this is how we rule the world,
the underclassed
the uncapitalist
(uncapitalised)
the forgotten, lobotom-ised,
relics
of a long lost dystopast.
not with a SHOUT,
we do not argue.
we do not even unsheath
our mightier-than-the’s.
we whisper in your children’s ears
the memories of what should have been.
the life we all crave.
the death we all crave.
WE do not discriminate
or obstigate
our opinions onto others
pressing the side of the blade
down onto the flesh
until
all are bitten
with the fever of our belief.
no,
not us.
this is how we rule the world,
we tell stories,
recite,
incite.
we incite a generation
to think
to love
to breathe
with their own scar/r/ed lungs
with a whisper.
I gripped the ladder fiercely until my knuckles whitened and my bones complained at the strain. I remained this way, like a rigor mortised superhero until my mind associated the tight throttling hold on the wood with the concept of choking someone; at which point I let go, momentarily, alarmed by the violence of my own thoughts.
The slight shudder rippled up through the fluidous wood and you complained loudly of my carelessness. We laughed and you dripped paint down trying to cut open my scalp with splashes of mint. Mrs Coraline banged her walking stick against her kitchen window with a resolute scowl and we tried to straighten our faces and appendages accordingly.
You had steady hands, so you had gone up the ladder to carefully apply the paint to the gutters. We had been promising to do this job for a year now, but last summer we were too lost in love to be found by anyone, even someone looking so hard as Mrs Coraline. This was the third weekend since the rain had stopped.
Up the ladders we had gone last weekend, I had grabbed handfuls of leaves and thrown them into the air to mimic your wedding day confetti. They had been slimy and the fat slugs of mildew hit the side of the house and we had had to clean that off as well as clean the gutters and for no added cost at all. I didn’t mind though, it didn’t matter what we were doing, every time I looked at you I was happy.
Finally the gutter was finished, with one final perilous stretch you swiped a glaze of superiority across the old witches abode and I felt my body relax as you announced you were coming back down. I waited for you as you carefully wiped the paint brush against the dark innards of the paint tin. Over and over until it was as clean as you could get it. I waited as you tidily resealed the paint tin and tucked the paintbrush into your dungarees pocket. I waited and I watched, enamored, as the sunlight painted you. A miracle in amber.
You began your descent and I knocked on the front door to alert Mrs Coraline that tea was required and that the job was done. She opened the door but promptly shrieked not to come in; she had noticed the splatters all over my shoes and worried for her expensive new carpet.
It might have been the shriek that did it. I suppose we will never know. All I do know is that it happened so quickly that when your body hit the ground I was still wearing my best Sunday smile, and when your blood washed over the mint patches on the lawn I was still hoping that you’d be alright.
Oh, mother, how I flew.
You should have seen me soar!
No more shroud for me.
My wings are a pale reminder
Of that place, in colour,
You would be so proud of me.
I used to be so afeared
and swamped in my misery -
But now I am bright and bold.
Oh, mother, how I flew!
How I love the sparkling stars.
Mother, just watch me Unfold
I unstuck myself from the sticking place,
Where the creeping things like to seethe together.
I gathered up the great heavy folds of my history
and took several crooked steps into the broken world.
Milkiness faded and I saw monstrous friends,
Mine creatrix, I saw friendly monsters there too.
I pulsed and throbbed and digested life all around me,
and sometimes I crawled on my belly with the beasts.
But as I fed on the open veins offered up to me
I found myself substantial again, thick with reality.
I began to look, to enquire, to want, to desire -
I tightened and tensed and I …. flew.
All at once I was felled,
Stranded and panicing under the vehement sun.
I threw a shield over my eyes
and tried to grope my way home.
There was no going back.
Safe haven disintergrated to dust,
I was lost. I am lost.
My crown barely formed,
The babe freshly born, I was lost.
My eyes still milky and new.
Cowering as my body revelled,
Expanded and exulted in the air -
I tried to rip myself from it,
To return to my self-made womb,
Do not go gently into that good night.
I shuddered, I drew long shaky inhales
To gather my wits about me,
I contracted and pulsated, in fear
I almost withered in my anxiety,
but there was no going back.
It was not quick, I prayed it was.
My bones grew long and jagged
and ground into the joints with impatience -
Oh and I cried,
As my tendons strummed and bowed
and my muscles throbbed
Until my heart itself wore the bruises -
Oh Gods the pain!
Confined, constricted around my neck,
Drowning in my own distress
And being strangled with the change
Oh how I wished for death then.
Death did not come for me
as my spine wriggled straight
and crack – my head forced through
Oh! Oh the light!
My bones are creaking.
I hear them gossiping while I sleep,
and they talk of me.
They call me maddened.
They say that the blackness,
the ravenous cave, has devoured me.
They talk of me,
as if I am not here. Am I?
This was my safe space,
I, cacooned
In the warmth of my own breath
Now it cages me.
My fingernails grow so long
That they pierce through the paper
and my eyes go wide to see
fragmented light once more.
Oh, mother.
I am so weary of this life.
Oh, how tired I am of the shell I have become.
Put your ear to me, you shall hear what I see;
You shall see despair.
Oh, mother,
Mine creatrix, help me.
Oh, won’t you lend me some new air to breathe.
I feel I may stew to death in melancholia;
Will I see you there?
Oh, mother -
but the world was cruel.
They dropped cinders on my ashen skin
and how they laughed when I wept.
How I wept.
Oh, Mother.
It seeks smashing redemption
in the broken pains of glass.
It seeps under doorways
Noxiously.
It burns holes in the plaster
With a cigarette
Constantly yearning for the other
side.
It secretes a spoon and digs,
It grows it’s nails to scratch.
It sneaks into the blacked coffee
consumer.
It is aching for sunshine
Where all are blinded with sorrow.
Oh it’s a sweatshop syndicate,
this Hope.
We were thrust, unexpectedly, into a tumultuous and decaying world. I refused to open my eyes because all about me were tears and screaming. Her voice was clinical, cynical and cold. See no.. Hear no.. With a shy, initial grasp for breath I felt the tinge of sulphuric malignance infuse into my body. My body spasmed and my voice strangled out its first sound. What a sound. For my primitive mind it could have been enough to ward off my enemies. To purify the air and neutralise the suffocating hostility. It wasn’t.
Sometimes they would laugh, which I understood to be hurtful.. but with a curious glance in their direction I realised I did not feel it. The venom would pulsate through my organs now, indefinable; the difference between it and I. I had been here too long already. They knew I was different, but to my dimming eyes they were equally so. So they laughed, and I only cried when they’re laughter reminded me of the shared data in our mainframes. I feared to be like them.
You smelt sweeter than the others. Although, like me, you emanated the soft silken after-bite of a poison unnamed. You were my first friend. I would roll your name over my tongue and practise saying it with an altered tone. You deserved your own special intonations. I never told you such but you were my model of hope, and I took myself home and vomited that night, in the hopes that if I could get the pollution out I would be good enough for you.
I grew restless quickly when that did not work. You grew even more so and found comfort between someone else’s thighs. I learnt a valuable lesson about the things that seem the purest often causing the most pain. I locked the nicest parts of me away where no one could see them again. You called me a bitch. I barely understood you through your swollen tongue. We went our separate ways, although some days, when I couldn’t help myself, my ways would follow yours. Five meters behind.
I watched the flush of toxins win the battle. They ate my particles and left a stream of blackened debris in its wake. My skin collapsed in on itself and greyed, my eyes could barely stay open but for that I was grateful. My hands trembled a lot, as I reached to paw at my underused lips, to rectify my overused make up. I was grateful to lose, because death could not be worse than a life in purgatory.
On my last days I wore a men’s suit and sat expectantly, panting as my lungs shivered and shuddered through. I felt my heart tighten and shrink, and only the dull throb of missing you assured me it was still there. I was accustom to it now, and reluctant to leave it behind. The things I knew I clung close to, perhaps hoping I could take them with me. I could not.
Tagged with: Birth • Broken Heart • Bullies • Bullying • Death • Hell • Journey • Life • Life Cycle • Loneliness • Love • Pain • Purgatory • Self Hatred
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