Symbolics

cardiactheatre:

Seems that you were written on the first day

that the sunlight really made us smile.

I’m really going to try, really, really. Try.

Lost track over years, things can be counted

if we look back at the numbers and calendars

not really sure though why we would bother.

That said, it’s good to keep records.

When we say ‘these days’, how many days do we mean

I wonder. Maybe two but probably more.

Pairs of days can be packaged, moulded a little

‘til the feeling of clean bodies, new potatoes,

crisp paperbacks comes to feel like the norm.

I confided, one journey, that I looked sadly

at a cyclist, the way I always look at shoes

- other people’s things.

Mother said sharp knives and sliced bread

were not for us. I smiled a little at what wasn’t quite irony.

So much in the middle it turns out. Middle is a funny word too

- so much on either side. The present is a middle

then isn’t it?

I used to think ‘temporary’ was the worst thing,

Now I think sadness is sad, temporary does not last.

Along with the confusion of skin

is what is under it – and how to get it out.

I once tried to run away from my legs,

crawl away from my spine,

tear out my hair and just disappear.

I don’t want that in my history,

I was angry when I wrote it.

They said the sun would come back,

through sheer will. If things could just go right

I wouldn’t have to rely.

Don’t make mantras. Don’t make mantras.

She caught me smiling, it’s perpetual now.

Vegetable Pasta

Truth is a distant endeavour.

His accent is curious and his masculinity apparent. He reassures with experience and offers company through his silence, but I want vegetable pasta. “Ideally we minimise our own differences.” She smiles and is human. Her hair moves in irreducible rhythms, and finally she is rid of me. ”I find nothing to be indubitably true”. Cold air by the bus stop. Pink hair inside. Orange walls make me turn away. “Social influence is the essence of leadership”. White lights pick out holes in the walls, visible as I’m in night once more. Feet feel well worn. “The great crisis of conscience in the modern age is indifference”. I corn turners, playing The Clash by the college. The light of the building ahead of me seems familiar. The ground grows softer as I move past it. ”Spirit grows and turns inwards upon itself as it defines itself by it’s own Negation. Without this it cannot partake of the Real”. Trees loom and I wander in the twilight of bedroom windows. Movement to my left as life carries on. I move in unstable circles: a compulsion. “Traditionally philanthropy preserves or even reinforces the power relationship between donor and user”. I wander through th Rose Garden in shadow. Past benches and echoes of laughter. Speeches made to comfort our dance; rising and falling in courtly figures while my sister takes photos. Smiling. ”Demonise the Outgroup to control the Prototype.” Myself 4 years ago walks past. Myselves as I never was gather in the centre. Steps recede from the distance. Cleaner kitchens come in pink - ‘sorry no mums allowed’: (Misogynists chuckle, move on)… “A stair is the series of steps. A stairway includes the space it is in.” Vending machines loom. Doors open. Walls of chatter shatter. Reform. “Cringe away from the Nothing back to the chatter.” Navigating human space. Blonde haired rocker; moves like clockwork within his bar, on a screen of a stage within this stage of a screen, in this bar like clockwork. Retribution smiles: he throws keys into dirt: (Misogynists cheer, stick around). “The image of the Other, the dirty, the lost, can hold the most of the hope for humanity. For they have nothing to lose but their chains and nothing to promote but their humanity”. Prototypes right? Eyes swivel. Mouths quiver over food as they pick more up. “Humanity is a double edged sword. Never idealise, never demonise. We are all just that”. The smell mingles with the music and the eyes get bored. “We are gregarious creatures.” Gourmet isn’t here, but it isn’t there either; despite everything, “Given a lack of evidence equivocate as much as possible between all possibilities”, I sit.

Truth is a distant endeavour.

——

Date: 04/03/2013

The temple

The pain in my head rises as I wake
like sharp iron bars,
trapping me here
within my temple.

The unholy racket outside,
forces my consciousness.

The blessed icons,
of fear and pain,
discomfort and shame,
align.
And the Great Rising begins.

My bedclothes slip of me,
holy water for this Great Vehicle.
I put on the sacred vestments,
a blue dressing gown
picked from the pile of sacrificial offerings,
of discarded clothes.

I advance into the outer sanctum.
Replenishing my supply of pure water.
I take it to my lips.
Each gulp feels like a sacred wound
within my swollen throat.

The ibuprofen is on the windowsill,
but that sacrament is complete.
I settle for paracetamol.

I begin the rite of feeding.
Cool, thin porridge.
Instant oats.
Retrieved to save me.
Consumed for unhungry souls.

I return to my inner sanctum.
My nakedness engulfs me,
and I embrace my eternal mattress.
The touch feels too hot, but I cannot indulge it.
For the iron bars in my mind pursue.

I shut myself away,
to continue my penitence.

——-

Date: 28/08/2012

Invisible hands cradle tokens of affection,
pathetic rags get discarded.

Never dare suggest it, but misunderstand.

I exist.
Don’t think about it.
I smile.
I feel.
Don’t think.
I don’t.

Exist.

Rising

Past headaches and hangovers.
Through mistakes and hangups.

The delicacy of verse,
has a forcefulness lost in time.

I wrap myself in swaddling.
Fetch underwear from the dryer.
Four hours of sleep but no more.
Stand. Swaying and smiling.

A stranger in a strange land.
The kitchen. It beckons sullenly.
Fresh juice. Cranberry and blueberry,
mix in my throat.

The box promises cool, bubbles rising and mixing,
with ice and fruit on fine white living.
I drink more, because I’m alive.

Shirt, trousers, power.
I create, I think, I free myself.
For a moment at least.
There’s too much to do,
and too little.

I eat music.
Eddie Vedder breakfast.

This present holds a key,
to both the past and future.
It’s why we’ll taste all this aching,
with bellicose surviving.
Beautiful uprising.

I’ll go make toast,
spread it with butter,
because I’m alive.

——-

Date: 22/06/2012

The mountain fell

The world crashed onto the mountain-top.
While bridges burned below.
Visionary shards of glass can get buried,
deep beneath your skin.
You’ll wander the streets, bloody and afraid of your kin.
Before smashed mirrors get you chased out of town.

We’ll ask what we mean when we dance to whirlpools within teacups. Arranged nicely over a tablecloth of smiles.

If we’re not careful we’ll be shown,
and simply forget all we’ve ever known.

——

Date:09/10/2012

Lips/Everyone is wrong

Everything is inadequate.
Everyone is wrong.

To agree with you is to hurt you.
To challenge you is to hurt you.
Our truth
lies between your lips and their ears.
But you wouldn’t dare admit that would you?
That wouldn’t be your lips tracing lines
across the fragile veins of our weakness.

It just wouldn’t be the same.

I used to think I could make sense of everything.
But these days
the best I can hope for is to see where I can’t. 

——

Date: 20/05/2012

Originally posted on my personal blog sum-being

(Source: sumbeing)

An un-fresh ritual

The shower curtain will need checking,
the shower head will need decalcifying
come June and chapters end.

I’ve learnt just how to hit the handle
so that the temperature just hits the spot.
Still, it can be so, these shards of water
can be like spilt scalding tea
or icicles of cave moisture
dripping from an ancient roof.

At last though it’s like warm summer rain.
I close my eyes and wash away things
which I wouldn’t even care to name.

All away down that wretched drain.

——-

Date: 13/05/2012