Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc
Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
By Julian Matthews
I turned the last page of Gaia’s biography and wept
Of course, I hadn’t even written it
I imagined it was there
And I wrote it
And you read it too
Because you were in it
And we hurt inside
And we hurt each other
And we hurt the world over
And we wept together from all this earthly hurt
Even our fondest memories are wrapped in this very hurt
And all we want to do is forget
To unwrap, discard, flush out this hurt
The hurt that haunts us still
Until we write it all down
Frame it in a way that lessens the hurt
Or wade through it like hot tar
Thick and sticky and bitter as war
Until it rips at our skin, our ribs, our hearts
Until we all feel this hurt
Again and again and again
The hurt we are all trying to forget
The hurt we will never forget
The hurt we can never forget
First published in the literary magazine Live Encounters, Poetry and Writing, 15th Anniversary, Vol 1, Nov-Dec 2024, based in Bali, Indonesia.
