Poetry — Blake Auden Poetry

.
let fall the soft
violence of sleep,

the soil of me
turned and heavy
with past burials.

how is it we carry
everything that's taken?

it doesn't matter,
which is to say
it's too early to think of longing.

pull yesterday's carcass
from sheet

I’ve been thinking about my dog a lot, recently. About how loss stays with us, grinds itself beneath our breastplate until just taking a breath is hard to do.

Losing people, pets, opportunities, love. They all take something with them, a part

Anxiety is a little like your own body conspiring against you, like you can’t control who you are at any given moment.

I spend my life in fear of the rebellion of my own body, that I will never truly be able to rid myself of the things that h

.
what if the two of us
can't exist on poetry

and movies where
the boy gets the girl

and the dog doesn't die
in the end?

what if we need more
than kept promises,

tender words
and held skin?

what if love
just isn't enough?

—-

Signed

Signed copies of my new book, To Drown As A Cure For Thirst, are now back in stock.

Get your copy now via the link in my bio, or at blakeauden.com, whilst stocks last.

I’ve also had a small re-stock of Murmuration, and I’ll be signing

I think to grieve is to remember, and I know what it is to forget.

But what is grief if not the persistence of want? The determination of love, to stay?

It hasn’t been long since I lost my beautiful dog, and I still don’t know how to

When you're young and you look to the future, you have an idea of the person you'll be - or at least, the person you want to be.

In my case, I also carried the weight of expectation, the idea of a person stitched to my neck by the people that loved

Maybe this is how it’s meant to be. Maybe the pieces left of your heart match the pieces missing from mine, and this is what people mean when they talk about someone making you whole.

Maybe everything is how it’s supposed to be, and all

I’m not sure I’ve ever been comfortable with the idea of healing, with letting go of all the things that haunt me.

I don’t know if this is because I struggle to write when I’m happy, or because anxiety has been all I’v

Not everything I write can be called a poem. Sometimes, the words are more exhale than poetry, more surrender than anything else.

I can’t always bend the ink into something worthy of us, at least, not in the way a real writer would. Even if I

.
the wind trembles
on your breath
and i swear

i can still
choose to stay.
i can still

unpick every goodbye
stitched into
the muscle.

for years, i was
a murmur
caught in the throat

until you taught me
to open my jaw
and sing.

—-

Be sur

Hope can be a mixed blessing, and at its worst, the cruelest part of the human condition.

We are designed to hold on to the idea that things can be better - that we can be better. Sometimes, the realisation that the things we love, the things we wa

Who we are is a product of our history, and for me the past has led me to think of love as something to be feared - a monster that will drag me back to grief.

I guess I’m not really sure what love is supposed to be, and I struggle to relate t

I have struggled with my mental health, and with anxiety in particular, for a long time now. I guess trauma is one of those weights we can’t always let go of, even when it’s dragging us beneath the water.

But no matter how desperate I&r

I have written a lot about my inability to let go - to hold on to grief the way other people do with love.

I am trying to be better. To allow myself the space, and the forgiveness necessary to move on. But the truth is I’m more than a little

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I would have never expected someone like you to want me, to see anything other than the broken parts of me. But to love me? Those words born on your lips have made me question the person I want to be, made me want something other than an abyss beneat

To Drown As A Cure For Thirst is available now via all good bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, Target, Indigo, Waterstones and many more.

You can also grab a hand-signed copy exclusively via the link in my bio, with worldwide shipping.

#blak

I have never been able to believe in anything permanent, in any idea of forever. What I mean is, look at anything beautiful for long enough, and it will eventually fall to some form of winter. To be happy then, I thought was just a matter of timing,

I have spent most of my adult life trying to find a way to heal, to banish the wolf that stalks me from the darkness. But the truth is, the closer I get to healing, the more frightened I am of reaching it.

As a poet, I rely on the pain I feel to cre