Sam Alexandra Rose

Writer, researcher, music lover, cancer survivor with CMMRD ("double" Lynch syndrome)

Page 43 of 45

Professor Green

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

Soul-spilling

I write a poem; type out my thoughts
one-handed, a glass of bourbon in the
other. Tap out the title at the top and
declare the date and time of writing at
the bottom. An old ritual. Open a new
document. Write another. Add my time-
stamp. I write a blog post. Later I decide
I’m drunk and it isn’t very good, so I edit
it, still drunk. It’s probably better. I start
on the Scotch. Write another poem.
Restart the soul-spilling. 

The timestamps get later and later.

small

maybe if I make myself
small enough
I’ll
      dis
           ap
               pe
                    a
                        r
                             .

I can’t fillet, I can’t fillet.

Write what you feel you need to write

Sitting in hospital waiting for my CT scan today, I wondered to myself whether I write too much about one particular thing. Maybe I should write poetry about something else, because it will get boring writing about the same thing all the time and people will get bored of reading it.

But considering I don’t even know if anyone is reading anyway, there’s little point in pandering to an imaginary audience! And if I have to force myself to write about something that I’m not really feeling, it’s not going to be fun, it’s just going to be a chore. Writing is difficult enough sometimes without turning it into a chore. (It’s okay to admit it’s difficult to feel motivated to write sometimes, isn’t it? Yes.)

So scratch that. I think I have to just write what I feel like I need to write. Because writing isn’t just for enjoyment, for developing a craft or for entertaining other people – it’s for self-expression as well. I cant just forbid myself to write about something. So I think I’ll continue to write whatever I want to, until I’ve got everything out of my system and feel like writing about something else. There’s no point in compromising – first and foremost, we should write for ourselves.

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