The exchange

 

The exchange happened at the end of a world
Without a word, without a gesture.

A clear night was thus born
The city purred at its feet.

His heart was no longer the matter
He gave her the most beautiful thing he’d ever made.

She hurriedly wrapped herself in the rainbow cloth
She was no longer cold.

Her own heart filled with pulsing joy
She listened to the lightwaves of love
She slept, and slept, and slept.

When she woke up, lightyears later,
She unfurled wingsongs covering the night:
He knew the world would never be the same again

He knew he’d bleed, every day, and not quite heal each time
Waking up to the city drowning in a sleepless coldfire
He’d hear ghosts calling out his fading name
Unrecognising it, slowly, slowly too thin to be heard.

The clothsheen faded, quasarcoloured the night instead
He knew chaos had begun long before the exchange happened
Entropy fractalled into his very frame, from the onset of worlds.

Never once questioning the concatenation of souls
He stepped in the darkflow with his eyes wide open.

The citylights faded into the quietest, dreamless sleep
And the night was of the deepest, most vibrant dark
That it might have been the bottom of the ocean
That it might have been the deepest recess of space.

The exchange was finally complete
Holding his moonheart in the palm of his hands.

Coherence

 

"The modern masses do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience… What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part."

in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

 

Through time, time (un)conquered

 

“...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

The Sound and the Fury (1929), William Faulkner (1897-1962)

 

Pell-mell pictures

 

Blues

 

hanging moon

 

How do you

How do you get back to a time

when everyone you knew was good

and kind, and patient, and soft

– you don’t, says a voice within.

How do you find a loved one again

when they’ve moved away

from who they used to be

– you don’t, it whispers firmly.

How do you find the peace within,

that which was before and is no more

and not give in to the rage

– you don’t, rage all the way, it sneers.

How do you get back to being loved,

regarded, and not just casually checked,

given cold shoulders and rearward looks

– you don’t, silence is the price of the spurned

– you, love, hate, have no reason to exist, it mocks.

How do you, how do you do all this

without going nuts, how do you not

want to set everything on fire and,

and leave the world an absolute ruin

– you do, and whining is the fastest way to a CVA

– everyone’s nuts, the world is on fire, look around

– get on with it, tears are useless in this dead world.

How do you go about just breathing

when the absence of love smothers

when life is – life is beyond your words

– love is that bitch thing that squirms in its sleep

– people can’t bother when they barely get by

– we all hurtle down the wormhole, ill at ease

– our bodies cumbersome, fragile machines

– vain every effort to love, hate, talk, search

– your concepts a waste – your worries pointless

How do you – how do you, you keep asking,

– so let me tell you how real reality is

– since your brain doesn’t seem to twig

– life’s not done with you all at all

– it simply doesn’t factor you in –

– your how-do-yous are gargles in space

– love, hate, feelings are constructs, life isn’t

– that point was missed from the get-go

– and I don’t hear you howdoyou about it

– ask the right question, or die like the rest of them –

In case of heartbreak

 
In case of heartbreak, be blue,
take a glass of wine, and another
but you’ll also want to do
a couple things so it’s not a bother
things that’ll pull your sanity through:
grab tissues, booze, and a mirror.

In case of heartbreak, shatter
your hopes and expectations,
they stab the soul like a dagger
pinch the heart, punch the guts,
each a station of rage a notch up,
leave a taste like silt in the mouth.

Better let curiosity guide your step
– it is a much softer, finer feeling,
it leaves the fingertips alert
– and tense – keeps the mind sharp
– it also dulls the will, dulls the senses
because let’s be brutally honest:
you’ll need a lot of dulling.

Yet do not – under any circumstance –
and I cannot stress this enough:
DO NOT LET THE SILENCE TAKE HOLD
– for you cannot trust your thoughts –
– because in such a heartbreak –
none of these thoughts are truly yours.

In case of heartbreak – break glass –
do cry, do rage, do go sleepless
– both heart and mind need this –
and if you become a fucking shambles
– let sadness invade, pervade
so you can come crashing down –
– obliterate all life out of your existence –
and forget everything and everyone.

In case of heartbreak, letting go is behovely
– pick up the pieces, glue the puzzle back –
with self-love and care, sullenly if need be
– ‘suddenly’ certainly not recommended –
let the wound gapeopen for a while
– then cram a handful of salt in it,
clench your teeth – and saw it shut –

And if your loved one calls back, do not pick up –
if messages pour in, do not read them –
if your loved one reaches out, just leave –
– trust me, it’s best that you walk away –
revived hopes have always set worlds on fire
spurred expectations are bound to rupture
and spill tar eventually bursting into flames.

In case of heartbreak, you’ll walk alone,
but it doesn’t mean the work can’t be done,
it doesn’t mean you won’t get there
– wherever and whatever ‘there’ is –
it doesn’t mean you’re not worth the fight
– heartbreaks grind the heart, efface the soul –
yet when they stop, for they do stop,
they always leave rich ground to start afresh.

 

Fire-nze

 

Fin de jour