Remembering Tonight

It wouldn't be midnight already if I haven't had such a good day. Time has warped past me without my knowledge and I feel like I've been cheated out of fully appreciating the moments. At least they are now memories stored away, to be retrieved at my convenience, as long as I have my wits about me. 

Eventually this midnight will pile on top other memories I have made but because its only significance is remembering other good times, I probably won't remember it after a few days. But yet, beautiful she is, this night. And while I will remember none of my ramblings perhaps I will remember gazing into the star-studded night. 

Disappear

The carpet is dark and damp. I watch it drip and soak through the fibers and mingle with the dirt and dust. It begins to pool as the edges of the world begin to cloud around me. I can see nothing but my hand and the darkness on the carpet behind it. It's all mine - my doing - because my mind can't handle it anymore and the problems are closing in on me and my only escape is to relieve the pressure within my veins.

The world seems to get smaller and smaller and all that's left is the stinging in my arm. So I lay down on the dark, damp carpet to keep myself just that little bit warmer as I watch the world shrink around me and finally disappear altogether.

Feeling

In these hands, they say, you can do anything - hold the roughness of labour and stone, work the dirt into earth to bear life, hold the edge of a knife till blood runs down your arm...
...but in these hands you can't feel the bruises which gnaw at heartstrings and numb the mind. These hands can't reach them or feel them swelling and pulsating. And in the whole time we spend trying to look for a bandage which can't even wrap around or stem a flow of black blood onto the floor, we forget that there are other hands to help us through because the darkness is so thick we can only feel that and nothing else.

Vignette #9

It's well after my bedtime and I don't know what time it is anymore

I don't know what time is anymore.

I can feel the rain soaking through my coat and into my shirt underneath. It didn't feel like there was much protecting me from the elements. I can just about make out the headlight of cars coming in my direction before they speed off past me. I know that a small slip on the slippery pavement could mean me falling in front of one of these cars.

These cars are going quite fast.

Talking Tales

It's when it rains, we stay inside, hidden away from sight. All we have are the four walls for our voices to echo and bounce off into each other. At times, we would tell stories around a metaphorical campfire and talk about the untravelled grounds of our lives and how we would one day travel down them. At other times, we would let the stories tell themselves over spilled coffee and crumbs from this morning's stale toasts - these stories are often told in silence without many words if any at all.

Eventually the rain withdraws and we go back out again to enjoy the rare bit of sunlight and part ways, even for awhile, to seek more stories than the ones we tell each other. And when it rains again, we come back indoors and share the stories we gained on our journeys.

And After All That

The door shut as I realise what I am about to leave behind. I turn around only to see it still on the platform where I had left it. The train begins to move and all I can do now is watch it get further and further away and finally disappear as the train turns round a corner.

Was my fault, how it all happened. I still work it out in my head in silence from time-to-time and all I can see is the poison I had introduced into the veins of the partnership. It reverberated throughout with every pump, pulse and by the time I realised what it had done, we'd been infected from head-to-toe. So when I boarded that train with all my belongings in one bag, I found it too difficult to look back knowing that I had caused all of this.

The door was shutting as I realised what I had left behind. I turned around only to see you still standing on the platform where I had left you. The train began to move and all I could do now was watch you get further and further away from me and finally disappear as the train turned round a corner. And after all that, I wish I could say sorry now.

Running Away

I could hear the wind rustling the trees behind the beats of my headphones. Somewhere in the dark, things are still moving, still breathing.

I set off for this run about eight - night had already fallen over London and the winter cold descending on to the people and pavements below. I could have stayed in and waited for sleep to take over me but I couldn't bear the conscious hours before that happened.

You want to make it more painful. More painful.

It is about two degrees out tonight and I can feel the cold tightening its grip around my arms and legs, gnawing particularly at my ankles. This will keep me busy until bedtime and it'll help me to forget about the issues wringing my neck.

Block it all out - the memories of events you don't want to believe have happened.

It's easier to think about the pace of my run. I clocked in forty minutes on the usual five miles last time. I should be able to clock in another forty...or if not less. The headlights of cars coming in the opposite direction blind me at intervals and I find myself constantly having to readjust myself to the darkness.

You know you can't handle it. It's all flitting about in your mind. Flashbacks and glimpses...I can feel the anger and the upset flooding into my mind

I decide to turn down a road I don't normally take. I probably shouldn't be taking an alien route but I hope it'll take me a longer time to complete which will mean less time sitting on my own thinking about...everything. I can see it all, feel it all...

You know it's all there. Feel it.

I can't feel my legs. It's really cold.

It's there. You can't run away from it.

I'm not sure where I'm going now. I think I've taken a wrong turn. I can't get out.

It'll always be there. The pictures, the feelings, the...

It all needs to go the fuck away.

I'm lying on the pavement. My hands and knees grazed from the fall. I'm seeing stars and realise that I've hit my head on the way down. I can't get away from it all - I'm now sitting on the pavement, in the dark, on my own, thinking of everything I've been trying to run away from. I lean against the fence behind me and wait for the pain to pass. Cars rattle by in the mean time and I watch them disappear around the bend of the road; just makes me wish moving on was as easy as changing direction. I finally get up and make my way home, tired and tearful.

Like Cold Air

Like breath in the cold
it doesn't stay to hold your warmth.
It goes lightly into the air
tip toeing away
with every glassy exhale.

The nights turn in on itself
breaking shallow roofs with delves
and shudders of winter winds
turning stone into ice
with what's left being pined
and lost
upon hands of mistrust.

Can you wait?

There is no direction or goal in mind. Just wandering walks through this haze. I don't think there is much to expect, or even think about. I just need to know that you can wait. Can you wait?

Ironically, time is no longer an element. It is just a measurement we use to give us something to gauge our lives by so as to provide us with some guidance and a concept of place and events. With the problems and the haze I face, there is no time - there are no milestone of events or landmarks tangible enough to talk about. There's just space - wandering, directionless space. But yet I keep asking: Can you wait?

We can't hold this together without time on our side. Time isn't here, time isn't something we'll get back. All we have are lost opportunities and missing wholes of our being just because we started off lost to begin with. I would ask again, "Can you wait?" but without time, waiting would not exist - waiting would only be as mythical as men flying without wings. Perhaps night skies are too dark to see through and hazes to thick to see much further.

"Can you wait?"

"Only if you do."

Unidentifiable

I can't find very much - they are under stacks of paper, unseen, unidentifiable. I should be able to see it. I know I put them there but I think they're just buried under the mountain of work and words, passages of mispelled and unstructured essays. 

I won't see it - but when I do, it will probably be undecipherable and I probably won't even remember why I wrote it. I can't remember it now come to think of it. I just can't.

I hold it all really tightly together. The words, I mean - I hold them so tightly in my mind and squashed between the day's work that they can't breathe. They don't come out and when they do, they're just jumbled and unidentifiable scribbles on paper with black ink blotches on the side. I can't read them or see them properly. 

So I now need to find them, as they sit tucked away under some coffee-stained agreement (which I really need to find) and maybe reread it again and try to make sense of what it all means. But it might just be they are words lost and now I just need to build them up again.

It feels, however, that I've held them so tightly that they've been crushed, and completely unidentifiable.

Story

I thought I'd written the story perfectly.

It felt perfect when I had the pen on the paper and let the words just spill out - they were perfectly arranged and articulated in every sentence. But then I destroyed it by tipping black ink all over the table and by watching helplessly as the darkness seeped into the script and all over the words I'd so carefully woven together.

By the way, did I mention that this is a story of two and not just some stupid fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood? This was meant to be kept carefully under lock and key but I made a mess of it. Trying to wipe away the ink with my hands only made the black smudge and dismember what little words were left.

I think I said sorry in my haste, and tried to recover everything I could but I now accept it is gone. I remember so little of that story now - all the perfect scenes I'd painted with words are now in the dark and I can't see them any more.

But give me a chance - I'll write some more and correct the mistakes and undo the missing words to create new ones. And I promise I can, and I promise I will compose something more special then the one that went before.

Time to Go

It's time to go, honey.
The night is growing dark,
the children are now in bed
tucked away under covers
protecting them
from imagined monsters and demons
that roam their minds
and maybe it's time we left them
to grow up and grow away.

It's time to go, honey.
There's a fire eating at the edges
devouring through the middle
and it's sadness honey - our sadness
telling us that we can make it;
it pulls a veil over our eyes
and disappears into the night
leaving us blind
and stumbling in the dark.

It's time to go, honey.
It isn't working any more
and it wouldn't matter no more
about the words we would say
or the gestures we could make,
everything is now hushed
broken beyond our grasp
and the sadness is only what
we share; and it can never be the same.

It's time to go, honey
It's time for me to go.

Vignette #8

Let's talk about how you're feeling today.

Um...okay. I guess that's why I'm here. I'm feeling okay.

Silence

What do you mean by 'okay'?

I'm fine. Just okay.

How would you like today to go?

I don't know. I'm not sure what to expect.

We're here today to help you. But in order to do that, you need to say a little more. How are you really feeling?

Silence

I feel everything. Everything from sadness to anger to loneliness. I feel everything. But happy.

Okay. Do you want to run me through these emotions?

I feel sad in the mornings and I then go for a run and the sadness becomes anger which I pound into the pavement. And when I get home, I feel lonely because I've just fought an emotional battle on my own and there's no one there to help me.

Do you know where these emotions come from?

They come from  inside me - the very core of me. It's turmoil all the time. I can't help it.

Silence

Would you like to talk me through the running?

Twiddling of thumbs

It's...it's how I punish myself but reward myself at the same time...a reward because it gives me a chance to battle the feelings and kill the anger. But it's a punishment at the same time because I know I'm hurting myself. I like the pain of running with my injured ankle and the pain of running on an empty stomach. It's an accomplishment. I really do...like it.

Do you think you could be relapsing?

Silence

I don't know.

Because you..

I can sit here all day. And you wouldn't come by
like you promised.
I could pray so hard each day
but you wouldn't no the difference.
Can I make a suggestion
that you do not come back and
see me anymore?
Because you obviously don't care
so why should I in return.

No Love, Honey

No love would come of us, honey
no love would come of us.
We're too rigidly strung by life
held by mere wire which bends not
to accommodate or carress
the bodies we swore each other to.

No love would come of us, honey
the dainty lights of Kensington
shine no sentimentality on us.
We're too cold to the touch
hardly living to breathe hot air
which disappears in winter's night.

No love would come of us, honey
no love at all.
And if I could undo everything
and never have met you, I would,
and live a lonesome life
never knowing at all.

Losing Sight

You're no longer tangible
in my dreams, just fragile,
weak and blurred by distance.
We were
never meant to be
this far, so out of reach,
so out of hand, so much
a stranger to each other.

I don't believe
that you can't see me
standing here
waiting to hold you again,
keep the cold away
keep you out of harm's way,
but you grow alien to the touch.
I don't know these arms
nor these veins that pulse life.

We become two almost-wholes
broken and withered
and no love to patch us up.
We become estranged
isolated from warmth,
and as we seek separate paths
we lose sight of
something that was once
tangible
to make way for something new
something we cannot yet see.

Dreams Fuck You Up

I've forgotten what it's like to write words now. It's been awhile since I've tried to speak. I don't think you could hear the real words and truths behind every gesture of goodbye. They bid farewell, truly for forever. And it's not the not turning back which becomes the haunting last touch.

It's pictured at the back of a bus with street lamps blurring in the background. It's silent and we are the only ones here, sat at the very back on the top deck. We isolate ourselves and then you talk about how things are now murky and dark. You talk about how things can't get better and how things are fading.

I then ask: "What are you saying?"

That moment of hesitation feels like a void in time where senses were heightened, waiting...and then everything falls when the words tumble out of your mouth and I know it is over.

The bus stops somewhere behind Oxford Street and I decide I will disembark before my actual destination and catch the next bus. This is my final farewell to you. I remember that one last look and the bubbling anguish as I part with you for the last time. We cry. And suddenly I find myself standing on the pavement, watching the bus disappear from sight.

The next morning, nothing feels quite real. One side of the bed is empty and I try not to occupy it to pretend you are still there. I still remember the look in your light eyes as I left you on that bus and the way your hair was ruffled, wind-blown by the strong winds. But, despite the vivid image, you are now just a withered figure in my memory and knowing that you're no longer here makes you fade even more.

Taking Melodies Through

Have you written songs which ring a melody

of ending? And if it does, would you hold a song

just for me 

or would it be lost in among the scores of others?

I'd write poems just to spell out departure

from the arms which were so familiar

and then be ready to hold them so close

to my heart, they burn

and singe the edges of my mind. And 

when I take a step back,

I'd realise I'd gone too far to ever return.

So when you compose the next song

for the ears of people you'll never meet,

think about where the melody comes from,

think about why the tune takes a downturn,

think about me

and how I live somewhere in the air

translated through you.

Find

Come find me, 

come find me again,

hidden under the veil

lying under mud and thorns

under the feet of walkers

under the dirtied ground

of scum and drugs.

Come find me,

I've been waiting for long

with the world passing behind me

slowly spinning,

dizzy with anticipation.

Letters to Myself

You know,
I've written the letters to myself,
incoherent, messy, torn.
They chart a story
that winds around my wrist
and writes out missing pieces
in my heart, in my mind
in the very body which contains
no soul. It writes out pain,
anguish and loss.

But you'll never see this.
You'll never read
my letters to myself.
Because they are broken
and incoherent and messy
and torn.
And you wouldn't understand.
You wouldn't, you wouldn't
see the words the way I do.
You wouldn't get my story.
You wouldn't see it my way.