Recension Day by Duncan Forbes

Duncan Forbes’s ‘Recension Day’ is not the sort of poem that is going to envelop you in feelings of warmth, hope and possibility.

Sometimes, poems like that do no good at all. When your heart is broken, there’s no point presuming that one simple thought, one simple, beautiful poem, will undo the anguish.

The problem with anguish is that it comes in unpredictable tides. One moment, you may be surviving, even happy – the next, the current has caught you and you’re swimming for your life. The journey from the bleakness of heartbreak to full recovery is long and arduous, and it is far from straight.

Recension Day

Unburn the boat, rebuild the bridge,

Reconsecrate the sacrilege,
Unspill the milk, decry the tears,
Turn back the clock, relive the years
Replace the smoke inside the fire,
Unite fulfilment with desire,
Undo the done, gainsay the said,
Revitalise the buried dead,
Revoke the penalty and the clause,
Reconstitute unwritten laws,
Repair the heart, untie the tongue,
Change faithless old to hopeful young,
Inure the body to disease
And help me to forget you please.

Write Your Medicine Prompt:

To start, choose an image that catches your attention, evokes a rumbling of emotion. You may know why, maybe not. Sometimes it is writing itself that will help you see why that image resonates.

It can be an image in your imagination, a pic from your cell phone, or a random picture from a magazine.

The idea is to explore, in poetry, how this image makes you feel. Often the image that comes to mind or captures your attention is speaking to you, represents a part of you that wants to be expressed. In this context, writing is the deepest form of listening. 

Here is my image:

Here is my poem:

Like the wave
A memory of a dream
Swimming the depths
Surrounded with whales
I am afraid
I feel free

What is your image and poem?