Poetrybylila - Poetry By Lila Kane

how could i kill the weeds

when i watch the bees frolick

among them?

i was going through boxes of books and old clothes when i found the scarf you lent me.

we were going to the football and it was cold and i didn’t bring a jacket, so you lent me your scarf- your favourite team scarf.

how is it possible for a scarf to claw its way into my chest and stop my heart from beating? it’s not? well, it’s happening. it’s possible.

i almost forgot what it was like to be 16, and to love my best friend with my whole heart- my best friend who secretly loved me a little too much;

i almost forgot what it was like at 18 to kiss you in the dead of night and dismiss you in the morning;

i almost forgot how entwined we once were, how many libraries i could fill with every story and aching that passed between us.

staring at your scarf, now dusted by 10 years, i can’t think of anything else.

oh, the human condition …..

Sotce

she’s a faint star in a cluster;

your eyes need time to adjust to the dark

before you can spot her.

but then, you can’t miss her.

you’ll map her coordinates

and check in every night,

watch her rise and fall

throughout the seasons

and twinkle beyond wisps of cloud.

she’ll be one in millions, billions, trillions?

but she’ll be yours.

me, the motherfucker with over 50 abandoned works in progress: i have an idea

to live without art is to live without breath.

I don’t want to be the next Rupi Kaur or Trista Mateer. I want to be the first Lila Kane.

sometimes i’m not put together. sometimes i’m not pretty. sometimes my words drip with the crudeness of bukowski and the bite of the primal woman beneath them. sometimes i’m broken and wheezing, or just hollow. as a poet, i won’t hide it. my writing follows me wherever i go. stoned, on a come down, in the thick of the healing and of the pain. i’m not palatable, no matter how you look at it. and that’s just too damn bad.

Made this a while back at uni for a book project around Sylvia Plath the bell jar 🍓🫧🕸️

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat Proffessions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs where many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant loosing all the rest, and, as i sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

places i vape:

in public bathrooms

in airport corners

under my desk at work

beneath my hoodie

on mountaintops

on backyard chairs;

in my sleep, in my waking, in my dreams. beneath the clouds and the shadows. on the horizon and the stars and my aching soul.

(addiction presents as poetry, just ask bukowski)