It's the chirp of the birds that set it off. The night has slipped away. Slowly, quietly, almost accidentally. I once counted the blinks it took for the sun to rise. I forget the tally now. It didn't seem important enough to remember, or at least that's what I tell myself now when I try to count them again. Too many graves have been filled with exhausted breaths since then. The death toll is in the millions now, each gruff exhale a soldier lost in my battle for rest. I build their coffins in my head and write eulogies for them to calm my frustration. 'Here lies a man who was killed by caffeine.' - I carve the pathetic truth into the back of my lids every night, as the beat of my rampant heart pounds in my ears. The angry footsteps of a relentless insomnia. But the birds. The birds still sing to me come morning.
They are as predictable and naive as my bed time routine. Their melancholy chirp is the adrenalin needed to arouse my nostalgia. They remind me of the slow creep of the sun over a tranquil beach, of the rush of wind past my ears as I ride through empty streets, of the accomplished solitude soaking the hour no one else knows. And all too easily they remind me of your voice. The rasp of it, as you began to share my vices. You never occur to me without the sun rise. I think I prefer to leave you in the light, things are clearer there. The day does not rage in my head, it does not mutate my thoughts and stab them repetitively through a wavering logic. With you restrained by the shackles of dawn my hatred of each witching hour leaves you alone. I can smile fondly at the birds and refuse to admit that you help the dim to crush me, that you are one of the knives it uses to impale me.
When we shared this sickness you were my bandage, I wrapped you around my gaping wounds and my delusion soothed the septic cuts. But you were just a band-aid; I was a desecrated leper who'd lost all his limbs. When you left the shock of your departure displaced that of my anguish. You saved yourself, which I could never blame you for. I was quickly decomposing, the air between our sighs was becoming heavy and toxic. As pure as you were you couldn't rescue me. I had begun to infect you, the skin across your perfect body was beginning to mold. I commend you for not fleeing sooner. With each subsequent night I endured alone the shock wore off, and so the blood seeped faster from my trauma. I was a fool. All that time you kept me together and I never even noticed. My punishment now is the memory of you, the shadows of you that mock me in this silent darkness. But I still have the birds. I'll always have the birds. Even if they'll never sound as beautiful now that I don't have you.
Monday, 23 February 2015
Saturday, 21 February 2015
Stop sign
The chaos of my mind dulls to your eyes. Part of what is raging within me purrs and coos in your embrace. I am a dulled firework, reaching the end of a glorious performance. My ignition a distant memory, lost in the translation of your gaze. For what was this life before you as my medication? You are the glistening heroin my fiendish cravings fetishized. Even when your touch felt repulsive, and your words cliche, I still basked in the warmth of such long awaited belonging. I tried to reciprocate - to be the baritone echo that the glory of your faithful ballad deserved - but there has been no practice by my kind for these moments. This established scene is but an improvised awkward sketch, the two actors being I and contentment. We are strangers to each other. Its grip is alien. I've studied how to respond, but in practice being human is a lot harder than one would think. Your eyes help. Your hollow smile. Your gushing lies. They encourage a hush that regulates the storm behind my dead pan mask.
I gave in to your charm unwillingly, kicking and screaming my resolve fought, wept, then fled - the new self assured delusion that your admiration animated from the moldy cells that littered my valves was stronger than any walls i'd built to protect me from affinity. But once you closed your eyes those walls returned. Their guard off duty. This time however they did not stay dormant, they were not there to protect - they were built for attack. My cage of solitude became an implement of war. I was handed a lease to cruelty and torture; my new homes, one for the summer, one for the fall. The murky pools of acceptance I had so naively bathed in began to corrode. My mouth filled with the black sludge of dependence, it coated my lungs and every breath became a battle. Allowing myself to drown was not martyrdom; no matter how much I wished it was. I simply forgot how to swim. No voice to lead me, no optics to rescue me, no hope in hell. I was alone. Abandoned easily, without sharp eyes to guide my morality it ceased to exist.
However on the surface I was happy. Ecstatic at the slightest whiff of longing from your direction. You were never to know how unhinged I had become, or suggestively how deranged I always was. The screams in my head that punctuated your innocent snuffling were only audible to me. My smile imprisoned the wailing. Nicotine-stained teeth were the bars that contained my torment. Kept like a convict by the near art of fitting in. Your torture was ward to an inaccurate painting of me, a wax scuffed less-than-idyllic replica. But further beyond that I was the captive of gloom. The loud infinite admission that under my skull was nothing but ill feeling and calculated revenge dangled before me the keys to my freedom The morose orchestra of clinking metals sang furiously through my mind. It incubated true fear. There was always fear.
You stiffen when I embrace you. A scowl curves your brow. Perhaps you're dreaming of combat, to you the cautious touch of my nervous hand is a balled fist launching across your subconscious, not a lost frightened girl seeking validation. Or perhaps I am a pitied enemy in your mirage, my claws pleading and desperate. Ironically the accuracy reaches beyond your fabricated scenery. My desolation is obnoxious. It roars across my face. But perhaps even you are unaware of my pathetic hunger. Perhaps to you this hour is reserved for sleep and I am but an intruder demanding attention in a time you allocate to blank dry rest. You know nothing of the way my brain is crawling with fury, the intrusive thoughts and the endless loathing. You are adrift on a cloud of ignorance, and no matter how hard I throw my spears you remain imperceptible. When will I give up anticipation? When, if ever, will your bubble pop?
There was a time when my monsoon was mine alone. I kept it in check with a cemented routine of solitude and abrasion. Me and my illness grew fond of each other throughout those intimate meetings. I learned to cherish it for what it was; irreversible and fascinating. We mastered a trust in each other, forged a respect for each other, we even began to need each other. But then you crashed into our visceral entanglement and you dislodged all i'd spent years building with one soft accidental huff. My capacity to love is limited at best, so in order to let you in I had to banish the security of my demons. Of course they were furious, and now when they return their horns are sharp and their intentions sordid.
I suppose what I am praying to discover is whether the hours of clarity and bliss make up for the subsequent bedlam. But of course this query doesn't plague me long. Because as the sun rises so do your lids they flutter open and let their innards consume- and once again I lose my rationality in your irises. My trepidation leaks from the ducts atop your lashes and I resent my doubt. How can something so beautiful possibly be toxic? Is this desire for pain and unease pathological? Will it ever release me? Must I release it? Your sleep cycle is my traffic light, a red, green, amber fog. You dare me to rush with you, teasing as my mangled engine revs. Will victory earn your devotion? Does the steering wheel spin a reciprocated tale? Could this quest cleanse my desecrated guilt? Yet alas delicate, powerful creature, retaining no regard to logic or lust; I am simply too drunk to drive.
I gave in to your charm unwillingly, kicking and screaming my resolve fought, wept, then fled - the new self assured delusion that your admiration animated from the moldy cells that littered my valves was stronger than any walls i'd built to protect me from affinity. But once you closed your eyes those walls returned. Their guard off duty. This time however they did not stay dormant, they were not there to protect - they were built for attack. My cage of solitude became an implement of war. I was handed a lease to cruelty and torture; my new homes, one for the summer, one for the fall. The murky pools of acceptance I had so naively bathed in began to corrode. My mouth filled with the black sludge of dependence, it coated my lungs and every breath became a battle. Allowing myself to drown was not martyrdom; no matter how much I wished it was. I simply forgot how to swim. No voice to lead me, no optics to rescue me, no hope in hell. I was alone. Abandoned easily, without sharp eyes to guide my morality it ceased to exist.
However on the surface I was happy. Ecstatic at the slightest whiff of longing from your direction. You were never to know how unhinged I had become, or suggestively how deranged I always was. The screams in my head that punctuated your innocent snuffling were only audible to me. My smile imprisoned the wailing. Nicotine-stained teeth were the bars that contained my torment. Kept like a convict by the near art of fitting in. Your torture was ward to an inaccurate painting of me, a wax scuffed less-than-idyllic replica. But further beyond that I was the captive of gloom. The loud infinite admission that under my skull was nothing but ill feeling and calculated revenge dangled before me the keys to my freedom The morose orchestra of clinking metals sang furiously through my mind. It incubated true fear. There was always fear.
You stiffen when I embrace you. A scowl curves your brow. Perhaps you're dreaming of combat, to you the cautious touch of my nervous hand is a balled fist launching across your subconscious, not a lost frightened girl seeking validation. Or perhaps I am a pitied enemy in your mirage, my claws pleading and desperate. Ironically the accuracy reaches beyond your fabricated scenery. My desolation is obnoxious. It roars across my face. But perhaps even you are unaware of my pathetic hunger. Perhaps to you this hour is reserved for sleep and I am but an intruder demanding attention in a time you allocate to blank dry rest. You know nothing of the way my brain is crawling with fury, the intrusive thoughts and the endless loathing. You are adrift on a cloud of ignorance, and no matter how hard I throw my spears you remain imperceptible. When will I give up anticipation? When, if ever, will your bubble pop?
There was a time when my monsoon was mine alone. I kept it in check with a cemented routine of solitude and abrasion. Me and my illness grew fond of each other throughout those intimate meetings. I learned to cherish it for what it was; irreversible and fascinating. We mastered a trust in each other, forged a respect for each other, we even began to need each other. But then you crashed into our visceral entanglement and you dislodged all i'd spent years building with one soft accidental huff. My capacity to love is limited at best, so in order to let you in I had to banish the security of my demons. Of course they were furious, and now when they return their horns are sharp and their intentions sordid.
I suppose what I am praying to discover is whether the hours of clarity and bliss make up for the subsequent bedlam. But of course this query doesn't plague me long. Because as the sun rises so do your lids they flutter open and let their innards consume- and once again I lose my rationality in your irises. My trepidation leaks from the ducts atop your lashes and I resent my doubt. How can something so beautiful possibly be toxic? Is this desire for pain and unease pathological? Will it ever release me? Must I release it? Your sleep cycle is my traffic light, a red, green, amber fog. You dare me to rush with you, teasing as my mangled engine revs. Will victory earn your devotion? Does the steering wheel spin a reciprocated tale? Could this quest cleanse my desecrated guilt? Yet alas delicate, powerful creature, retaining no regard to logic or lust; I am simply too drunk to drive.
Sunday, 1 February 2015
Breakfast
The shattered fragments of china were of varying sizes. The littler chunks that littered the room were an opaque hue of green; a sugar bowl perhaps, or an ornate cup. The bigger pieces were obviously plates - smashed like fireworks and exploded in shards across the ceramic tile. The way they spread across the room was a mine field - the nightmarish quest of a shoeless adventurer. But blood from nicked toes was not enough payment for this crime.
A black lake spread across a chequered plain. Oozing with a friendly morning steam which ascended in a mist to the default cream sky. The lake was advancing, stemming from a weeping glass tunnel with a snapped plastic handle. It shrouded the red and white squares that were unfortunate enough to be stagnant in its path and it ran for the edge of that plain. In a feat of escape, or with the thirst for an end, the lake dropped beyond the plastic coated horizon and slid to the mystery of the ground below. One drop at a time it leapt to freedom; if it survived the glass would not know.
What was that sharp demanding note? A pitch violent screeching, monotonous and endless. Was it a warning? What was it warning of? The accompanying flash of red was like a light house signal; screaming 'please, please, please' to those ignorant to danger. It passed through the dense smoke that was quickly filling that place like a navy ship search light through a sea-hung mist. But like a singular match in the depths of a chasm - it could do nothing to help.
The licks of orange were hungry today. They passed through the world feasting on victims of cheap fabric and dry leaves. Able to be where ever a banquet lay, invited by the accidental slip of a hand, or the heat of the sun. Today the slip was of feet; the dance of spilt coffee - which lead to a soft skull on a hard floor. The licks tasted the woman tenderly at first; savouring the initial raw lashes of flesh. Delectable and virginal. But the flames had been growing ravenous since they left the charred breakfast exhausted in the pan, snacking on curtains and cabins in preparation for their main feast.
The coffee wept for its careless mistake and the drops picked up pace, thinking that maybe were they able to catch the licks in time they could stop them from gorging on the woman who gave those drops life. But the battle had already been lost, the moment her slipper lost contact with the ground. The fire's gluttony consumed her, drooling blue heat and roaring with a thousand degree bite. The only solace the murderous spillage could cling to, was that the damage to her lungs caused by the friendly coiling smoke would kill her long before she felt herself becoming a meal for the heat. At least that was what it thought; but of course it could not hear her scream.
A black lake spread across a chequered plain. Oozing with a friendly morning steam which ascended in a mist to the default cream sky. The lake was advancing, stemming from a weeping glass tunnel with a snapped plastic handle. It shrouded the red and white squares that were unfortunate enough to be stagnant in its path and it ran for the edge of that plain. In a feat of escape, or with the thirst for an end, the lake dropped beyond the plastic coated horizon and slid to the mystery of the ground below. One drop at a time it leapt to freedom; if it survived the glass would not know.
What was that sharp demanding note? A pitch violent screeching, monotonous and endless. Was it a warning? What was it warning of? The accompanying flash of red was like a light house signal; screaming 'please, please, please' to those ignorant to danger. It passed through the dense smoke that was quickly filling that place like a navy ship search light through a sea-hung mist. But like a singular match in the depths of a chasm - it could do nothing to help.
The licks of orange were hungry today. They passed through the world feasting on victims of cheap fabric and dry leaves. Able to be where ever a banquet lay, invited by the accidental slip of a hand, or the heat of the sun. Today the slip was of feet; the dance of spilt coffee - which lead to a soft skull on a hard floor. The licks tasted the woman tenderly at first; savouring the initial raw lashes of flesh. Delectable and virginal. But the flames had been growing ravenous since they left the charred breakfast exhausted in the pan, snacking on curtains and cabins in preparation for their main feast.
The coffee wept for its careless mistake and the drops picked up pace, thinking that maybe were they able to catch the licks in time they could stop them from gorging on the woman who gave those drops life. But the battle had already been lost, the moment her slipper lost contact with the ground. The fire's gluttony consumed her, drooling blue heat and roaring with a thousand degree bite. The only solace the murderous spillage could cling to, was that the damage to her lungs caused by the friendly coiling smoke would kill her long before she felt herself becoming a meal for the heat. At least that was what it thought; but of course it could not hear her scream.