Sam Alexandra Rose

Category: Poetry

  • Things I would say to myself if I were my friend

    #1
    “Are you okay? You’re wearing that look
    you sometimes wear when you’re
    listening to My Chemical Romance’s
    The Black Parade album. ”

    #2
    “Worse things have happened but it’s
    okay if you don’t always remember that.
    Nothing bad will happen just because
    you sometimes forget to be grateful.” 

    #3
    “I understand you wholly – I know why
    you feel and act the way you do, and
    I feel the same way.” 

    #4
    “Now you know I feel the same, you
    can take a break from being emo.
    You have to try.” 

    #5
    “You do this to yourself.” 

    [because I can’t put this on anyone. I can’t
    expect anything from other people;
    it’s only fair to rely on myself.]

    Written on Monday 22nd December, 2014 at 20:55

  • Bad things and good things

    Further to my last post, this is my attempt at writing something cheerful. It’s kind of happy and unhappy at the same time, but at least it’s some sort of transition, and I’m happy with it. I love being able to be so honest in my writing and share it with whoever comes across it.

    Happiness can come out of bad things,
    you just have to squeeze the bad thing really hard
    and look really carefully at the mess that’s been made.
    It might be hard to find the happiness,
    but if you don’t at least try to look
    then you’ll never have a chance of seeing it at all.

    Since I was given my bad thing I’ve spent a long time
    turning it over in my hands, putting it down,
    picking it back up, staring at it from all angles,
    so now when I look at my good things they look
    even better than they ever have, and I feel extra glad
    that I have them, but at the same time extra scared
    that one day I won’t have them anymore. 

    My appreciation is love, wrapped up in terror,
    wrapped in a heightened sense of the mortality
    of everything and everyone, but essentially
    it’s very warm and soft with a hard, tough centre
    made up of too much knowledge of the world.
    And I say I feel 17 instead of 27, but sometimes
    I feel wise beyond my years in ways I never wanted
    but at the same time am grateful for,
    like I’m grateful for [you].

    Written on Saturday 20th September, 2014 at 23:54

  • Glow in the Dark Words

    I don’t know why I always gravitate towards writing about negative, unhappy things. I am in a good mood – I am happy, honest! I am in a good place, but I can’t seem to write from this place. When I write it’s only because something has happened to make me think of a darker place – I have nothing to say about happiness. Why?

    Glow in the Dark Words

    Why must there be suffering before there is art?
    I cannot create art from anything else life gives me.

    My words glow in the dark –
    I can’t find them in bright places
    but when I’m in that black place again
    they’re everywhere.
    It’s like a word-growing field.
    The word farm.

    I wish I was writing from a different place.
    I wish I was writing from the present, but
    the feel of my own forearm gives me flashbacks.

    In sunshine, the words don’t exist.
    In sunshine, I am useless.

  • Printer Sounds

    The printer beeps with every
    button pushed and I know it’s
    the printer but that steady sound
    makes me feel like I’m in a hospital. 

    No –
    I don’t feel like I’m in a hospital,
    I feel like I’m in hospital
    and now I’m trapped and bound
    by a memory,
    so severe it rips me from here
    and deposit me elsewhere
    where medical machinery beeps.

    Written on Friday 19th December 2014 at 22:44

  • What even is this

    This is the kind of thing I used to write when I was 15. I used to write song lyrics while listening to Nickelback and have a whale of a time.

  • Common Ground

    We are a group of people drawn together
    through our inability to recognise
    when we are on fire.

    And after the fire has been put out,
    if we survive, we share an inability
    to recognise ourselves.

  • Still Alive

    I have nothing to write about.
    Everything is going right. I am alive.
    Nobody died today, not in my world.
    I haven’t been thinking about it,
    and if I’m not thinking about it,
    I’m generally not feeling tortured,
    so what is there to do? 

    I cope with life’s mundane problems
    by repeating to myself
    “worse things have happened,
    worse things have happened”
    and so even if I think I’m not
    thinking about it, I’m still
    sort of thinking about it.
    But that’s okay.
    Worse things have happened.
    We’re still alive.

    Written on Tuesday 9th December, 2014 at 23:19

  • Time Travel

    I’m not allowed to have regrets
    but if I could go back in time
    I would tell my 22 year old self
    that it’s okay to cry and to be scared.

    If I could go into the future
    I would tell my 30 year old self
    to go back in time and tell my 26 year old self
    that it’s okay to have regrets, actually.

  • Broken Organs

    It’s not enough for words to be true
    it’s not enough for words to evoke empathy –
    they have to poke and prod with their meaning,
    they have to scope out your hollows and fill them,
    first x-raying and identifying your sores
    (search and destroy)
    before deepening – yet at the same time,
    patching up –
    the wounds of your particular
    broken organ. 

    Written on Tuesday 2nd December, 2014 at 22:26

  • Funfair

    They are not all wonderful years,
    but they are years, for sure,
    years that overrule minutes and days, years
    enhanced by whirls and swirls of colour
    induced by Jack and coke, a joke
    or two, puns and double entendres,
    lights residing alongside tunnels,
    stars and stripes and banners and my silly
    ideas, my far-flung dreams, contrasted by
    your grounding foundations so I’m a flag waving
    at the end of a pole instead of a loose cannon
    shooting through the shepherd’s delight,
    uncontrollable like nothing I’ve ever seen
    before – I’m staring back at myself like
    in a hall of mirrors at the funfair. I recognise
    myself but at the same time I really don’t.
    Obstacles aren’t so bad; they at least make us
    pause for breath before continuing on to the
    next year and the next. 

    Written on Friday 28th November, 2014 at 22:15