{"id":370,"date":"2015-10-19T18:06:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T18:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/?p=370"},"modified":"2022-09-14T17:24:25","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T17:24:25","slug":"sometimes-only-poem-will-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/?p=370","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes only a poem will do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/12112140_10153226625268333_352631717118469064_n.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/12112140_10153226625268333_352631717118469064_n-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"12112140_10153226625268333_352631717118469064_n\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-373\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/12112140_10153226625268333_352631717118469064_n-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/12112140_10153226625268333_352631717118469064_n.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Write me poem, Caron*. Write me a poem for my birthday. You said you weren&#8217;t alright with it and I&#8217;m not alright with it. I need a poem. Take the slow collapse of ash and make it spiky and bright. Only a poem can do it. Only you can do it. You have the hair. I never inhaled, you know. I never even didn&#8217;t inhale. Too smelly, too dirty, too risky, too bad, too boring, too what my parents did. And I&#8217;m not starting now. It&#8217;d probably kill me. I have blood pressure and bills and a boy. I need a poem. I thought I&#8217;d wear purple, but I don&#8217;t. Just grey, fading to greyer. And as for eating too much butter, well, the blood pressure, you know. I thought I&#8217;d rage. But I&#8217;m just too knackered. I need a poem to set things alight. I&#8217;m all about the prose. And I&#8217;m turning into one of those faded middle aged novels of navy blue and ash. I need a poem about my crimes of passion and the despair and the rage. There will be no spring; the leaves will fall upon my head and that will be it. How fucking crap is that? I need some words that will be a Festival of Lights. I&#8217;m not even excited about the cake. Stick a tombstone on it. The flavours have all gone. I need a poem with chilli and spice. I don&#8217;t want dulcet, measured, subtle, pitch perfect prose. I want a fucking poem. I&#8217;m not alright with it. I&#8217;ve built no monument.  I&#8217;ve never seen the Northern Lights. I&#8217;ve never felt thin, even when I was. I&#8217;ve never been pretty. I was old before my time and now it&#8217;s my time. I&#8217;m still fucked up. I&#8217;ve not forgiven my mother. I&#8217;ve not forgiven myself. I&#8217;ve got acne and wrinkles. (It&#8217;s the fucking menopause. And I&#8217;m not alright with that.) Sod being a crone. I don&#8217;t have the wisdom for crone-dom. Or the patience. I don&#8217;t want a nip of sherry. I want a bloody great bucket of wine. But most of all I want a poem. Sometimes only a poem will do.<\/p>\n<p>* a friend, teacher and proper poet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Write me poem, Caron*. Write me a poem for my birthday. You said you weren&#8217;t alright with it and I&#8217;m not alright with it. I need a poem. Take the slow collapse of ash and make it spiky and bright. Only a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}