Scars

It was a lie
the greatest lie
that I had ever known
and I'd said it to myself.

I typed it out
I sketched the lie
I sang it till I wretched,
and in return it stripped me down
and scratched and picked my flesh.

It was a lie I'd heard and read,
a lie with a sophistic sound,
it clutched me in the dark
and pressed me to the ground.

We heard the lie
and listened
and never turned around.

Larkin swore it to me,
on afternoons in parks,
and D.H. Lawrence preached it
with his bloody lustful hearts.

But one day in that poet's seat
as I left Hull on a train,
I saw two magpies in a field
and I never lied again.

It was a truth,
the greatest truth
that I had ever known
My flesh was loose and scarred
and peeling from my bones.

I rubbed my sores with ointments
and hid the scars with clothes,
I'd found a powerful honesty
that only real love knows.

But still she never leaves me,
her white hate suffocates
she kills me in the darkness
that she, in me, creates.