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.
No more the Summer
I asked for banners on the sky
For words to jag and scrawl intent
My eyes were blind to details loud
To smaller notes of what you meant
The empty sun that fills the west
Leaves only low light for my eyes
You gave enough to stay the course
With breathspace only as the prize
The pain of loss is chill as bone
And nothing fills the place you left
I am the one who took the most
And gave no peace, no careful rest
So heavy heart, you’ll pay the price
And know the petals falling thin
From roses left in summer’s heat
To dry, as autumn draws me in.
So actions speak aloud the words
For now I look; no hope to find
And here the story ends, untold
With only me, my selfish mind.
Autumn Instinct, Homeward Flight
If this year has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is secure. Things unravel in a breathspace. One by one, the fragments of life I’ve carefully pieced together in the city, are falling away. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Maybe my time is done here.
I try not to expect too much of any one day, person or feeling now. With the year already starting to look old in more ways than one, my face is turning to the south, to my old hometown. I fled it three years ago, to escape ghosts of my past.
I’m starting to miss their pale touch. Especially when the geese thrum overhead. Instinct is pulling me to wherever I’ll feel at home.
Now when the light among the trees
Has frayed from summer’s gold, to brass
The geese make chevron smiles at me
And I shall wave, to see them pass
But now the hawk, his keening cry
Has sold my soul within the haze
I watch him leave and mourn the loss
Of diamond love, within his gaze
Your hand was warm inside the spring
A green-gold hope, a vagrant lust
I couldn’t hope to rein you in
And distance bides its time on trust
But here again, the road shall part
My breath is twisting with the wind
And melancholy rides the grass
Towards the winter chill within
My home, my time within the walls
Of ancient stone and modern face
Are dialling down towards the sun
Lost in the west, his empty grace
And soon the autumn, with his geese,
His brassy sun and fading light
Shall lift the hope and set me free
Where instinct points me home, in flight.
Coma
Flowers on my windowsill
Pale and lifeless, cut
And steeped in old water
Their heads shun the light.
The scent of the lilies
Streaks my mind, lost
As it is in memories
With no hope of return.
This bed, my soft grave,
White as the skin
Which papers my bones,
Holds a memory alone.
Highgate Cemetery
Let me preface this with the admission that the photos were taken on a naff little Nokia. I’ve used the best possible shots, minus pixel-spatter.
You were once as I am now
A dreamer full of sleep and lust
A thought on someone else’s time
A river flowing to the mind
I am here, among the stones
The ivy-clad, the sparse and blank
The fretted vines of ages gone
The scent of death and heavy life
We are gone and they remain
To watch us through the lowered night
With faces chapped by falling rain
Beneath we lie, as one in dust.
celenagaia 