Self Portrait Poem by john coldwell

You fight your curiosity,
At every stranger’s face it sees,
Their awkward shapes, eccentric gestures.
Ungainly gaits, peculiar postures
Each oddly familiar archetype.
It wants to look into their eyes,
But from that intimacy it shies
To touch their privately protected lives

What makes them so? They’re not like us,
These self affirming caricatures.
With countenances dour or glad,
Expressions cold, hot, sometimes sad.
Wrinkled skins and double chins,
The occasional elusive impossible beauty
To something deep within their form is owed
Far deeper than genetic code

Living portraits, animated, lined.
That pencilled fate has so designed.
Etched, and sketched and coloured in,
With pigments mixed down deep within.
Their subtle tones both mock and shock,
With ruthless truth, all modesty, and paint
the soul for all to see, more forthright,
Than ever could a still-life be.


And so it’s true that a broken heart,
Profoundly affects every other part.
It may be, you no longer cry,
It may be many years gone by.
Perhaps that longing, that deep regret,
You now have learned how to forget.
The emotional hurts at last have healed,
But outwardly are the wounds revealed.

So it is with me, ironically.
Because my heart will no longer hear,
One eye permanently sheds a tear.