Category: poetry

Never Enough

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

I wanted it not to matter

for it to make no difference

for this to not be measured in these pounds of flesh

weighed and found wanting

we wanted to be free

not to measure

not to count

you mourn yourself

your particular futures

the claims you have made on them

usurped by raw fact

these things too must (sometimes) pass

“No fear exists except beginning”

It is enough

It is never enough

After, we swam in the river

trusting in the darkness

calling one another’s name

you forgot to answer and I

swam to you

blind in the blood warm water

the sacred dark

and when your hand touched mine

beneath the surface I forgot my

own name too

(2023)

On the Watchtower 

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

If we were not so frightened

If we didn’t need so

If every home was a homecoming 

And none died gnawing bones beneath the walls

Would we still set these lamps

Still ward the world away?

Yes, Brother

For the woods are deep and pathless

Yes, light them

As we prepare to receive 

Yes,

For the night you lose the path

For the night I set the lamps

For you

(November 2022)

Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash

Line poem 5

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

(A Minor Delay)

night 

drop 

drip

light

lost 

stars

of 

desert

roads

reflected

by

dark

skies

rivuletting 

circuits

bearing

our

impossible 

flight 

reprieved

ungravitied 

birdless

blind

(21:12 Nov 20, 2022)

A brief reply

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

what if

the fact that

we make all meaning

wasn’t so frightening

what if

all that happened to you

simply happened

not by some secret choice

not by your soul’s decree to test you with this struggle

not by some greater need for you to know this pain

but just by chance

by the unequal equilibrium of time

and your passage through it

pain is not a prize

neither is its end

what if

we learned to love

the fact that

there is

nothing

to love

(2022)

I rarely explain my poetry.  If the meaning isn’t embedded in the words and cadence then I’ve written it wrong.

In this case I wish it known, as I am attempting to offer a counter narrative to the idea that suffering is both virtuous and necessary.  Trauma isn’t really a gift.  It isn’t a magical “teaching.”  It’s one’s recovery from a painful or stressful experience that is the teaching.  Trauma is the damage that occurs when we have no teacher.

Suffering in itself is not particularly noble. Maybe you need to believe it is, as part of your journey to overcoming your trauma, but it was not and is not necessary for you to experience pain in order for you to be a whole person.  The nobility of suffering is a lie of power, to make the oppressed love their oppression.

You do not need to burn in order to rise.

You didn’t deserve to be hurt.

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

#lifegoals

Deep in the woods in autumn, the black tree trunks crowd together. Ahead, brilliant white sunshine lights a clearing, making the last clinging yellow leaves glow
~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

I am done with bettering myself

with perfecting this feast for worms

piloting my sinking ship

through seas of unexamined lives

if you want me

you will find me

muddy and ignorant

waist deep in the raspberries

seed-toothed

wild

(2022)

Travelling

an aerial photo of a dramatically cloudy sky at sunset hazily overlaid by a drone-taken photo of a stark white iceberg edged with green
~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

I practice a form of time travel called insomnia

or maybe it practices me

a liminal state

awake but wrongly

the morning uninevitable

though it is always morning somewhere

what is a morning but the night’s fist unclenching

present always but not noticed until it strikes

rattling your old bones

the earth dragged onward

spiraling through all that night

that fist

opening again and again

and closing

and us

raked by cosmic winds

barely clinging 

all our ambitions a smear on glass

a concrescence of matter

a chance

I practice a form of time travel called insomnia

or maybe it practices me

Plain Air

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

Remember that time

When the light was golden

And the colours lost their edges

Like an old photograph

A chemical reaction in plain air

On the forward edge of thunderclouds?

Do you remember? she asked

As if that was a thing I could forget 

(2022)

Choice

A mysterious box decorated with gold Chinese scrollwork with an ornate clasp sits on an antique leather desk-top
~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

this is the magic of the fear-not ritual

this is why ritual is

so that when you place your hand in the box and

the pain is indescribable

when your fear says: pull away, save yourself

questioning this fear, you remember everyone before who passed this test

generation upon generation who did not pull away

who asked this question: why?

remember this like your own name: pain and fear are two separate things

distinct, divisible, neither inevitable

we mistake them for each other

the experience of one produces the other

but they are separate things

when, from pain, you experience fear

ask it: why?

some pain simply happens

or maybe all things

happen simply

what we call fear is a reflex

the animal retreat

hate is the choice to not question your fear

(July 2022)