truth is the garden pond beneath me,
little goldfishes and ginormous catfish sharing the same muck,
and breathing the same strangling air.
There is no poisoning permitted within their world,
no time for man-made deaths,
perilously cold, creations of old.

They have this amazing ability of not bumping into one another,
as though they understand the nature of truth-transportation,
within their minds, within their scales,
there lay the makings of something frantic yet strangely calming.
 
I unwind myself and my stress around the edges here,
simply speaking, as naked as marked by my worldly arrival,
I bear the tidings of youth and the addled nature of age,
paperweights upon my important documentation,
leafing through the pitfalls and milestones,
such a young age I was when it began,
much mental anguish to have unravelled.   
 
These documents are meant to reflect the truth
but they speak of others’ interpretations,
naught of my own cacophony and musings,
I am wound and wound by their looping,
their incoherent inked ramblings,
their medical terminology to describe
how I am presenting.
Nonsense! I am not a category three or five anything.
 
I am more like a butterfly in that storm,
where I gracefully flit to flit to dream to dream,
and explore the deft nature of mental health
and their well-versed world,
explanation upon explanation
of what I am,
what illness I have become
because, that’s just it,
labels weigh down, they laden.
 
A butterfly finds little comfort in human inscribed notes and details,
instead, she takes delight in soaring, higher and higher,
taking that particular note with her, and then,
with a release of her limbs,
the letter flutters down, further, and further,
until no one knows where it went.   
 
© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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  • Prose Poetry: The Fall – 22/01/20

    Prose Poetry: The Fall – 22/01/20

    When I am slighted, I can become cruel. My words spit forth with venom; I cannot help my purging. It is as though I need to get them out, in order to stop the poison taking effect upon myself, my soul, and in doing so I hurt others by means of my cathartic process. Afterwards I should feel remorseful, but, not yet, not yet, a lone raven calls, not yet, my dear, we have to await The Fall.
 
What is The Fall, you may ask? Let me explain simply, The Fall is when everything culminates and crumbles from a formidable boulder into shattered, tiny pieces, the strong once broken, forming mere pebbles settling into dust clouds, which really are unsettling. My exterior, strong and generally kind, now turned cold as of recent times, has been dismembered into gravelly limbs and such that really, didn’t need any adjustment at all. I had pooled my energies and forced myself into intensely focusing on one or two tasks alone, and in doing so, my stresses had increased tenfold. And the way I perceived being treated or mistreated really spoke volumes to my self-harassed being. I convinced myself that I was the most obvious victim.
 
So, essentially speaking, The Fall is when one falls apart. Strictly speaking, symptoms are as such, when I rock the boat slightly, testing the waters, then finding it fine, I start pressing back and forth violently, making certain I am causing a commotion, then suddenly the boat keels over and the only air pocket is the oxygen underneath the boat.
 
I must breathe into this prison,
For without breath there is no hope.  

© 2020 Lauren M. Hancock. All rights reserved.
All images signed “LMH”
are copyrighted 2019-2020 by Lauren M. Hancock
and all rights reserved.

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