This poem was written a decade ago, as part of a 31 poem collection called “May Day Poetry”: a challenge I took on to write a poem a day through May. My poems/music are always written under the name “HanJan”, my name to close friends and family.
This particular poem originally arrived in my mind as I came home from a moving day with clients. In September 2023, the words of this poem arrived again from the recesses of my unconscious. I woke in the small hours, with the entire idea for this project. It was so insistent, I had to creep to the silent kitchen and grab a pen. In all that arrived, this piece of writing appears to have become the signature poem. Sometimes, Trauma is in the cell seeds and the anxious rope tail of your skipping stomach…
Please see below a reading of “Sometimes” on YouTube, set to music and pictures. The full poem is below.
Sometimes
A sad woman asked me
“Can this be changed?”
and hoped I would have
a key in my pocket
to fit the lock of her
despair.
The lonely man asked
“What shall I do?”
as we both sat,
with his chain ankle ghost,
that manacled
freedom.
Sometimes,
we keep our souls
in a locked box
on the windowsill
and fear death’s fingers
if it rattles.
Sometimes,
we seek to hear only
clattering dialogue of thought,
clanking down the
one-way tracks to
contention.
And sometimes
the truth is hidden in cell-seeds,
trapped in shoulder stories;
or the anxious rope tale
of your skipping
stomach.
“What does your body say?”
I want to ask.
The answers
will hold their
breath and wait
for you.
But only in that
rejected, split off
holder, in the
soft sacred
fruiting
body bowl
Will you ever feel
the right question to ask.
The question that
tells you, finally:
it is time
to harvest.
HanJan
Sometimes, Trauma... 