As a poet and spoken word artist - words provide the vein through which I help others (hopefully) and help myself too.

The following poem is an expression from my perspective as someone facing grief, so exposing myself from the other side of my funeral work. 

Writing poetry is not just for poets, it is for everyone and anyway, who defines a poet from a non poet!

There is only one rule - write from the heart.

Pick up a pen/pencil / keyboard and just 'speak' through your fingers, worry about what you are 'saying' once the words start to fall from your fingertips, write anything, curse, shout, laugh, cry, howl onto the page, let every word squeeze out and be gathered from every corner, then look at it again later and re-frame it if you want, don't if you don't.. kiss it, burn it, share it, hide it, print it and do it again!

It feels GOOD and there are no RIGHTS OR WRONGS!

OK, go!

Here is one of mine- and yes its un-pretty and a reaction at the time to an unexpected death of a friend.

'On Death'

by Colleen Allen

Dedicated to my good friend P.S.

There is a taste, acrid

A tingle, a touch

That fingers dirty..

 your soft palate

Extends each digit length to

Cradle throat

Tight to choke

As life flickers - adrenalin

Licks salaciously

Down jelloid spine

To hip

 Grip

My heart in time with

Tremble lip

Upon that note of death

I wish to plug my ears and eyes

And mouth

So not one morsel of this vile

Meal information

Can enter my skin

And make it real.

I feel its dark note plummet

Offensive drip, drip

Loaded viral substance

To throat back

Spit or swallow

Neither

Repairs or endears

Poison news unwanted

UNWANTED

But fact

Repairs not

The dead.

Or those

With every torn nerve

Bleating beak open to life

Screaming out so loud its binds the silence

My head space staccato

Hysterical blind - I see with touch

Your skin is like parchment

Open wound

Bleeds nothing but empty spaces

Nothing

Nothing

psychic pain so deep it weeps

through parallel lines-blotting on numb

 with each gasp I try to

lasso you back

humming pain ebbs out from inside this throb

Gap weeps from hollow orbs.

Salty track to map the line of change

Over bone of cheek to philtral dimple

A thousand drops to you

To you my friend

But a timeless fluid landscape

for the grieving

Colleen Allen