Sunday 16 August 2015

Ruins In My Mind

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When I return to Guernsey my family moved into a house which, in the words of the estate agent, "had lots of potential". In order to realise this potential a number of walls had to be moved and knocked through.

One morning while taking down a wall a large amount of rubble and dust piled up in the hall. As the dust cleared I had a flashback which stirred up some unpleasant memories, thoughts I had long since locked away.

Every now and again, as I walk through the hall, the sights, sounds and smells of the original event, strangely combine with those of my house renovations in my mind. It was one of these flashbacks that inspired this poem.

Ruins In My Mind

Blood trickled through the dust on a lifeless hand
sticky crimson turned black
as it dried in the grey stone dust.
And there; a shock of hair,
matted, covered in blasted stone.
here in the rubble of the wall I'd taken down
here in the hall of my own home
memories of a past
I thought I'd forgotten.
Ghosts of horrors past,
resurrected to haunt me,
resurrected to taunt me,
in the ruins of my mind.

John Carré Buchanan
16 August 2015