On the boat

Hi!

My name’s Tara. I’m a writer and poet.

One of the first poems I wrote that I felt proud of afterwards, was written on a very turbulent ferry. It got the core of what I was trying to say.

The words must have needed to come out..

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Those that have been traumatised

sit on the back row, indoors

Head against a wall surface

Wanting to be ignored

Don’t say anything

Don’t make a fuss

Deal with it internally

I’m not here

We aren’t this moment

Chaotic serenity, playing jokes

It’s another secret

The world is the water

We aren’t us

We know that game-playing

Just quiet

Play buoyant

The life belt they can trust

Feeding, offering to the enemy

None of this is an us

Gives you a strength

A story

Maybe you relate?

If you’re in your body

You’re empty

The words spew out

Internalised gnawing

Chewing at the so-called peace

The rumble, that aggravates

If we have these long moments left

Shapeshifters, invasive, at the test  

You’re used to uncertainty

Voices of hurt

Washed over with doubt

Buckets of quicksand land

Stability questions what

a secure versus choppy con would be about

What is my liability?

Signature never written

Yet etched in with every drop

(When does it end?)

You can never win

and I can never stop

Have you lived the downside?

Now, you found the strength

And, somehow you have to learn

that setting coping skills down

They’ve been both bad and good

With the cost of all island time

You couldn’t win

You didn’t destroy the places you went

I don’t even want to package travel

up in terms of bad or good

A zone out that was needed

Detrimental in the long run

The engine powered through

Whirring, silently, as it should

As you cried internally

Stopping you from being fully reached

A float rescuing others

Walking through storms in nature’s sleep

They are equally misunderstood

Your pain is oceans deep

Sick to my stomach

Airy

In my stomach, I regress

The pain of that is greater than the pain

of This is me

So, could I embrace the light moments

I have left?

The trauma survivor sits in the cabin

Feeling very zen

See, they’ve been through this before

They know moments expanding

Moments that feed them

And, again, that moments will end

Storms turning into nothing

Going into my head

But the everyday moments in birthdays

A Vengeful monotony

Like books I can’t remember, but once read

All at once

An empty

Space

It’s Zero Gravity quiet air

The silent waft of confidence is

interesting

For a body that’s not there

The men with sick bags and smiles

The men who we were forced to

create the narrative for

While this story was going on

A bigger picture underneath it all

The message settled into us

We aren’t lying on the floor

We have survived this

We can move through pain

Smugness inside me

When tears, daily, well inside

But we can beat the storms on the boat

Peel back those tentacled monsters

The monsters labelled as shame

The sea urchin fires up

A literal burning moment

A phrase, a walk, a smell

Feels like you are back in the mist

because nothingness raised you

And, nothingness raised you well

Temporary shutdown, inside

Memories want to both masquerade

and ride the ferry that rocked your mind

Suffocated as they re-generate

Dislikes and instinct’s intoxication

A crossword puzzle of unkind

I don’t like this and ask the question Why?

Moments of quiet reflection

Discombobulated triumph and sadness

As the truth dawns

Smashes the boat up

and tumbles down your sky