Category: Poetry

(Video, audio, print)

When you are a creator, you need to try new things and explore your creative gift. This has always been a challenge for me as I often struggle with confidence and I become unsure what my “whats next” should be.

It’s a journey and one thing I have learnt over the years is that I need to keep on trying!

Keep on pushing beyond my labels, both given and ones I have grown onto. I need to keep on challenging my mindsets concerning the fears of being vulnerable. This means accepting that poetry is about being vulnerable, period! Full stop! There is no discussion or argument, it just something I need to embrace!

“Poetry is about being vulnerable, accept it”

So being aware of that ‘push,’ that drive to ‘keep things moving’ and ‘try new (or re-visit forgotten and old) things, I have started to (again) do You Tube videos. I hope to connect, and perhaps re-connect, with the audience in a different way.

Written poetry withholds the poets voice and rhythm, audio poetry helps to restore that ‘unknown voice,’ but video/ visual poetry goes further and aids body/ facial expression, making the experience more intimate/ personal/ real.

I love doing audio poems because it helps me to focus on my voice and slow down my speech, hopefully making my words sound more clear and the poem message understood…

…And lets not forget my first love, printed poetry…

It’s day
20 of this lock down ting

And I can’t help but be unsure of things

My minds gone wild

I’m swinging in trees

Howling in the breeze

Clothed in animal skins

For a moment I’m lost in confusion

Taped and sealed in a box, padlock and locked

Key dashed in the bush

Gone I can’t see

Stilled in shadows

I watch

Trapped in silence

Head-locked with self

Wrestling until morning

It hurts when I’m breathing

Burns my throat

Like over proof liquor I shouldn’t be drinking

I feel myself sinking

I’m tired of this lockdown thing!

I wake up one day

Not understanding my speaking

Thinking I’m dreaming I close my eyes

And say nothing

Too scared

Another uncertainty baffling my brains

I rather not go there

Head back on the pillows

I inhale exhale twice

Scratch an itch on my arm twice

Watch a fly on my ceiling

Hear neighbours arguing

Wish I was sleeping

Someone knocks on the door twice

Internally I mumble

About answer “yeah what do you want”

But something else comes out my mouth

Shocked into silence

It sounds like star trek speech

Now fully awake I shuffle under the covers to wake a year later

To normality

Public sanity

A new society

I’m tired of this lockdown ting!

Most mornings I sit in the garden

Whisper prayers between coffee sips

I listen to birds and notice the sounds my feet make on gravel

Sometimes I hear the wind and Gods word

I think of the self-control I need to not get vex

At people, at government, at self

I think of the new rules I live by

And I sigh at what I have become

Don’t sneeze, don’t touch, don’t spit

Don’t cough, don’t smile, don’t sit

Don’t come near me because I’ll growl

Don’t breathe over me  because you’re fowl

Don’t watch me funny when I wave you from my space

Don’t laugh, don’t hug, don’t grieve

Don’t give, don’t love, don’t see

Don’t talk, don’t cry, don’t breathe

I’m tired of this lock down ting!

“Lockdown Ting” Copyright © 2020 Traysi Benjamin-Matthew
All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or by otherwise without the express written permission from Traysi Benjamin-Matthew