I want Fantasy
I’m in a black-purple mood tonight. My head is a beetle’s back, a monochrome night. Bonelight, moonlight. You can try and follow, but the cats have business of their own, and I follow around corners.
My shadow creep-claws the way.
My eyes are restless as my feet, it’s not something I wonder at too much. Intro to outro, extro to invert and back again. Keep the streets for me.
I was an introvert raised by extroverts. An endless parade of parties and sorority-like gags, dinners and hiding behind floor-length curtains with my nose in a book. Hiding with the cats, down by the mud-gullies and creeks, wading and climbing trees, while they sipped tea and talked Nothing.
Lonely child, now come with me
Into the wood, the dark to find
The light shall fail within your eyes;
The sweep of love is only lies.
I did not fall, nor did I stare
But found the path that we all know
Now tremble, Time, for all is fair
In love and lust, and bonelight glow.
…My darling, the story has yet begun to take hold.
Abide with me, in
Peace (something like it)
Through the mirror, the cracks
Of time, the broken watch
The sentry fallen asleep
His round not yet done, but Time
Is an angular thief
And we are but stickmen in his gaze
A puppet, a clown, a fool
A black rose, blue
A thought, turned to you
A mental shroud, an illness tau(gh)t
With what must be, with all, without.
Come. Walk. With. Me.
No one to point the finger
It’s just you and me, and the rain.
As it once was, before our shared time spun away in toxic-beauty droplets. No more the red kites counted, the hikes through all weathers, our faces burned bronze with time spent alone and together and apart.
It was only one hour ago, it was all so different then. Five years and counting nothing, because that put it to a timeline, a calendar – an End Game. We were younger then, stupid with the world and lust and red wine. We found ourselves in the face of shared life, on and offline, down rail line, up streets fine; lost ourselves in over-priced shopping and London roads and rain-filled afternoons quietly asleep, dreaming of a time we’d be published and famous and aloof and awake and over the hill. Never married. Never childbirth. Never divergence, of thoughts and things that mattered … until they ceased to matter. Until I couldn’t hold your eye. Until you couldn’t keep my feet still.
I grieve for you. You live in me.
The future is a blue rose, full of mystery, the unobtainable and the longing, the shared ice and anecdotes and memories frozen in a place none can follow. We’ll be buried as best friends and confidantes, but my soul will wander, as ever it did in our waking dream of real life. No one would riot for less.
You kiss my mouth.
Hell is here.
You were my All, and thought and dream and time, until none of these seemed apart or a part of myself. Until this year broke us. Until our shared time faded out in mosquito bites of cash flow and supermarket runs and broken hearts and shattered trust. Did I dream this belief, or did I believe this dream?
Grieve for us both, world, and move on. That’s the way of things; when friends become lovers, and back again. We drank to ourselves then, as now, as ever.
Distance doesn’t count for anything, unless it’s in the heart. Our hills have been climbed, our storms outrun. The Beacon will always be there, waiting. The Downs will probably call us back someday. We’ll pass the barrows of your forefathers, and laugh at the times we fell down rabbit holes and mistook sanitation for cigars and fell asleep with our mouths catching flies. And recall those old-gold afternoons by the wretched train station, when I listened for the Mini’s whine, and the sounds of a weekend-life just beginning. No, distance meant nothing. We surpassed it.
But when together, we couldn’t overcome distance of the heart, the wandering mind. So it goes. Five years, to me, is a long time … a relationship’s lifetime. Not one memory regrettable; even the hard times were bittersweet pills. We learned ourselves in the face of the world, and each other; though we chose our own times to look away. Now it’s mine, and it’s for good, and somehow that’s OK. Friends part with tears and a smile, not mouths of hate.
I’ll send you North, you’ll keep me here.
I love without capacity. You love without remorse. Somehow, it worked; and through the nightmares and flashbacks and illness, the silent rage and writer’s block and doubts of fidelity, from that first daft kareoke night (when we cried together from laughing) to running for the train, to Evenstar and swords and bad emails and Love Will Tear Us Apart, in the pub that’s since burned to the ground and lies as an ashen stub of its former glory… we part as friends.
There’ll always be the Downs, the barrows and the red kites.
On an Atom (End of All Things)
So, traipsing around inside my head only recalls echoed footfalls. Trickle and trace, the dance comes around again, and I find myself with sweat-rimed skin and empty eyes. There’s only so long I can breathe.
I tried. I found. I spoke. Flailed and fought, and damnit where do things go when you lay them down for a moment? Around the Nick, I need to padlock my possessions down, as the guys have kleptomania for mugs and coffee. Chocolate doesn’t stand a chance.
I love them all. They drive me mad, like all the best ones do.
I can’t imagine life outside these city walls. I’m frittering with emails, trying to find somewhere new to live, old to exist in. These stones are my mind, ancient and antiquated like good wine, fine bones, knowing eyes. I’d jump off them all into the dark, if I didn’t think it’d land me in a cell down the road. They’d laugh with me, turn turn again.
The night is cold with feelings and air, and I’m at a loss in the face of blank space and time. Stuck inside a circumstance.
The editing went well though.
Sometimes I find my face in a window and forget my name in the absence of things to throw.
LOUD thoughts. Not gone yet, nope. Still there, itching my brain. Bastards with sticky fingers, daemons with claws, and a tightrope to walk. Normal, sane, what’s in a name? Mine’s printed on the back of someone’s hand. They’ll wipe it off in a moment, an ink smear, a loose connection.
Freefall always works best for me when cut to the tune of a diamond song.
Friend or foe? Under the bone-white light, who could say where that word lands.
****
I can always rely on the sky.
End of All Things
At the end of all things, as the sun
Flares brighter, eclipsing the night
While the stars scream death-songs, the light
Shall dwindle and fade in all eyes.
And in the shivering darkness
Your winter, the echoing sighs
Of battles fought and lost, and won,
Shall pale in the memory of time.
No longer the soil grows, to be scarred
With reason, with motive or sense
No longer the bellies shall echo, love
As the Horsemen dismount and relent.
Now watch as the tides draw back, the surf
A brilliant white, in which the sun drowns
Your hand everlasting, warm with regret
Shall find and take mine, as we wait.
The years and the days in passing, love
Have mocked me as only a clock face can
The silence and stillness now are friends
At the end of all things, as we stand.
celenagaia 