STORM CHASER

It wasn't the rain , or the breeze,
or the fact that her organs
felt like they were on the out side
that made her stop.
It was the light.
It trickled down through
the spindly tree fingers
and cast a cobweb of black onto her face.
The light.
It was cold light.
White blue grey light that was heavy in the air
as she huddled under this giant fairy tale tree
to hide from the storm.
The outside storm that is,
not the storm in her head.
She never hid from that.
That she embraced with warm wooden arms
that splintered and chipped.

It wasn't the first time this had happened,
it may not be the last
but it was another time
and she didn't see why deserved another time.
So she never ran from the storm in her head
but they did.
They cowered from it,
shuddered and shook in its wake.
Instead of trying to weather it,
to harness it,
to just brace themselves against the coming winds
they all fell to the shelters and storm drains
that soon became her past.

But you see,
she was bigger than small boys in all weather clothing.
She was bigger than tiny men in flimsy boots
that hid and shook.
She was bigger than most.
She was lightening  just searching for her thunder.

TATTERED

They dragged from her. Strange half words in breathless icy syllables.  Sharp sounds that fell on soft mushy ears.

Fumbled and tumbled and crashing from her junk brain, her trash mouth, her fat tongue. Her lips, too thick for her mouth to tell her story.

The police woman hands her a hot thing. Hard, and hot, too hot. “Cup”, she says, “Of tea”, she says. Words are fractured. Thoughts tattered. Body torn.

She tries to tell the tale of her fall from grace. Her push from grace. Her shove from grace. The theft of her grace. She tries to force the words out through slick teeth past metal fillings and into the air.

She sits on a chair that hurts her creaky rigid bones. Snapping bones. Brittle icy battered bones.

This room is full of strangers, foreign to her, she doesn’t speak their language, or she does she just forgets how.

She remembers to try and push the words out again but her fettered breath hangs limp in the air as strange eyes and strange hands draw their own conclusions.

There is no comfort here, in this bare room of hard walls and soft people. No comfort. Except for inside the hard and hot. Hard and hot and really there. A cup, she said, of tea she said.

It seems there is always comfort to be found, at the bottom of a hot drink. 

CIMERII

Have you ever laid in bed at night

Eyes heavy with the weight of the day

And tried to sleep

Really sleep

But nothing will quiet the incessant rushing

And whirring of the world at full spin.

The pulse of the vacant throng of your room, your bed.

You close your eyes to a cacophony of internal noises

BABUM! BABUM! BABUM!

Your heart beats out of rhythm with the rest of the human race

You blink a sand storm into your brain

Winds howl and rain pounds

And you lie there

Eyes scrunched up to the night

You lie there and think,

Why is this emptiness so loud?

Why are my bones creaking and my heart

Heavy and loud as steel?

Why can’t I just sleep?

You are weighty and slumping into the chasm

The gap in consciousness, in knowing.

And tomorrow is just a flicker of an eyelid away,

It always never more than a flicker away

And you drift

Down

Deep

Underneath a blanket of Cimmerian shade. 

Chaos and Squalor

I am full of chaos and squalor.

You might even say that I have a dirty mind.

But not in the sexy; “I’ll rip your clothes off with my teeth”, way.

No.

I have a dirty mind in that it is…

…Unclean.

My thoughts are dust and grime.

My sentience polluted.

Words tumble from my lips all…

…Gritty and hard.

I inhale the worlds’ depravity,

And exhale with diesel breath.

Forever tainted by global sadness.

Making me dirty.

Making me dank, and dreary and…

…souring me.

There is so much disarray in this world.

In this spinning pile of air and water and earth.

And us.

Preying on each other,

Searching for the ultimate quick fix prescription.

A quick fix to fix me quick.

Harvest the unwashed masses.

The fellow unclean.

My filthy brethren.

God it’s just so…

…bleak.

Sometimes it’s just too hard to stay buoyant

In a world that’s made of lead and quicksand.

SECOND SIGHT

Her fingers cast shadow branches across the wooden floor, as she held them to the light.

Sunspots marred her vision. From the ground she heard whispers: ‘Is it him?’

She convulsed violently on the floor, shaking her way out of poverty’s iron grip.

Their grief was palpable, hungry, and blind.

They clucked in anticipation as she sprung bolt upright, head back, eyes rolling.  She bellowed, in the deepest voice she could muster, ‘Yes, darling it is me’.

Dust fell from her like glitter in the sunlight.

She heaved and sweated and sucked all the air right out of the room, feverish in her deception.

Desperation turns us all into whores.

She heard someone fall to their knees and then a sharp snap as a coin purse opened. ‘There is no guilt to this duplicity’ she thought, as a tiny glint of hope reappeared in two eyes made of sorrow.  

THE PERIPHERY OF LIGHT

 We move through dense clouds

Of misty doubt and dewy emotion.

Unguent viscous rain drips raw feeling into our eyes

As we search for that break,

That flash of light.

One day you wake up right out of a cold reverie

And you realise,

No one ever looks at me anymore,

No one ever looks at anyone anymore.

Stone cold feelings, like you’ve lost.

The loss of nothing

The loss of everything.

One day, you wake up and think:

‘No this isn’t right’

Life knocked you off your feet,

Kicked you when you were down.

But, one day, you wake up and…

BOOM!

There’s that break in the clouds.

That golden beam of hope

Just pushing through the thick heavy dullness.

Suddenly it’s worth it.

It’s worth all the darkness

The doubt

The fear

The pain

It’s worth it all

Because that one beam of sunlight

Is breathing life into everything it touches.

Then you realise that no one was looking at you

Because no one could see you

You were clothed in grey and shadow.

So you get up and you dust yourself off

And you shake the cobwebs from your battered skull

And you step up

And you step out

And you step into the light.

And now you are clothed in gold

Wings stretched out for flight

Like Icarus, daring the sun to melt your wings.

All the while knowing that unlike Icarus,

Your time in the gloom means the light will never take you.

It will merely surround you, and carry you, should you decide to let it.

You’ve learned not to fly too close,

Just to skim the edges,

To graze the periphery

And to fly

Fly, fly fly.