Poetry by Cole Kelly

                               ​jmettraux CC



Nothing is better 

Nothing feels better than my pen at night.

Slowly, slowly, I regain my senses,
which have been dulled and soaked in alcohol. 

Beat me leather whips because I cannot feel

the breath on my neck, 
how it used to tingle through me.

The irony of these compulsions;

that we burn the taste buds 
cease to feel, 
scrape ourselves raw seeking sensation. 

Nothing looks better than candle light on paper
and in the warm glow I can almost not remember 
what it was I was trying to burn off. 





Hungry 

The streets at night
the doors spilling bodies bars
the yellow lights
glow in closet alcoves,
people smoking cigarettes
it always made me restless.

I want I want I want 

to run my fingers over bartender, 
wine in all its dark and velvet glory,
coat me from red lip to hungry belly. 

I want to smoke ten thousand cigarettes and 
light one from the other off their cherry ends. 

I want to burn my throat raw 

and kill this craving, 
this empty angry growling,
this hyena,
that’s shrieking starving searching,

that eats and eats and eats and 
still the stomach is churning,

I don’t want to be hungry like this anymore. 

I’ve been gorging skeleton 
off fumes and oil and poison, 

Nose to the ground, 
tufts of fur, stray animal. 

I don’t want to be hungry like this anymore, 
hollow cheeks and growls of desperation. 

I want lips upturned to dripping nectar, 
I want to be full from what I’m given.

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​
A moment of clarity 

The light on the kitchen counter set against dark windows lightening slowly with the rising sun
reminds me of my father 
Of dark coffee in the morning, five a.m., when he tiptoed so as not to wake the house
on his way to work to pay for it. 
I forget, in the caramel coloured memory, all of the reasons I am at a rehab clinic in Kelowna 
and all the ways it must be very hard to be my father. 

​
​

Cole Kelly is a poet, journalist, aspiring documentarian and radio broadcaster living on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. She has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember writing. 

Cole is in her first year of sobriety after a particularly ugly battle with addiction that lasted most of her adult life so far.  

She has dedicated her future projects to helping people with addiction issues have their voices heard through the mediums of podcasting, documentaries and writing. She believes that the stories of addicts are the stories of our most innate humanity, and the world should hear more of them. 

You can find her podcast at www.storieslessspoken.com or on Instagram at @storieslessspoken

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