David Hanlon
On Blue
Inside every man lives the seed of a flower
If he looks within he finds beauty and power
Minnie Riperton – Les Fleurs
Are we ever our own heroes?
My favourite colour represented everything I was not
everything that I hated I was not
football pitch-shackled
flushed ball-kick
directionless detected pink like a girl
unpredictable
as my chaos-lead life
Drowning in the decorated whirlpool
of my own bedroom my own living space
bedcovers curtains carpet
pigmenting my identity
Who saw the conflict in my colouring book pages?
My chosen crayon fury-scrawled
beyond the lines
I tried to stay inside them
kept weights under my bed
watched too much wrestling
learned all the words to ‘The Real Slim Shady’
I was a moth fleeing the lightbulb
only to throw myself back into it over and over again
I was the slow drip of a leaky sink faucet
holding back an ocean ready to burst from steel pipes
I was skies away oceans away
from the norm I so wanted to be and to not have to be
I look now at every new-born boy
eyes but buds still unknown to this world
straightjacketed
in the colour of expectation deceptive soft shade
manufactured identity
long to free each one
tie a cape around each tiny neck
made of their own flowering
If he looks within he finds beauty and power
Minnie Riperton – Les Fleurs
Are we ever our own heroes?
My favourite colour represented everything I was not
everything that I hated I was not
football pitch-shackled
flushed ball-kick
directionless detected pink like a girl
unpredictable
as my chaos-lead life
Drowning in the decorated whirlpool
of my own bedroom my own living space
bedcovers curtains carpet
pigmenting my identity
Who saw the conflict in my colouring book pages?
My chosen crayon fury-scrawled
beyond the lines
I tried to stay inside them
kept weights under my bed
watched too much wrestling
learned all the words to ‘The Real Slim Shady’
I was a moth fleeing the lightbulb
only to throw myself back into it over and over again
I was the slow drip of a leaky sink faucet
holding back an ocean ready to burst from steel pipes
I was skies away oceans away
from the norm I so wanted to be and to not have to be
I look now at every new-born boy
eyes but buds still unknown to this world
straightjacketed
in the colour of expectation deceptive soft shade
manufactured identity
long to free each one
tie a cape around each tiny neck
made of their own flowering
Biography
David Hanlon is from Cardiff, Wales, and currently living in Bristol, England. He is a qualified counsellor/therapist. You can find his work online in Into The Void, Barren Magazine, Mojave Heart Review, Riggwelter Press and Homology Lit, among others. His first chapbook is forthcoming in 2020 with Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on twitter @DavidHanlon13.
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