Fragment #196

The long and short of it lasted more so

than anything she'd seen, and it left her

– panting – sweating – and looking up at him –

both still slightly discombobulated –

A middle-class death

When are we supposed to reach

the age at which our rest is due?

We are tired

– tired of looking after others,

our elders and youngers –

– the first bailing out as soon as possible – 

– the second deferring for as long as they can –

We are left with the toil and the sweat,

the emptiness of our feelings and of our lives

– the very subject of the shows we watch –

We are tired of stretching ourselves

across such vast distances,

our minds numbed with pain

and impossible tasks.

We long to rest – perhaps even

waste our lives, unoccupied,

unaccompanied, slothful –

for the prospects of being too frail and sick

to be able to rest when our work is done

– out of breath and having achieved little –

– unable or unwilling to have sex, do sports –

– life suddenly just a distraction,

death the justification –

– and endpoint:

bedridden, committed, parked and underfed:

how could we escape this middle-class death,

we ask you – the answer more deafening

than the fucking Big Bang

– and we’re expected to go down

with a barely-heard whimper –

>TI<

 

Si demain tu te sens seule

pense à moi

et embrasse-moi

comme cette nuit-là

si demain tu te sens seule

cherche-moi 

au fond de ton cœur

au fond de ton corps

et embrasse-moi

tous deux à portée de mots

à se perdre dans les sens

enlacés, éternels, sans maux

pendant des milliers d’instants

perdus, retrouvés, ancrés

en chacun, insoucieux

des autres, des années,

dans l’échancrure du temps

dans l’absence de lieu

ici, ailleurs, partout, présents

à CMA

Luck

 

eyes-spangle meteor-like

gyres souls and clouds effortlessly

yet it landed next to me

Soon, you said

 

‘Soon’, you said, but soon never came.

It died in the next day’s dust.

‘Soon,’ you said, ‘I’ll get better’.

‘Soon’, you said, and soon did come.

Like a tornado levelling towns down.

‘Soon,’ you said, ‘I’ll show you my heart’.

‘Soon’, you said. It meant all, and naught.

You knew we would never meet again,

but keep each other where we keep secrets,

where truths streak like lightning bolts,

outbursts of brilliance in the night sky.

‘Soon’, you said. But the rain came first.

Summer and snow followed suit.

Seasons passed sooner than your ‘soon’.

And years later, like a remanent déjà vu,

soon happened, for you casually forgot.

‘Soon is an aurora in broad daylight,’ you said.

Except it wasn’t. I lived for that soon

like others pray to an invisible god.

Soon is a strip of land on the horizon,

soon is a shaft of sun through the clouds.

Yet this is what you meant all along.

I read what my heart yearned for,

not what yours couldn’t possibly give.

That ‘soon’ you said was a memory

etched on the wind of your breath,

a whispered reminder to hold on

or to let go, for this ‘soon’

you’ve now placed it in my hands.

Dandelion

 

I am a dandelion in the sun

waiting for a

sudden gust of wind

to blow away

any minute now

I seem to remember

a memory not my own

nectar stuck in the stem

for a spell, unstuck

any minute now

The wind in the trees

traces rays of dusk

on the grass

last chance to belong

any minute now

I wish oh I wish

time slowed and sped 

the hands on the clock

moving sunward

any minute now

I am a dandelion in the sun

lest the nightdew

petrifies images

of heartbreak

any minute now

Embrace the wind

be done with it

any minute now

the sphere perfected

only to disperse

any minute now

I am

echo

 

happiness happens when

we’re the least capable of seeing it

—

in faint microbursts of love

—

unrecognisable until years later

when looking back polishes the moment

removes the grain and the dust

—

its lustre gently caressing

both mind and heart

—

then happiness is felt

and rewards the bearer

with a loud, unexpected echo

Together is a space

 

"Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts, nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them – keep what is worth keeping – and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."

 
Dinah Mulock Craik (1826–87) A Life for a Life (1859)

 

Fallow

If you think you’ve had enough

perhaps you have

If you think you’re not enough

perhaps you aren’t 

If you think something is impossible

perhaps it is

—

But if you think you’ve had enough love

ask an old person if they feel they ever have

If you think you’re not brave enough

look at the scars in and out of your heart

If you think life is impossible

water the grass coming out of the concrete

And you will see

Letting go

 

I didn’t know but letting go of someone I’ve never met is the hardest thing to do on this dratted planet. I’ve let go of ghosts, friends, demons, good habits, bad habits. I’ve let go of memories, dead people, distant people. I’ve let go of parts of me which I thought were innate, but ultimately were inane. I almost added an ‘s’ in there. Of all the toughest decisions I’ve had to make over the years, this has got to be the most difficult one. Letting go of someone I have never met.

I had an ideal, once, and once only, and it was taken away from me. She was all I didn’t know I needed, and she had stepped into my night like a dream. The day I met her was daily nondescript. No buildup to this day, no chance of me thinking I’d meet my ideal person. So when I did, Death was amused, and after a time adorned it with tubes and a ventilator, and tied its life to a thin green line drawing mountains and abysses at irregular intervals. That erratic horizon of a line had to settle between those two, where the ocean meets them, and became as still as the doldrums.

Now we’re drowned among 8 billion individuals. We’re even specked into oblivion by billions upon billions of stars and galaxies we cannot possibly ever explore. Yet when I look at her, her uniqueness shines brighter than quasars, weighs more heavily on my mind than black holes on the fabric of the universe, appears more majestic and terrible than neutron stars. This is what I feel when I think of her.

Ultimately, our lives may not matter and our decisions only affect a fraction of whatever we call the reality around us. Yet I will not get to meet her; and surely Death wouldn’t be amused again because that is not how Death works, yet it feels right all the same. Yet I cannot shake this feeling that I have that it could be she, again, even if it’s not how Life works. I didn’t know but now I do, that letting go of someone I’ve never met is the hardest thing to do on this dratted planet.

 

Shards

One day, he picked up a shard of glass.

In the street. It wasn’t anything special

but it had a nice sheen in the sun.

It was flat, for the most part

glittered like the lake in summer.

It brightened his day.

He wasn’t doing too well at school.

Hank and his clique had stolen his lunch.

Again. Stepped on his shoes. Again.

Miss Atterby said he was slow,

he overheard her at parents’ evening.

Said he would struggle his whole life.

Later that night he heard his dad say

“What we going to do with him?”

His mom didn’t say a word.

Life was like that. 

His dad drank and shouted and punched.

His mom didn’t speak, cried and made dinner.

He liked to watch the grass grow

and the sun make shadows

and sometimes glimmer on raindrops.

He wasn’t too bothered with others,

except when they stole his lunch.

He liked playing with his shard of glass.

Sunrays made it gleam real pretty

especially near the edges.

He liked it so much that he kept it in his bedroom.

Never brought it to school.

He didn’t want Hank to lay his filthy paws on it.

But he missed it every minute.

He rushed home as soon as the bell rang.

Sighed with relief unhiding the shard.

As even on rainy days it would sparkle.

One day he found another shard.

This time near the grocer’s.

When he picked it up the fat man

who always winked at his mom 

with saliva at the corner of his mouth

said “You going to cut yourself”.

He knew adults were always right,

like the time he was told not to climb the tree

in the supermarket parking lot.

He fell and broke his collarbone.

That day he thought this was death.

And then his dad beat him more,

and he knew death was worse

than breaking his collarbone.

This was just pain. A lot of it.

So he pocketed the shard of glass

making sure he didn’t cut himself.

At home he cleaned it in the bathroom sink

with some soap. Delicately. Delicately.

The light coming through the oval window

made it shine so bright he closed his eyes.

He could still see the shard shimmer.

Then he put it in the box, with the other.

He played with one at a time only

because he didn’t want to cut himself

like the fat greengrocer has said he would.

It was like playing with the surface of the lake

every glint weaving around his fingers.

But one day he tried playing with both

and he saw they kind of fitted together.

They fitted so well he couldn’t pull them apart.

He couldn’t even see the line between them.

It was easier this way to play with them,

he thought, so he left it at that.

The glisters like liquid light 

bright, bright

the only flicker in his life.

Life had no flicker for him, though:

school, no school, lunch, no lunch

dad drunk, mom crying

him crying because people were mean

torn jeans, getting beat, getting more beat,

and the fat one smiling always.

Until he found another shard of glass.

And another. And another. And another.

Over the month he pieced enough

to make something

he didn’t know what it looked like

but it was like a big hollow box

with one large hole and three smaller ones

and it spangled and glimmered

like a puddle of rain with petrol in it

in the sun so unbearably beautiful.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off it.

The box was getting bigger and bigger

with things like branches popping out

and it grew bigger and bigger and prettier

so he hid it in his cupboard instead.

One day, Hank got him good though.

His clique had cornered him near the bins,

he couldn’t run any longer.

They beat him and beat him and beat him

and a rage in his heart began to grow

his mouth tasted like metal and he smelt it too.

He thought he could engulf the world in fire.

When he spat his blood on the ground

he saw swirls of colours streaking across

like mad butterflies, purple and blue and green.

His dad made fun of him when he came home

black and blue and his heart beating in his face

the rage gripped his stomach and twisted

he got so mad that he took a map of the city

in the chest of drawers in the corridor

marked all the spots where he had found a shard

so he knew where to look for new ones.

It took him a week to find as many pieces as he could.

It took another week to assemble them all together

connecting holes with holes

making a structure which eventually

looked like a costume made of glistening water

When he was done the glass

all shimmery and smooth

was flexible like his clothes

with no seam or holes but somehow

he knew he could put it on

his face still contused hurt him when he smiled

as the glass costume fitted him like a glove

he became so sheeny that people winced

and looked away, hand spread before their eyes

the sun turned him into crystal

clouds in a grey haze

on rainy days he would be imperceptible

and Hank wouldn’t come near him

and Miss Atterby stopped saying he was slow

his dad shrugged and watched the match on the telly

his mom sort of looked and didn’t look

her eyes in the distance and smiled

One day he decided to go to the lake

and if the people picnicking there had looked

they would only have seen the surface

go crazily on fire, spangling like a night sky

like a shower of meteors glitzing the blue air

like a thousand suns firing up at once

like a million dragonflies’ wings flapping

as if all light and no light in a blend

Everything within a fraction of a second.

The surface of the lake, after the explosion, was undisturbed.

Home

Be safe home, my friend.

– but home isn’t what folk think

home, my friend, is neither

the start- or the endpoint, 

nor is it the journey

– home takes you to a port,

a door, a heart, a book

– where you hang your hat

for a single night

or a lifetime

warm like a hearth

– where you sit down

in good company

exchange news about

the world and the other homes

– homers nodding in agreement

sharing bread and broth

– where you replenish

your food stores

your memories

your laughters

your hopes and dreams

your itinerary

– where you renew the caulking of

your boat

your boots

your body

and set out again

– on your own but not alone

carrying with you

things you didn’t know you needed

things you didn’t know you had

– home is the slow filling of the void

more and more complete

as your journey unfolds

– and at some point you realise that

a mountain ridge beckons like a lighthouse

a friendship guides like a compass

a smile is a cross on a treasure map

like a familiar forest or a river bend

– and when one complements the other and

together becomes the place called home

you understand it is both

the movement and that which moves

– that is what folk really talk about

when they talk about home.

– So,

Be safe home, my friend.