Posted on by authorialintentions

Before, behind, beyond, and blind

 

I often wonder what it would be like to return to the house that had contained us all for those sordid and slowly passing years. I wonder what my mind would do if I came to directly face what had once been my prison. Often, when I think of it, I consider the conifer trees. In truth, those trees, are the first thing that springs to my mind; accompanied by an initial image of the exterior of the house from a certain angle. Always initially the same angle. But its always those trees.

Perhaps they hold such significance because they grew as I did, alongside me, on the outside. I remember them at a few different stages, but the variations are spread over time that cannot be accurately gauged or entirely trusted. Tiny saplings standing to attention like weak inexperienced infantry; on basic training, deployed to their fated service; committed but not yet sure of what they have been strategically deployed to defend, not yet knowing their purpose and ignorant to the politics that bubble away underneath the surface of their service.

They were so scrawny. so short and feeble; innocent and fresh. Perfectly aligned along the perimeter, the majority of them in 2 rows, one shorter than the other, linked by those that arced around the curve of green to make more pronounced the shape of the hellish corner plot on which the semi-detached stood. I wonder how strong they are now, and whether they know their purpose. I wonder how tall they stand and whether the man of the house enjoys neatening them, takes pride in the neatness of their formation, whether he considers them as a line of defence for his family or whether he allows them to become wayward until his wife’s nagging becomes too incessant to bear and so he spends the best part of a day snipping and chopping in the sunlight while contemplating the miseries of his life. I wonder if  their purpose has changed from what it once was; whether they now serve to keep the outside world out, or to keep the secrets inside the brick hidden. I wonder if they have been murdered, if they no longer served a purpose, and so, were wrenched from life to know only death and dryness.

I remember how odd they appeared when they were first planted against the backdrop of a well-established and giant patriarchal conifer that took pride of place in the middle of the front garden, shielding the lounge window from the outside world of the cul-de-sac. It stood like a promise, a foreshadowing of their fate: that once bound to the earth there is a sense of the inescapable, some doomed inevitability that the weak will become strong, one way or another, and that any growth is bound by servitude from the conditions chosen for us by others.

I often tell myself that I will return to the house, that I will face it head on as though it were a living, breathing enemy. My reasonable mind sometimes kicks in: it isn’t the house, or the conifers. They aren’t to blame. They cannot be. Yet among the confusion of symbols, and layers of possible meaning that makes all of this exactly what it is, those trees, and that house, are all there is left. There is no paper. There is no man, or woman. Just me, and that house, whose walls formed my prison, doubly guarded by those trees, know the whole truth. Only myself and them remain. We are the residue. The remnants of the aftermath. Those that continue to serve and keep secrets.

A few months ago, whist sitting in a coffee shop, I sprang to my feet, closed my laptop, and set off to see the trees.

The drive was excruciating. I did not know if they would greet me. I did not know if they still lived. I hoped, despite all that they represent, that they would still be there. I wanted them to hide the house from me. I realised, as I drove through winding country roads, that I was relying on them to protect me from the house. They once served a purpose to keep passing eyes from looking past the plot’s perimeter and into the secret space dominated by the depravity beyond the glass of the wide bay window. Now, I hoped that the purpose they once served for another’s desires would serve to protect me. I turned the corner into the cul-de-sac to find myself sufficiently greeted, but unprotected.

Posted on by authorialintentions

5 minute deadline #2

 

 

Skimming the scenery of this innocent space,
Where now each blink creates, not a trace,
or a droplet, but a torrent tide to tour the mind,
the page; a pace, a place, set for the tragic,

the defaced;

the sublime.

Posted on by authorialintentions

Mummy Issues

 

This is not what I chose,
You made this murderer of me.

You strove to crush this small
and choiceless hand in your grip
You smiled, I skipped; voiceless,
quick and all the while mute and blind
The stone cold soul behind your grin,
Thin grimacing lips hid invisible whips
and killer ties to bind these wrists.

This is not what I chose
You made this murderer of me.

Posted on by authorialintentions

Futile Love

 

My love for you does not exist,

For it cannot be.

For it to be, must mean it must belong

To some time and place,

To some tangible somewhere, to some version of reality.

If I claim it as my own, it must belong only to me,

Which cannot be.

And after all, which reality would you have me confine it to?

To this reality? This world of sense and smallness?

You would have me beat it to reduction?

Or densify it into visibility? So you may use blind eyes upon it,

So you may name it ‘my love for you’, and call it sure and safe?

You would have me claim it as my own, and not ours?

I cannot do that, for my love for you does not exist.

It cannot be. It is not.

Yet its magnitude, could not, would not,

be held fast in the feeble confines of this world.

There would be no room for its weightless gravity;

No space durable enough to cradle its submissive anguish

to peace. Nor to Rock its calm into a frenzied, reckless rage.

I cannot trap it here. Nor coax it to reside here,

Within some brittle walls of vain construction,

Where no human hand could hard enough whip

Its roaring silence until its deathly silence screeches and

its mute screams reach the deaf ears of oblivion.

There is no mortal death that could snuff out its vibrancy.

In its deep death, it is too alive for this world.

In its tenacious vivacity, it holds too much lively death to live here,

And in the scorching light of its life, the dark is extinguished,

And there is nothing. It is nothing.

For the light and the dark of my love cannot live here.

There is no life force capable of sustaining it.

So great that it could not be.

So entirely everything, that it could only,

ever and always,

be nothing.

It is so beyond life in its non-living that it is death itself.

beyond perishable, so dead that it can never know life.

You would have me try to murder my love?

So you can mourn at its empty grave?

And rejoice for the life you imagine it lived?

For all the evers through which time has flown,

My love can never know, yet knows all, all too well.

The never of my love would be the most present absence

So suffocating in its absent presence, it would devour,

And in its non-existence, would swallow up always.

The always here could not force its longevity upon its never,

Nor could the never of here destroy its perpetual foreverness.

It’s always is no moment, not ever, not even at all.

For in its lacking brevity, never is all time,

all moments, and all.

My love for you could not move here, nor could it be still,

For it is the sluggish-slow drag of the noiseless crawl

And the echoing shriek of purity,

at the mercy of the plummeting fall.

This world could not prevent its motionless plunge

into the unreachable depths of a life-lit pit

filled with the fluid of bleached black stone,

where depraved restraints hold virtuous freedom.

And you would have me blot out its innocence?

Strip it of its murky light?

And rape it of its radiant corruption?

So that it may lay it at your feet, life and deathless,

So you may fixed it there, and call it stable and purged?

It is a void filled vacancy; the most absent of presence,

So vast in its everything, that it could only be nothing,

And so singular, that it is everything and all;

All at once, everything and all, yet nothing at all.

Yet you, you would have me reduce everything?

And make something out of nothing?

You would have me house my love here,

In the illusory ramparts of this reality?

It cannot be, for it does not exist.

It cannot live here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by authorialintentions

The Boy Between Us

 

The boy between us inflames our faces

And fuels the feud in this decade long fight

It’s been a war alright, and it’s not over yet.

 

In fact, it began before the boy was between us.

I would not be trained in your regime

Nor tamed with pretty leather treats

Or meet your guidelines of what a woman should be

Don’t speak. Don’t learn. Don’t answer back.

Don’t you dare defy me!

During those years, to your annoyance,

All those orders fell on deafened ears

I’ve heard it all before

Just spat at me in a different tongue, a viler voice

But then, before, when I had no choice, no means of defence

I stored it all up, ready for the likes of you.

You don’t understand, this small iron and immovable frame

Was forged by far worse than you

See, long ago I was trained from a pup

Tethered to far worse than you

Do you hear me? Far worse than you.

Given music in exchange for silence

Given bruises to gain compliance

And when I say tethered, I mean tied,

And when I say tied, I mean bound and gagged.

And for all they trying and all the times

My leader led the way and yanked me back

Tired and trapped by the hand that held the leather strap

But that hand was stronger than yours

 

Then freedom came and began my reign of defiance

No more choked cries,

pillow-covered eyes

No more dead I

Do you hear me?

You will be fought to you death,

not mine.

 

 

 

Posted on by authorialintentions

Soundtrack

Voices guiding;

Bribing,

deep in negotiation.

 

Volumes fighting;

striving,

Slice in to speak.

 

Overarching shrieks

from drowning,

bitter tongues

fade to muffled tones.

 

Some sweet sounds hide,

heard underneath

Chip in, chime in

And in between with

Subtle chords to fit

That let rip and

land on the page,

or hover there –

mid-air to cause

a swarming war of rage

where ragged words

sing major slurs and

minor scales play shame.

Posted on by authorialintentions

A Ballelegy of Paternity

This tale to be told, of a man and his mind

Will tell of the power behind his decline

A terrible fiend lurked deep in his head

That cruelly and craftily led him to death.

 

A short life lived long while awaited the grave,

For the victim, through frenzied life, displayed

A tempestuous tongue full of venomous rage

Whipped franticly through its deceptive cage.

 

Deeds, like thorns, stab and prick with spiky tips

Like pointy pins they puncture skin, and yank to rip

Some land on fresh and perfect flesh,

While some seek scars to sink within.

 

 

In shallow sleep comes the jagged old man

Who feasts through the night on a cunning plan

Luring and luring; he reels in his prey

With bait of false promise of peace to claim

He coaxes the dreamer to follow his way.

 

 

The jagged old man lies clenched in wait

For the lids of the dreamer to open the gate

While poised on the brink of the realms of dark

He moves to the beat of the slowing heart

 

Step,

By step,

By step,

With creaking old limbs

He creeps to the dreamer

and taps to come in.

 

 

Crusted flesh forms the rim of a noxious cave

Where seeping sores wept tears of decay

The taut skin splits as parted lips move to speak

Exposing peaks of shards of teeth

Browned and weak, corroded and seared,

From the acidic breath of thousands of years.

 

 

Forth was forced a crackling sound

From the hollow of his dusty chest

Where could be found, no more no less,

A blackened heart that barely beats

 

 

And coming around from their rested phase

Shrivelled lungs recall their ways:

An arid wheeze progressed to a rasp,

Then the jagged old man spoke out at last.

 

Posted on by authorialintentions

The New Cage

When he let me go, he didn’t set me free. He set himself free so that he wouldn’t have his freedom taken from him. He died inside walls of metal and glass, not within the concrete box that he deserved. He chose his way out to reach his freedom and disregarded me as he made his planned exit route his own reality. I often wish he had taken me with him but I know he couldn’t have done that.

 

I was the by-product.

The leftovers after a feast.

The residue.

 

He built for me, instead, a cage. Its construction took years of careful crafting and, gradually, it formed well – sturdy and strong. He prepared it for me. It laid in wait for the day that I would inhabit it; for the day he would send me to it.

 

Of course, he hid it from me. I hadn’t seen it until the day that I came to be trapped in it. It jarred me because, for a fraction of the most peaceful of moments, I thought I was free. You would have thought I was used to being shut away, but that brief moment, and the intricacies of that new cage, with its complex locks, and ever-changing structure, was a different kind of cage. A pretty hell of his design, except this time, I was alone, and he was free.

 

 

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Shards

 

 

I found a piece at the foot of the cherry tree.

Ever so slightly, the rounded worn tip peeked

out from the earth. The rest of it hid; nestled,

embedded and muddied by the soiled years.

 

I found a piece wedged in a concrete slab.

Buried deep in dust in a hairline crack.

I must have dropped it when I lost my fear

of the crane flies that danced drowsily

in arcs across the path.

 

I found a piece stored in the corner of the varnished frame.

Flush to the portraits flat back, pinned against the virgin wall,

trapped behind stained times. I must have saved it there,

when I fled from him, and raced up the stairs.

 

All these shards

scattered through

the years of the past.

I did not gather them up.

I did not reclaim them,

or take them in.

Nor did I devour them.

I left them there

in their shallow graves

where I alone

can grieve them.

I let them remain

and kept them safe;

like scars, like stains,

like sharpened bones

at home on secret,

sordid thrones.

 

Posted on by authorialintentions

The Lie

 

Time does not heal a thing.

All those wise types with comforting

Voices in soft, sympathetic tones,

Declaring the magic of time.

Well, they lie.

Time heals nothing much.

Time is not magic.

It is what it is. An invention.

If the wound is scratched often enough,

Day by day-

How can anything heal?

The scab picked at, mithered over,

Almost healed. Pretending to heal.

Itching from underneath.

If you are lucky, the damage site does not spread,

You are left with a scaly silver streak that once wept

A blot that time only teases at.

A constant reminder, but mocking time.

Deceptive, aching, viscious time,

Does not really heal a thing.