Means and Ends 2

How it must feel
to shed all that density
that life-preserving fat
to feel the body split.
Is it transformation
or simply emergence?
Thin and fragile and cold
having only the fur enough,
stretched out like a rug,
on which to lie.

Means and Ends

The mermaid splits her
fin and gives up her voice
in the old story yet, the
pain beyond imagining, her
desire is stronger than
the knife that fillets her,
spreads her legs. Why
must it be a man who
gives her her own soul?

in a state

Anxiety drips
tickles as it
trickles down,
pools at the
base of my
spine. Cold
spreads through
the muscles,
freezes them.
The tension--
suspension of
rationality--
reality blurs,
burrows deep
inside: hides.
Unfounded
perception
confounds reason.
Treasonous lies
blanket my
brain, the pain
of belief,
without relief
from the tangled,
mangled perception
of reception
of input, not
trustworthy
because no
worth can
penetrate
the awful state
of the cracked
view from inside
looking out.

Untold Tale

Sitting in silence
in the empty space
between words, I want
to form the links
between you and me--
not with gossamer
thread that may
tangle and tear,
but bonds forged
true, like steel:
no give, no take,
only spaces held
just so--definable,
unambiguous
and impossible
to break by accident.
I want to know
you whole--crawl
inside your head,
hear your hurts,
your fears, and
sometime wishes;
know each pinprick
of pain, each spot
of blood that
escaped the trappings
of your frail,
human body;
see, taste, touch
your soul. I
would stitch myself
into your side
with spider's silk,
become a part of
you, know your
mind, know what
the silences
mean in your own
language. I cannot
think there is an us
until I hear you
speak. There is no
us, just you and me
and the spaces that exist
between,
unbound in silence.
I crave your native
tongue, want to
taste the words
that form to shape
a story that
is not mine.

Wishlist

I want love.
I want pain.
I want space and I want closeness.
I want intimacy and I want mystery.
I want Romantic ideals and Gothic aesthetics.
I want colours.
I want freedom and I want restraint.
I want clean air.
I want to breathe.
I want to lose myself and I want to find myself.
I want stability and I want spontaneity.
I want discovery and I want wonder.
I want beauty.
I want silence.
I want sound and I want movement.
I want stillness.
I want complexity and I want simplicity.
I want misty rain and wet city streets at night.
I want the living and I want the dead.
I want memory and I want oblivion.
I want to create and I want to destroy.
I want heartbreak and I want healing.
I want fragility and I want resilience.
I want sleep.
I want dreams.
I want good things and bad things, joyous things and sad things.
I want to slip away
I want not to want.

But what I need is time.
And hope.

A forgetting room

I want to forget you.
I want to forget the way I wanted you.
I want to forget how you turned my head inside out.
I want to forget the way you cut me down and bled me dry but left no visible wounds.
I want to forget waking up afraid.
I want to forget not daring to speak my mind.
I want to forget rescuing you constantly.
I want to forget how many friends I lost.
I want to forget how you fuelled my insecurities.
I want to forget how unworthy I felt, how worthless.
I want to forget how my problems were always framed in the context of how they affected you.
I want to forget your selfishness.
I want to forget how you tore me down because you could not lift yourself up any other way.
I want to forget my broken heart.
I want to forget the futures planned now forever out of reach.
I want to forget your false compassion.
I want to forget my foolishness in believing you were different.
I want to forget that I felt you were worth being honest.
I want to forget that you swore you would not judge me, only to do just that.
I want to forget that I thought you were my friend.

I want to let you go, because you have weighed me down for far too long.
This is the end.
This is the last thing you will ever get from me.

I will forge an oubliette just for you.
I will banish you there and take back all the power you took from me, claimed from me when I was too weak to claim it for myself.
I will seize what is mine and damn the rest of you to obscurity.

For a Lost Boy

You were a puppy, dearest:
with eager smiles and a wagging tail
you nipped at my heart
with your earnest
affections. I knew you
would lose those needle-sharp
puppy teeth one day, when
you would grow capable
of the full savagery your
playful growls and yips promised.
But I hoped you would never lose
that softness in your eyes,
that adoring nuzzle, and
the shamelessness to ask
for a tummyrub.
                           Oh my dear,
you are not lost--you never
ran away from home; instead,
you stayed and it's the world
that ran away. And now I have
nothing to show of the puppy love
you gave without reservation
but the faint imprint of paws
on the ragged, chewed-up
edges of my soul.

Entirely sincere and utterly ironic

written 23-11-2015

Look at my scars...

Look at my scars:
They show
where I was
--once--
Too Much;
where I
overflowed
my limits,
a terrifying
(beautiful)
excess.
Too much
flesh
too much
curve
too much;
More
than my
allotted amount
by prescription
of proportion.




written 27-11-2015

Concept Art

This is what it is like
to be sculpted
by someone else's
hand; to know that
I am made
to someone else's
specifications, perhaps
sometimes to wonder,
was there a better vision
of what I could have been?

On a Cold Night in October

There was only a pane of glass
between me and the sea
that night--thin as a filament,
barely a figment of reality.
Only that pain kept me from
the water, deep and black
below me, so many storeys
below me, so many stories
between me and the sea
that night. The fey lights of
the ferry drowned in the mists
in the Sound, rushed landward
in the Sound without a sound
because of all the storeys
between me and the sea
that night. The faerie lights
glowing in the mist,
that will-o'-the-wisp,
called deeply to me,
called me to the sea,
but the filament of reality,
the pain of a pane of glass,
thin as a figment, stood
between me and all the stories
that kept me from the sea
that night.




written 02-11-2015

Slipped by the crook of the hook

I want to glimpse
the look I mistook
when I hid behind
my borrowed book.

That look was a hook
meant to catch
in its crook
the eye of a girl
in a nook
with a book.

But it never took.

May I Come In? (Neither Lion nor Wolf, revisited)

The storyteller spoke to the girl in stories--metaphors. Lessons she wanted the girl to learn, from her own life and from the lives of others. She shared her wisdom, the wisdom of a life lived widely, the wisdom passed down for generations, all lilting, lulling the girl with her storyteller's voice.

She spoke of wolves, though she was, herself, a lion. How could a lion know the plight or pleasure of a wolf? The girl longed to be a wolf, would forsake all she possessed, or may possess, in this world and all others, to have a pack to call her their own, bound by blood and the savage solemnity of the slaughter. Loyalty of like calling to like.

She was no wolf, nor was ever meant to be. She was no more wolf than the storyteller. Nor was the girl like her. It was not in her heart or her soul to be leonine. She dreamt of dragons and the lonely freedom of flight. The awe of flame and ash. Also did she dream of fleet-footed felines, the ferocious hunters, sovereigns among beasts, who were her namesake. But she was dedicated to a god she did not know, had never known--could never know. How then could she claim her place as his lioness?

No, a lion she was not; her name was a mistake--a lie--a false face. She knew she must doff it to find her true self: being neither lion nor wolf, having neither pride nor pack. Where then was she to find her place? She embraced the madness, cloaked herself in its name, submitted to its siren song, and set off, armed this time, no longer the questing child. All she had left was a single thread of hope, holding above her head Damocles' own sword, that she would find where she fitted, she she would slide into place, the piece, whose coming would be celebrated, not as a prodigal return, but as a homecoming foretold and finally fulfilled.

Neither wolf nor lion

She spoke to the young one
in stories--metaphors.
Lessons she wanted the child
to learn, from her own life
and from the lives
of others. Wisdom shared
in the lull of her storytelling voice.

She spoke to the child of wolves,
but she was herself--a lion.
The child wanted nothing more
than to be a wolf, to have
a pack that called her their own,
bound by blood and the solemnity
of the kill, and by the loyalty
of sameness.

The child was no wolf, nor ever would be,
no more than the storyteller. She dreamt
of dragons, and the lonely freedom
of flight. She dreamt
of fleet-footed felines,
ferocious hunters that were her
namesake. But she was dedicated
to a god she did not know, had never
known. How, then, could she be
a lion?

No, a lion she was not. Her name
was a lie, a false face.
She knew she must doff it
and search for her true self:
being neither lion nor wolf,
having neither pride nor pack.
All she wanted was to find
where she fitted, where she slid
into place, the missing piece
whose return would be celebrated
To come home, not again, but finally.

No one told me...

The lessons I have learnt in my life have been myriad; some have been simple, others have been profound, some difficult, and others simply requiring a nod of the head before moving on. The hardest lessons were always the ones I was not prepared to learn. The ones that came without warning. Sailors, they say, keep close watch on the sky because she will tell them everything they need to know to keep themselves afloat. A story I read a long time ago says that the skies and the winds over land are inconsistent, shifting, and do not give us the warning that sailors have learnt, and passed on through the centuries.

Sometimes I feel like my gatekeeping tasks have me locked in a tower, watching the sky, but I don't know what I'm looking for. Is that cloud formation dark because the sun is going down? Is it shifting to the east or to the south? I get distracted by the lightning and the pageantry of the moon, and by the time the storm hits, I haven't rung any bells, I haven't sounded the alarms, and the air raid sirens are silent. What good am I, as a gatekeeper, then? What good am I as a sentinel? My watch began without instruction, and continues without guidance. I do not have the knowledge and skills passed down from generations past. I have not the preparation or the instincts to know when to raise the alarm. How, then, am I to succeed?