Sam Alexandra Rose

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

Tag: spilled ink (Page 9 of 9)

Self-exploration

December 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

I am walking by a dark building
What’s inside is bad news.
Why must I always go in?
Self-exploration ensues. 

What’s inside is bad news
But I can never just walk past.
Self-exploration ensues
But I don’t have all the answers. 

I can never just walk past.
Why must I always go in?
I don’t have all the answers.
I am walking by a dark building.

 Written on Tuesday 23rd December, 2014 at 23:01

OH MY GOD

I started off this poem asking why I always go inside the metaphorical dark building even though I know it’s awful inside, and saying I don’t know why I do this and that I don’t have all the answers to my questions about myself… and I ended the poem by answering myself – why must I always go in? because I don’t have all the answers, so I keep going back in until I find them. Holy crap, I’ve just accidentally figured out something about myself by writing a poem. I love that. I adore trying to psychoanalyse myself!

[This isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, but I thought I’d have a go at writing a pantoum for a change, and I’m so happy with the result, not because it’s well-written, but because having some kind of revelation about myself through poetry is one of the best feelings ever!]

Things I would say to myself if I were my friend

December 22, 2014 / / 0 Comments

#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

December 21, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

December 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

December 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

Common Ground

December 14, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

December 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

December 8, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

December 2, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

November 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

Newer posts »

IHadCancer.com Best Cancer Blog Award Winner 2016, Runner-up 2017

IHadCancer.com Best Cancer Blog Awards

follow me

© 2025 Sam Alexandra Rose

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑