Invisible
I go unseen and breathe invisibility. Nobody sees me, no matter where I go, no matter where I stand, no matter how loud I sigh and no matter how loud I cry, they will not simply turn their heads to see what it is that follows them; they won’t see me. I lurk around shadowy corners and lie in wait for them to come and call for me, slipping in and out of mental alleyways behind them, in the backs of their minds, hoping that they might call me up front to say hello.
I am invisible. I could be standing in the centre of their little social circle and not be seen or heard of. In the heat they barely notice that the sweat of another’s putrid flesh is contributing to the humidity; on cold says in winter they fail to see my breath condense in the air before them before it floats away, whispering in the breeze while I try whispering in their deaf (dumb) ears.
I am unable now to reappear, if in fact I ever left them; they’ll never know and never care that I’ve finally forsaken them and turned away from lukewarm company. Maybe now they’ll turn around, but something deep inside me sounds out loud my eternal doubt, and I myself turn back -just one second more before I walk out the door- and find that they’re no longer there.
Maybe if they’d turned, maybe if they’d seen, I would still be alive, and not have left to become just another made-up daydream; the consumed product of a god that is now as invisible as I had been.
To be sure (can I be sure)?
How can I be sure?
Is it possible to know
-for certain-
that what you say is
what you mean?
When each sentence is but
verbal prosetry, each thought
a metaphor - when all that you
have said to me has been laced
with broken simile and imagery;
How can I be sure?
Will you ever leave behind
the cipher, will you ever help
me to decipher the scrambled
cries for help that you have
left me with?
Your mind is an enigma, and
every word you speak a puzzle piece;
will I be able to put them all together?
or will your painted picture remain
only as fragmented brushwork?
How can I be sure that,
even if I were to try,
that the pieces of your mind
even have a place in this world?
Is yours a jigsaw solveable on earth?
Or are you truly lost to us, in mind
and being?
Worlds Away
I saw you today, but not in yourself.
I saw the you that I once knew, sitting back up against a pole painted with the flakes of a coat long gone, living your life in your red spiral-bound. Within the figure on the floor I had seen what I once saw in you; steady movements, cautious glances, and a world upon the page before you - the fantasies of a you you’d rather be.
In your minds eye I have seen the universe within which we’d rather be, where injustices are made right when the just sit to write how they think justice should be wrought (wrote). A world where beauty is not written about, but is simply written. Where wilted rose petals lie upon the floor only when the old have stopped, and write no more, only for another (one of us) to take his place, take up a book and fountain pen, and write the blood-red flowers to life again. Your dream world is just that, though - a (foolish) dream that lives among the clouds within your mind.
You seem to grow ever smaller, while your words grow ever taller. To them you say so little, and through your pen you speak so much more. In writing yourself into another life, you’re leaving one here in so much strife. You breathe not, except to breathe life into your creations; you eat not, except for your world’s continuation. You live not, except so that you may come to live among the stars.
Do you notice that we’ve noticed where you are? Can you tell that we are watching from afar? Would you shy away from me, or would you invite me over (let me see)? Are you sketching a door from mixed metaphor, willing creativity into solid, worldly reality? I come across to sit beside, but I’ve only one question in my mind as I look into your eyes and sigh.
“Can I join you?”
Just as a general service announcement:
My presence here is going to be eternally diminished. The login’s saved only on my off-hand browser, and I’m only going to be logging in to post new pieces when I think they’re polished (so definitely no updates while I’m sick, like yesterday).
Chrome now has a new Tumblr login saved, and I’ve set a 25 follow-cap on it. I will follow, at any given time, up to 25 lovely writers. I’m currently at seven. If I like something, I’ll like it, and if I really like it I’ll reblog it with a nice, possibly detailed note as to why. That note will probably never be read by more than you and I, but I’m not doing it for people. I’m doing it for you, and me.
So, with that being said: I might have something brief for you to read this evening, but beyond that… Well, we’ll see.
Much love and such,
~ Me.
One-Act Blunder
Introduction
you come and set
the stage, line up
the cast, watching,
waiting in the wings
for their cues; you
hope now that your
crowd will love it,
but now you are
committed
to your act.
Complication.
You’ve hit a snag,
they’ve found a
small problem with
your play:
you’re not acting
now, you’re working,
thinking,
you’re writing
as you’re walking, as
you’re talking and the
audience have noticed
that your words are
deviating from the
script they haven’t seen.
You’ve begun rambling,
desperately scrambling,
stalling (how appalling)
so that a daring knight,
your saviour
(your muse)
can arrive on set to save you.
You remember writing him in,
etching charactertures into the
margins of the script; but have
you cast him?
Or were you waiting for an
agent (angel) to get in touch
with you?
Resolution The audience leaves,
your play half done,
your stay half-run.
You didn’t even
make it last to
Broadway!
No knight has come to
you yet either; you stayed
the intermission, hoping that
by chance fate has overseen
the grave omission and have
bravely sent you someone
who can save you from
the gravely mess that became
your play!
Nobody comes.
The press decry your work as trite,
and almost out of spite the public
blame you now for all of life’s small
travesties, and you’ll now be forced
to take on the guilt of ruining
the evenings of those who came
to take their minds away from
already ruined lives.
have I now introduced your complicated resolution,
that there is no such thing as absolution?
I want my head held underwater, every cell in my body burning, screaming for air, until my skin is grey and cold and my heart stops beating .
“‘Love’ is dead.”
“It started with a tingle.”
I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong story downloaded there. I have experienced the it you are referring to, and I can tell you that it does not begin with a tingle. It does not begin with some kind of mysterious heart-drop, or some magical feeling of euphoria that serves only as the beginning of a metaphorical rollercoaster ride. No. If it were to begin with anything, it would begin simply with the knowledge that a series of chemical reactions were occurring in the brain.
“I knew it, and I had to share it. I had to ask. I had to tell.”
Once again, I’m afraid not. What is it that you think you’re sharing, for godssake man, something deep and philosophical? Some sense of inner purpose and meaning the likes of which haven’t been shared by man since the enlightenment of Prince Siddartha?! No. What you are professing is the existence of a newly created chemical imbalance in your brain. You’re professing to newfound instability, and you’re asking that somebody help you explore this with you. It is not profound, it is not deep, it is not edgy and it is not new.
“We had our ups and downs.”
By which, of course, I assume you mean that you yourself experienced ups and downs in your mood and demeanour due to the experiences you’ve had with this mystery person. Your heart doesn’t jump into your throat (in an obvious attempt to get on your sleeve) from the pit of your stomach young man, it remains lodged where it is for most of your fucked up sense of ‘eternity’. It beats not for anyone but itself. It beats not even out of habit. It beats because it beats.
“But now we’re happy.”
But now you’re stable again.
“We can handle whatever life throws at us now.”
You’re looking for the danger
of instability again, only now
you are not alone.
“We can die happy, together.”
You have simply finished living.
Your glorification of simple chemistry appals me. Who the fuck do you think you are, a writer? A “hopeless romantic”? A class of person that would end all war and promote eternal love, if only there were more of you? We had that, we even had a name for him, but he never was. He wasn’t real like the synapses in your brain, and the wavefunctions that make up your mind. You ought to live now by what the rest of us have come to accept. Our lives have purpose for ourselves, purpose in our own survival. Repeat after me, and act like the rest of us; a human once more you will be so long as you see that we must:
”EAT, FUCK, FIGHT.”
Me[?]
Who, if not me,
am I?
If not intelligent,
if not a writer,
if not honest,
if not loving,
and caring,
and kind,
then what (who)
am I?
If I am not who
you see me as, if
I am not who I
thought I was, if
I am not what I
want to be, then
who the hell am I?
Fast poems
fast words
have to write
(have to fight)
harder and faster
forever and ever
until you say that
you’re satisfied.
Lust and hunger
hold power over
us both for longer
(and longer)
as we feel our minds
cave in around our
entwined hands
(entwined souls);
entrapped within a
state of mind that
rushes us.
Flowers and clovers
and healers with cleavers
and all I can think as the
words of my mind rush
through my heart is
am I sure these aren’t the
words of my heart rushing
through my mind?
