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At the Edge of Silence The ceiling grieves, a vast landscape of mourning, tumbling above me like the sea. I lie below, fighting as ever with panic coiled behind my ribs, flicking its tongue at my throat. Televised voices infringe on the peripheries, imprinting themselves on the walls. Wind yelps and howls in the garden chasing its tail, as rain drags nails down window panes. What dreams will follow when the ocean finally pours heavy over me, and I slide, on the undertow of a yawn into sleep? |
Reflections of Anna Put this picture on your wall above a fireplace warm and red, the bones have risen, the white has spread over skin hollowed with darkness. A ghost glows dully in the frame a memory never solidly formed, lost but not yet missed or mourned, sits wispily in the glass. Fingers grip and clutch at life but sustenance must not be found, no growth allowed to curve or round this child to womanhood. Limbs too long, too pale now, jutting hips and shoulder blades these lines are not beauty that fades but swift departing breath; and yet this image is set to warp, its shape will change under shifting eyes, it will spread and redesign its size to trick a shadow into shrinking. |
Fighting the Seasons This time is the hardest when days are starved, nights grown gluttonous and fat brooding heavily, consuming the hours claimed by the dark, and the light falls submissive Cold grips us in its fist, leaving everything short of breath. Trees cry their tears like old and withered letters long unread, littering the ground with forgotten sentiments drawn by a gravity that seems to hold us more firmly. A barren beauty can be found in the skeletal landscape (as in a chalk sketch hastily done) and memory reassures that the sun will find the strength again to warm us. |
A Sense of Falling Lately I have been muddied. Not blank like unspoilt paper but full of junk and the ends of stagnant conversations still smouldering like ashtrays. There is no way out it seems, no doorways or openings to make good my escape; this.is.all.there.is. I went abroad, the flight a scream across a darkened sky, breathed in the air of a different place, ate up the sun, and the moon that first night on a silent beach when nothing was solid; least of all me. Distance helped me to lose time, sweep clean the spaces I inhabit brush away the usual debris; find some sanctity and peace in transience. Yet even now back at the hard surface of my life I cannot seem to find an foothold. |