Tag: #agony
Unrecoverable
Nightshade
Oh mama
There are days
I am bent double
The stuffing of me kicked quite free
One side is fear that feels like unyielding felt, thick in my dry, slack mouth
Making me the puppet I never was, when good and whole
So is sickness for the soul
A sour well with brackish water and no yield
I long to be your child and retrace in time to your arms
Fantasies that never were, become, our lullaby
A palpable longing for comfort
Nourishment
To be saved against invisible foe
No
I did not invite you, fever dream
No
I did not beckon you visit me and stay, pinning my anxiety as colinder
Cast as we are, sluggish on fortunes wheel
Like chance, we ebb and flow
Moths without hardy wings
I desired wellness
and while the summer river ran
I believed it would never turn
Against me in undertow
Disease is a glutted wretch
A terrible betrayal
A war
You stand in rags fighting until your last
We all do
But when the bees come and honey is glitter in the trees
We forget our fear of unseen things
Believe ourselves immortal or at least
The sleek otter who can hold his breath
Longer than sense and her confine
For such a time I rested
Against this calm
Taking for granted what I did not own
And as winter will
Reveal herself bare and merciless
Soon those hours of peace lay behind me
Damp with regret and burned yet
To leave plumes of green smoke
Evoking Gods
Who may be senseless to our call
For the comfort of our childhood
Curled inside a place
As yet unborn
Do not
Let me stay in this cold fear
Or stand alone
With its frozen clasp about my heart
Squeezing hope til nothing pumps
But the ice of terror
I am
Just born
To this strange chill
The waking before dawn of prescient worry
Will I be well? Will I ever be without pain?
Oh mercy and her ink, clouding fortelling
The whine of our need to know, what Fates only jest
My gut is silent and
Nothing but the fast snare of my pulse
Can be heard over lamment
I am
A statue of fear
Thinking back
To the Happy Prince
He felt pain
Of others
Taking the jewels that were his eyes
Sacrifice I do not have
A lesson
To think and care as we suffer
Of others and their
Equal walk
In nightshade
Find me in cinder
Press tighter
the ribbon too loose
the welt too shallow
press tighter
block out light
kneeling in our find
discovering strange arms
do not right the wrong
of absence
you lace your shoes all the way to the top hook
standing by the gutter watching imagination speed past
grab a cab, take a train, hail a bus
erase the deep scratch
take yourself as far as you are
find me
find me in cinder
I’m sweeping up my make-believe
ashes mark the brand with loving hand
I left myself on a train somewhere
heading past the blur
trees convening into walls and thorns
thorns
shaping my need
pricked back to defeat
raise your hands in prayer
watch them fall leaden
like pennies who deny wish to the carp who
listless grows fat on his doom
once you reach the bridge’s middle you will know
the circumference of your blank page
I am here split into footsteps
wet with their hasten
I am here giving birth to your disregard
bloodied in veined marble
it was always the fault of mine own flaw
I don’t have a skin like you do
this girl rends in spinning glass
pretending she is well enough
for this loud world
we who bruise on emotion
catch the lasting arrow
so fine they go, the ones who can
shine themselves well
boarding future with jagged step
watch them marvel at themselves
for six weeks and six years and six centuries
I buried feeling in soft velvet boxes
whispering to the fox
we who are timid
cannot stand the jolt
we who are fractured
do not wear pain for long
before relinquishing fight
deep in the rosebud
where the fold has yet to
come undone
they told her she was wasting her time
trying to be normal
give it up
you speak in imperfect step
from passive to shout and back again
you do not understand your tense or your verb
you were rejected by the snotty folk
who pinch their noses as they bustle past
in formula
and alacrity
bet you know all your grammatical rules like
a foreign language whilst
I paint in saline and muzzled howl
save this last lesson
when you shout
ensure the fields are on fire
and the birds indigo sky in their fright
you will never know what it is like to be
savaged in kind
is that the sound of my neck breaking?
over the ache?
reaching one last time
growing old in perpetuity like
light staying too long in the same place
turns listless and if you listen carefully
with young ears you can
hear the rustle of her gown
bitter with the after glow of grind
I know I’m wasting everything
except this last buried purse
of everything
if I let go now
the seeds will spill
out of me
and grow taller
than I ever
even on tiptoe
could be
Within the woods
You lost your grip on reality around the same time
my own dalliance with death disturbed the rafters
my shoulders of a man, yours of a sparrow
we danced around amber whiskey bottles
setting fire to tarmac
lifting our skirts before silver ash enveloped us
but maybe I didn’t clean my feet well enough
you began to tremble in the morning
and I found I could not move
it was as if a deer had been startled
standing quite still in dried grass
he was frozen in situ
for a time I wanted to break out
resume merriment and three penny carnival
until the feeling of falling inside
behind the bones of your face
where all emotion blanches and traces
secrets and lies
became my norm
I did not know anymore
how to stir cocktails of polite acquaintance
or make small talk trace like sleepy snails
I did not know anymore
what became of my social graces
pinned and folded beneath me like taffeta
it gave me comfort to
lose my art of conversation
the yawning maw of fraternization
I listened to words and they did not
beckon me come closer
I felt as strange as the outdoor moth
who half wishes he did not
slap against warm glass trying to
eat the light
for it is not you he seeks
but the burn and blitz of some fantastic
singeing his wings in tattoo
and I too
had always yearned for that feeling
never discovered among the feeding troughs
of social intercourse
and once or twice I left
a full and heaving party
to lift my legs for a stranger in
cramped confine
because the hard bang and knock of his
emptying wood was
more honest than all the winks and nods
whispering behind my back
words
I no longer needed to use
only three ever necessary
I love you
though now you are smudged out
by burn of cinders staining toes
gone as cold as foggy morning
selecting mute I retraced my arc
pushed myself back beneath my bones
within the temple
within the woods
where the deer finally moved
from her camouflage and
sprinted light as powder
into converging dark
There you are
about one hundred years ago
or three years
or just yesterday
I lay in your bed
smelling the indent and the roll
of your dream life when I am not
trying to look through your eyes
into your soul
About one hundred years ago
or three years
or just yesterday
I stood over your bed
stripping the sheets
smelling where you lived and breathed
all those nights and days
we should have been making memories
now folded away
About one hundred years ago
or three years
or just yesterday
I smoothed the mattress clear
of the weight you inhabited and
little traces curled here and there
persisting to remind me
of the way the moon lit
your sleeping face
now you will always have your eyes closed
maybe now you can see
the shapes of angels
watching over you until
it is my turn and I come to find
if you have been waiting all this time
a year, a month, a day
one hour is too long
without looking into your eyes
to see what I love reflecting back
like dark diamonds capturing stars
will wink out
and there you are
Cannot breathe
Good bye. Two words. Easily said
impossible to mend a ravaged soul
take a photo of grief she may hide in plain sight
a snapshot in time does not a story tell
one great smile and everything is assumed well
even we, reminiscing glaze over story’s end
maybe it’s for the best …
making memories to endear rather than ravage
such the way of humanity and its glitter ball
yet
beneath the smile, as bright as ever was
more luminous and beautiful perhaps
for undercurrent of savage sorrow
you were crawling out of your mind
it seems an offense to forget
under widest grins we suffer in silence
touched by the same unspeakable sin
of feeling too much in a world favoring compartments
for on the appointed day the photographer says
cheese! and on auto pilot I grin with every ounce of fake
afterward he exclaims, you can see the joy in your heart
it radiates
and sure enough
look closely you cannot tell
I am falling apart
I am coming undone
beneath the layers of my glimmering
it is spoken, smile! and you will feel better!
would that were true
a smile when you are sorrowful
one that cannot be seen through
often the ruin behind the glue
for all the world is a stage
people believe what is easy to convey
they never stop to look beneath
it is not what they wish to keep
in their collective memory
let’s be cheerful! Dismiss regret!
the sorrow we feel
welling under surface
must stay as secret lake
never admit
when you are the only person in a room
crying inside whilst outside you bloom
hello it’s good to meet you
hi there, it’s nice to see you
everyone says wow don’t you look great!
not aware when you get home you will
pluck out your eyes
made of stone
pull off the mask
kick off the shoes
tear down the dress
all the artifice
with no-one to hear your cry
for sorrow is never shared
it is a lonely lonely journey
suffered behind waves of denial
and you wish so much
someone would call you up and say
you were smiling in your photo today
but I saw a sadness beneath
can I come round and help you?
can I hold you when you cannot
breathe?