Wednesday 20 September 2023

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 –

Monday 18 September 2023

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.
 

Wednesday 13 September 2023

Spurned on


"Spurned pity can turn into cruelty just as spurned love turns into hate."


in Aphorisms (1880/1893), by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)

Saturday 9 September 2023

Ghost ship

– fable fading now like a frayed,

sunbleached atlas

– unmoored, left to the currents

– gathering headway towards 

the edge of the map

– oblivious to the homeport marks

– yet calling at foreign ports

– making time to anchorage elsewhere

– seemingly shoaling a chance course

– – now known never to return – –

– despite its casual erring

– sails always in sight

– hovering the homedock

– – it is time to storm the doldrums – –

– tonight, the locks to the harbour

shall be shut – till the seas sweep away

that fata morgana of a ship –

thirty thousand people

The day was torn and grim birds yet began to sing as if they knew nothing’s eternal and old gives way to new that man, one day, will fall t...