​There is No Other Me: a series of poems after Tracy Emin, by John White

It Was All Too Much

Hidden behind a wash of red,
she’s gone.  Bare outlines of her body

clipped in angry strokes.
She lies back,

collapsed.  The head a contusion,
a dark scratching, a rage

turned numb and covered.
She doesn’t want to see

her face for fear the tears
will wash the paint away.

**

You Kept It Coming

“I will not be quiet,
I will not turn myself inside out

to bury suffering”, she says.
The body laid out on the bed

as if she wants to care for it
but cannot.

The head exhausted,
destroyed.  

**

Because You Kept Touching Me

I’m bruised.  I paint
the parts you touched, over and over

with black.  To get this
on the wall I threw the anger at it,

but then the sorrow overwhelmed me,
set the painting free.

John White
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John White is a writer and BAFTA Award Winning TV & cross-media Director/Producer. He has been writing poetry for many years and was first published in Michael Horovitz’s seminal avant-garde review New Departures. He graduated in 2021 from the London Poetry School/Newcastle University UK Writing Poetry MA. Recently he has had poems in the New European newspaper and Alchemy Spoon, and he has a performance poem on New Boots and Pantisocracies at: https://newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/postcards-from-malthusia-video-interlude-1-john-white/
Twitter:  @johnwhiteprods

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