by
You Break It, You Buy It features poems about disconnection, the loss of friendships and identity, our voice, our purpose. At its core, it is a collection of elegies railing against and dealing with toxic relationships, from fair-weather friends, controlling mothers to narcissists. These poems invite the reader into personal experiences, public observations and the price we pay, positive and negative for our interactions with the media, our global and local conflicts, environmental challenges, the pandemic, the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. She writes about the dark underside of our lives with a sense of danger, humour and of hope for reconnection in the future with our community and our world.
Aletheia Speaks Out
Three things can’t be hidden for long: the sun, the moon and the truth.
attributed to Buddha
When I go home to my holy well,
my hair will weave itself into a nest.
I plant birds for the lady next door to marvel at,
though birds frighten me and say so.
I love to throw myself against walls of mirrors,
see a thousand heads, all agreeable and in love.
What happens in the shadows? You’ll have to ask
the other one, the one without feet.
Oh, how she loves curves and angles scattered and warped.
Straightening out her handiwork is so tiresome and best
done in the desert—less distractions.
Goddess of Lies—calm your tornado of sticks.
Throw away the pointed hat.
Call my pretty name and I shall answer—an obedient dog
hoping to chase a bone, but instead,
you toss the horn of truth downstream,
jump in and swim against everything good,
pretend to drown before you’d hug any righteous coastline.
To be foot-less, yet have a foothold on so many souls
frustrates the Hades out of me.
Any time someone asks for the truth, I tell them;
but it’s seldom the answer they’re looking for.
*Aletheia- The personified spirit of truth
COLLAPSEKate Rogers on Arc Poetry wrote:"These are poems that disturb and question and shine a floodlight upon the assumptions, judgments and wounds we are prone to prefer to hide. But the words stick like burrs inside of socks, right at the top of the ankle where they rub the most. And lines open into dark pools of water way over your head. I found myself having to re-read each poem several times. And with each reading, I felt more and I deepened my thought, and I want to say my soul grew a little each time. I particularly admire how Lynn Tait will lead the reader down a well-trodden path that just so happens to end at a wide opening to a larger view. Even when examining the hurt caused by fair-weather friends or finding oneself the target of gaslighting, or when tenderly examining the gift of true friendship… there are wrong turns and false assumptions and reasons to re-examine. Highly recommended."
Bryn Robinson on The Miramichi Reader wrote:Read full review at https://arcpoetry.ca/editorials/you-break-it-you-buy-it-lynn-tait/.
Read full review at https://miramichireader.ca/2023/10/you-break-it-you-buy-it-by-lynn-tait/.
