Freedom in the shadow

 

"All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible."

Doris Lessing (1919-2013), novelist and Nobel laureate, as quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 18.

Corps mourant

 
watching the cormorant
alert, scan the river
plucking torn feathers off –
bitter taste in the mouth
of the weary, backstabbed,
morose office worker

Three, or two, or one

"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."

William Faulkner (1897-1962), interview in The Paris Review of 1956.

Enough

 
Not everything was stolen, of course, but enough was robbed. Enough that I cannot love anymore. It was not just the one robbery, of course, it happened over many years. One kiss, one tryst, one relationship at a time. “I’ll take this,” they said, “who cares if it leaves a hole.” “He won’t mind,” they thought, “he has a lot of love left anyway.” “He’ll pull through,” they reasoned, “heartaches never killed anyone.”

Like this one day on a hike when I saw a procession of mountain rams circling around the dead body of a black fox. At the time obscure explanations seemed the most obvious. Now that I am the fox, I know enough.

Leave me alone so that I don’t have to harness my breath, so that I can freely cycle to and from work, simply, Monday to Friday.

Leave me alone so that I can do my work without interruptions, so that I don’t have to overthink about past and present miseries. I want to be able to enjoy my evening walks, my weekend cooking and nightly reading, alone, unperturbed – undoubtedly sad but assured that the certainty of hurt has gone, or has at least abated enough that I can move about untroubled, assured that I can pour over my books uninterrupted, with the obsession of those yearning for answers who yet doubt everything.

Leave me alone so that I can enjoy my episodic sleep, my epic and magnificent dreams and nightmares. Let me enjoy the carefully-nurtured illusion that I could ever have been and done enough.

And no, you cannot ask me to learn to love again. I am too old and tired for that balancing act. I have seen enough. You’ve robbed me of enough. My heart is like those petrified skeletons in the natural history museum: chipped, glued back together with dirt, with bits missing and instead bits of wood and rocks in the crevices, hanging by invisible threads from the ceiling, weightless, gathering dust, projecting ghostly shadows when the moon shines through the windows.

Yes, leave me alone. Now, and for good. Enough is enough.

Had you by chance any fear, may they rest comforted in the assurance I shan’t need any help, for I have gone beyond that. Leave me alone in the tundra of solitude, when the body tenses and melts when touched, eager and desperate, weary and numb.

The body will rebel, of course, but the mind is resolute.

I’ve had enough.

 

Aar

 

The desperate and the mad

Folk say to look for the light within

and for the light above

beacons in a world of obscurity

but when every light goes out

it’s all dark, isn’t it

all dark

and in a world of fugitives

the person lighting the candle

will appear as either

the saviour or the traitor

the brave or the fool

the desperate and the mad

no light is eternal but darkness

only darkness can remain

 

Middles

 
Someone once wrote
that all beginnings
and all endings of
the things we do
are untidy

Vast understatement
if you ask me
as all the middles
are nothing short of
chaotic

Often one thinks
– so…this is how it ends
– how can life go on
– this storm can’t be weathered
– what is the fecking point

One thinks those things
when one feels gutted out
and all one can taste is ash
life a pile of smoggy ruins
and breathing feels sticky
like molasses, lumpy
when one feels
the heaviness in the lungs
the gurgling within the chest
the very air mud, like
bubbles slowly surfacing
as if wading through silt
murdering your lungs
when one has to run
for one’s life
gasping for more air
as the sludge gargles in

This, this isn’t the beginning
this, is far from being the end
this is the middle we all know
tougher than last week’s bread
gnarlier than a knot in a plank

Middles are hurricanes
to be embraced

This, is chaos.
This, is life.
 

This is no longer home

On the train back to the old place

unsure if any memory is left there

Surely there must be

an old cigarette burn hissing

embers fusing with the darkness

a cracking bone echoing

like a stapler under

the father’s fist

Yet there aren’t any

even the scars

have stopped itching

so there must be little left

there to hurt, or even faze

Life then was unquiet and

demanded a constant vigil

drier than sunbleached grass

colder than any Arctic blast

storms known to claim lives 

Life, now, is a different kind of unquiet

seeking peace like one parched an oasis 

Yes, there are dark memories

there in the old place

but they do not — cannot —

open old wounds

these simply do not exist anymore

the scars visible only when

the skin is tightened or

under a magnifying glass

or tanned, gorged on sun, or

rippling under a lover’s touch.

 

Silly little details

 
You said
it was the way
I looked at you
played with your fingertips
drowned in your eyes

starving your skin
you felt happiness again

your very words
butterflies in droves

stomachquake of love

yes, happiness

I held as long as I could
until you went home
and fucked your partner
for yes, of course
he took precedence
over everything
and of course
I wasn’t legitimate
in any way
and you were a butterfly
intoxicated on fields of flowers
and I happened to have one
ready to bloom

I let you pick
bunches by the armful
you smelt them to exhaustion
examined each
cupped in your hands
then lovingly
you sapped them all
one by one wilted
until the hill, sombre, faded
and you went home
content, sated by
all of those silly little details
which, somehow, mattered
but, eventually, didn’t

who knows how many fields
how many silly little details
laid to waste there

I held as long as I could
until you went to love more
someone more deserving
and let’s face it, better
with all my silly little details
folded up in two
in a fraying petal
soon forgot
inconsequential
in the grand face of
the supernova
of your other love

 

Us all

Death born as us

borne within us

every second of every minute

not even masquerading or posing

undetectable not because 

it is a part of us

but because it is us

not even waiting to be

just being

Existing

as us

innocent until darkened

innocuous until stained

until the will to live eternal

grips it at its core

wrenches the madness

inside its shell

until finally, when the time has come

a time not even it could determine

it unleashes life as its ultimate weapon

killing us with an overabundance of it

cells upon cells upon cells

feeding us the life it takes from us

feasting with a gargantuan appetite 

until monstrous, adipose, ignoble

deformed beyond belief and recognition

now a behemoth, yet celerous and cunning 

with unlimited resources and craft

infests and corrupts, multiform

unique and multiple

insatiable, unoblivious but adamant

because in fine the lifeblood

can flow eternal

life only matters

its fear of death killing it eventually

Unstoppable, suicidal

outpacing our ability to cope 

with its greed, its power

the aporia irreconcilable 

killing us eventually

for just being

a cell, a soul, us all –

It starts, and ends, with us.