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Haytham Trueheart
‘What Does The Outside Know?’ & ‘Justice To Myself’
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What Does The Outside Know?
After everything I’ve survived, with all I’ve endured, for all times I’ve sinned. From parentless decisions, homeless adventures, to where the ash of my sins still peel off the hell of my past. I attempt to forgive every cringey chapter of my growth.
I wonder? How much can one’s eyes witness? Memories flood from the drip of my pulse, can these scars acknowledge my father? Like blunt knives with stained stories, can these tears acknowledge my mother?
Take me as a dried-up river guiding a headless fish struggling for breath. My tiresome face is a grave removed from death. As I face the bloodied massacre of my conscience, giving empathy to exile, harmonising with shadows- tasting the mould of my soul, I attempt to forgive those who’ve loved me wrongly.
There is no genre to closet my multiple selves. Smell me like beheaded flowers bleeding from broken bandages. What does the outside know of me? That my brightest day survived my darkest night.
Still, I am a tender loving man with the weight of life crippling at the edge of his cigarette. I’ve been a vessel vandalised of voices, a sacred land colonised by racists, though my theatre never sweats the drama!
After everything, I’ve come to be a joke that’s laughable, or an arduous poem that’s too long to be read. I just let my pen be the instrument that cries for me and keep enduring.
Justice To Myself
I didn’t come from money though
I acknowledge its necessity.
I understand its importance though
I wouldn’t die for it.
What do I live for?
I live to free my heart
as a sculpture of soil
refined in words,
wrapped by wind,
felt by people.
Like seeds that fly from
their pods waiting to
land then grow.
Like a fly by the
closed windows— begging
and buzzing for the outside.
Each poem written
is another child heard.
For each day lived
Is justice to all
parts of myself that
wanted to escape
this world.
I didn’t come from money though
I acknowledge its necessity.
I understand its importance though
I wouldn’t die for it.
What do I live for?
I live to free my heart
as a sculpture of soil
refined in words,
wrapped by wind,
felt by people.
Like seeds that fly from
their pods waiting to
land then grow.
Like a fly by the
closed windows— begging
and buzzing for the outside.
Each poem written
is another child heard.
For each day lived
Is justice to all
parts of myself that
wanted to escape
this world.
My name is Haytham Trueheart, I am a poet based in Brisbane, Australia. I am Torres Strait Islander—Kiwai, Australian, Aboriginal raised, and Kurdish at heart.
What Does The Outside Know, gives the reader an insight into who I am, how I’ve lived, what I’ve overcome and how poetry became my be all and end all.
Justice To Myself, shares with the reader the reasons I live my life is to experience, be, and writing poetry means to liberate my heart.
Haytham is featured in our issue 01 print . Get your copy here!