Sobriety

I drink too much on occasion;
I smoke too much sometimes,
too; I take drugs every day; no
it’s not you it’s me. Really. Inhibitions?
I don’t have them. I know how
to say, I want this. I fancy you.
Please kiss me. But still,
I don’t let you see me sober.
Sobriety is a curse -- it is me
stripped bare and saying, See
how damaged I am? See the pain?
The fear? The insecurity and doubt?
See where I come unravelled, where
I am frayed and worn, where you
can see the light shine through
because I have no substance left,
at all. See where I come undone.
I fill myself with cloudy smoke
to obscure what I truly am -- to hide.
It is putting on a mask, or perhaps,
wrapping myself in a shroud. It is
comforting, calming, centring.
You don’t believe me; that’s okay.
Or maybe you’re not sure. I still
won’t let you see me sober.
Because, let me tell you, me sober?
I’m not what you think I am. I am
not who you think I am. I am not
the inquisitive, intelligent creature,
with an open smile or an easy laugh.
I am a darkling thing. Furtive.
Irrational. And sober, I do not have
my voice. Sober, I -- me -- myself--,
am not the strongest; I’m not the one
that is heard. This body, sober, isn’t me.
Someone else comes in
when the drugs wear off.
She walks like me, she talks like me --
but she isn’t me. I don’t want
you to meet her. Not yet. But someday,
you will look into her eyes. Will you
see me there, deep inside, standing
in her shadow? Will you see me
scream in silence? Will you see that
when I go mad, I do not go anywhere at all?
Will you see her and think she is me?
My sobriety is where she lives -- where
she rules -- where she is in control. So,
I don’t want you to see me sober.
Because I fear you won’t see me.
You will see her -- and she’s a fucking monster.
Let me keep her under lock and key.
Just a little longer. So maybe --
by the time you meet her --
maybe you’ll fight to keep me instead.

Scott Expedition, 100 Years Later

What hubris was it
that grabbed hold
of his brain--
what madness seized
him, and said: Here,
where others failed
and died, here
I shall succeed;

In that remotest
part of the world
where there is no
night for months,
no horizon, no markers
by which to navigate.
Just the punishing
expanse of glacial
landscape in every
direction; no sea
and no sky, just
bare white desert
stretching infinite.

The bright yellow
sledges and red
rucksacks and blue
parkas were the only
colours to bend the eye.

And then, with
a headwind the whole
way for the first
nine hundred miles,
the two-man team
ran out of food.
Grit and determination
failed, gave way
to hypothermia
and malnutrition,
and there were times
he wanted to give up,
to die in the desert
of endless white noon.

Starving, ready
to lie down
in the snow,
'utterly pathetic,'
he radioed for supplies.

Sitting, eating
the smoked salmon
and cream cheese
on crackers before
resuming their journey
in the fabled footsteps
of the ill-fated Capt.
R. F. Scott (buried
under the ice),
he contemplated
his own failure
to complete this journey
unassisted, with only
what he could carry.

But surely the man
who died alone a century
past in the cold
on that shelf of ice
at the very edge
of the known world
would not begrudge
his successors' success.


written 17-02-2016

repaired

Take the fragments
of this clay pot
(broken into pieces
against the wooden table,
fallen to the floor)
and paint the seams with gold.
Fit them back together
and fire them in the kiln;
Life exists after death,
and light shines bright
in darkest spaces.
My body is the clay
vessel, made of the earth,
and of the sea, hardened
by the sun, and shattered by
the world; paint my scars
with gold dust and make
my brokenness beautiful.

Falling

i am falling -- falling
falling in(to the void)
falling out (of love
with the world)
falling on (my knees)
falling up falling down
all around and back
again -- just constant
(constant constant)
constantly falling through
(space and time)
((place and purpose))
plummeting plunging
lunging lifting
and out and over
up begets down
and out chases in
(round and round)
and through
(through -- through)
falling through (him)
and (her) and (me)
and (we) and (they)
and (you) falling into
us and them
same and other
others fall with
fall against fall
fall back to down
fall down to out
twice and thrice
and once again
there is all and
naught and in
between the fallen
sacred spaces
(falling into ruin)
((falling in the dust))

Self-Consciousness

Take your fingers, my love,
and trace the scars. Here,
down the curve and underneath
the skin is hard, bubbled up
where the knife cut,
where the flesh parted,
where a piece of me came away.
Touch me where I am now
less than I was, with this
smooth, shiny reminder
of being more. I will close
my eyes as your hands explore
the new story my body
has to tell.

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?