Words I’ll Never Say
Poems by Lee-Ann Khoh
License Notes
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Copyright 2013 Lee-Ann Khoh
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author.
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This chapbook is dedicated to the amazing friends who let me scribble away in my notebooks at inappropriate times. You know who you are.
And to anyone with these poems in front of you now... Thanks for giving me a chance to share a piece of my heart and mind with you.
Contents
Fortunes
Terror
Perfect World
Hearts and Hands
Chasing Summer
Bereaved
Walls
Drug
The Contract
Wicked Fairy Princess
Don’t Ask Me Why I’m Bleeding
Missing You
Red Rivers
Under the Stars
Love at First Sight
Fortunes
watching you
watching me
your iceberg eyes
that never quite see
but always know
my destiny
your foxfire lips
that seal my fate
twitch with cunning
curiosity’s bait
and I beg you to tell me
before it’s too late
but I’m watching you
you’re watching me
and you only spill words
for a fee.
Terror
A cold premonition.
Ice chills my veins
and condenses on my skin.
Clouds blacken
The earth rumbles.
Together we tumble
Like lifeless pins at the mercy of a rolling bomb.
White light
Burnt eyes
Distant screams
Skittled streets
Scattered pieces of you
Faces lost forever in the smoke and soil
Searing heat grips my soul
A final breath catches in my throat
Calling a long forgotten faith.
Cleanse my body
Free my mind
Kill my vengeance
and only then can I rest in peace.
Perfect World
In a perfect world
We’re safe in the palm of your hand
In a perfect world
Discontent shall forever be banned
In a perfect world
You feed us lines so we don’t have to make a stand
Here in paradise
We can all have fortune and fame
Here in paradise
Everyone will know your name
Here in paradise
We can always find somebody else to blame
There are reds hiding under your bed tonight
There is opium in the water supply
There’s a bomb tucked under her scarf tonight
On your flight, they’ll blow you out of the sky
Yesterday melts into tomorrow
We hold on to pain and ignite hate from sorrow
So new generations of rich and poor
Can learn the same poisoned lessons as before
Hearts and Hands
Young Hearts with dreams of tomorrow engage
in shameless nights wrapped in sin.
Forgetting that they, too, were once young
or perhaps because they remember only too well,
Old Hands scramble to crush these youthful fantasies
and summon the winter months.
We swore we were invincible.
We burst through their shackles and ploughed through the snow.
We were higher, stronger, faster, better
than those who scaled the forests
and walked the crumbling paths a generation ago.
But the gulf between our dreams and the world outside
left us with a choice: Fight or flee. We surrender
when we look down at what years of toil have given us
and find an empty pantry,
a cold bed,
Broken Hearts and
Old Hands.
Chasing Summer
(for Captain Kidd and the King of Swing)
Do you remember Summer? It was like a scene from Grease
Singing cheesy songs on the boardwalk by the beach
The days went on forever and we swore they would never end
But clouds are breaking, the seasons changing
Reality sets in
I see you down on the sand
With a board in your hand
Chasing Summer
But I want to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band
No backup plans
Just chasing summer
Days went on forever, we swore they would never end
I recall that childlike wonder and it drives me round the bend
Time slips through your fingers as wise men call us home
Then tides of star-crossed lovers turn to face the world alone
I saw you down on the sand
With a board in your hand
Chasing Summer
I wanted to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band
But life had other plans
When we chased summer
Bereaved
I)
when I came screeching into the world
blinded by bright lights
you held my fragile frame until my cries faded
and promised I would always be safe in the cradle of your arms.
now I chase the lights
the lines on your face deepen and contort
your eyes fade
your hair grows pale and grey
while your child finds comfort in anyone but you.
II)
I spent the last 10 years running away
Until I got the call and had nothing to say.
Duty paved the way back to my hometown
Where I prayed salt water would come tumbling down.
I watched your hearse snake through my old street;
Tried to conjure days of playing at your feet;
Bowed my head with conviction as familiar faces started to cry
But when I opened my eyes, I was numb – they were dry.
III)
In the beginning we shared a cocoon
All our lives they saw us as one
Now through the distance between us I feel your cracks
and reach towards the sun.
In my mind I trace the lines on your face
and take you in my loving embrace
But I can’t heal you across time and space
and together we fade away.
Walls
The walls between a dozen cliques were broken down today
The dark date we’ll all remember as the day you went away.
We united for the first time where these bricks had kept us apart;
Each of us, though different, found a place for you in our hearts.
We wonder what
demons dwelled
in your sleepless soul.
We wonder when
you decided that
you couldn’t linger anymore.
We wonder who
if anyone
could have broken through.
We wonder how
we made you leave
and why you’ve gone so soon.
You sat by the window at the back of the class;
Saved a wink for the teachers when they walked past
But your smile hid the secret
s you would never show,
And someone, somewhere, somehow should have known.
Could we tear down these walls
and build a bridge;
a rocky road between us?
How I wish
I hadn’t been
so cold to your cries.
If only these walls had never existed.
Now beneath these foundations
I realise we
could have fallen
from a single tree
And I wish
I’d been open to
the possibility
that you held deeper layers
Like me.
Now many months have passed here since that fateful day.
It burns in our hearts, though we never speak of the day you went away.
Life goes on without you. And of your legacy we’re bereft;
The cement of the rebuilt walls between us dried the day after you left.
Drug
You’re like a drug that I can’t kick and I don’t want to
You touch my heart with the warmth of a high I never knew
You infect my soul so sometimes all I can think and feel is you
But you’ll never know and they’ll never know
Sometimes I cry myself to sleep and drown my mind away
I fill the pages of my life with words I’ll never say
One taste of you is all I need to get me through the day
But you’ll never know and they’ll never know
My heart is screaming in my ears
I don’t know if I can handle anymore
These butterflies speak all my fears
I’ve never felt this way before
The Contract
We meet once a week in the cloak of darkness
and we know each other like our own private garden
and we’re magicians weaving stolen seconds into hours
We have to make the night last seven days
But you’re always the one to call – that’s the agreement we made.
I thought I was entering a fantasy playground for two
and that we’d shake hands and walk back to our own lives
but I never read the fine print and Cupid blinds me
We signed on the dotted line between this barricade of sheets
Now you own my heart and only you can break it.
Wicked Fairy Princess
she carried Heaven on her shoulders
with fiery eyes, she sauntered over
she stood above me, hands on hips
a sneer escaped her bloodstained lips
the battle lines were drawn that day
the air crackles for words we don’t say
the stars that shine in her eyes
are windows to her web of lies
the crocodile tears that she cried
can’t hide the bitterness inside
but I’m not the same blind dreamer I used to be
I’ll make her sorry she cast her spells on me
two can serve a dish stone cold
and act like children ’til we grow old
I’ll play my part with a verse or three
and dedicate them to her and me
Don’t Ask Me Why I’m Bleeding
Don’t ask me why I’m bleeding.
I bit my tongue for so long
that my teeth grew into a picket fence
closing my tastebuds to anything but you.
I stapled my ears shut
trying to tune out your serenade to the only person who could throw your bones into a cyclone time and time again
and still wait for you to crawl back to their feet like a sick puppy.
I tattooed over every millimetre of flesh you touched
in the desperate hope that the angry swelling of my sandpaper skin would distract me from my internal bruises
but every tribal-stamped butterfly smudged into your name.
I burnt my nose trying to snort up a high
to blunt the knife you hurled through my heart
but the snowflakes left me as hollow as the straw they’d been sucked through.
I pulled my eyeballs from their sockets
so I could be blind to the truth I’d dared not think
that for all the lingering kisses and caresses that passed between us
you were never really mine to love.
Don’t ask me why I’m bleeding.
When you swore we were infinite
you ripped open my chest
and played the only instrument that ever kept time with you.
And when you held me
your nails carved a deep well into my soul
that no other hands could ever touch.
But someone else was holding you with talons.
Missing You
I’ll never forget
the way the sun danced in your eyes on the day we met
or the glow of silver moonlight
as we kissed goodnight
But now I see
There’s no happily ever after for you and me
and I should just turn away
but that’s not who I can be today
I’ll always miss you
I can’t believe you’d make me leave this place
I can’t believe you think I can leave your heart without a trace
What about tomorrow?
How can I pack up and walk away?
Forget the words I never got a chance to say?
How can I survive the fall
Knowing you’re not missing me at all?
Red Rivers
it was a cloudless night when you came to me
with your sights set on claiming a shiny new trophy
brandishing your king piece you swooped to create
a deep red river to seal my fate
I was locked and strangled my grip on the key
when you tried to get inside of me
you wanted the treasure still unmined
now I’m tripping over ghosts and running blind
I’m drowning in the deep red river
of promises I could never deliver
every night I pray for the dawn
but if there’s light in this life the curtains are drawn
Under the Stars
Once I was lonely
I was shy once
But being shy gets you nowhere fast
So I’m letting go of my distress
And painting on some happiness
Can you feel the heat of a summer night?
The burning beach is in my sights
Now I have a million friends to choose from
Use them all
Then you move on
Cruise out of control down these streets
We can tramp it up to the backbeat
Can you feel the heat of a summer night?
The froth and sand will make it all right
We all wear our disguises
I know somebody will turn me on
And try to touch me until my inhibitions are gone
Maybe they’ll love me all night long
If only for tonight
We’ll feel the heat of a summer night
On a burning beach
The soil grazing my back
The waves licking my feet
You’ll take me
Under the stars
Love at First Sight
He was standing at the back of the garden
smoking his last cigarette
surrounded by glossy models in stilettos
that drank his every utterance.
I was leaning against a tired tree
watching this spray-tanned parade play out
when his cool coffee eyes caught mine.
With a flick of the forefinger
a click of the boot
and a gentle smile that summoned the sun;
He made me believe in that pristine moment
that I could
be something greater than me.
And as his arms reached into my darkness
and pulled me towards his circle of light
I thought I was home.
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Website/Blog:
leeannkhoh.com
Twitter:
@leeannkhoh
Facebook:
facebook.com/leeannkhohwriter
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