Dragging behind you every decision
& memory:
a ragged procession
of skeletal marionettes;
decaying bones hanging limp from
myriad strings,
they dance the maudlin, shambolic
parade of your existence:
the weak blue
deep blue
hollow
fallow
moment
after
moment.
Those shadows on the cave wall, distorted,
contorted,
grotesque & tall,
they aren’t shadows at all.
Only mutated shapes;
circus images permeating
fluid;
another trick of a sick mind.
Don’t take it too seriously
but if you
listen too closely to the sounds
they start to drift &
float around
without direction, detached from meaning.
Don’t be ashamed
for acting from the purest of instincts:
fight or flight is joined by frozen
fright as well; belief is
necessary
& to believe in what you see
is so natural it almost
seems like blasphemy not
to just
let it happen.
The track was carved too shallow to follow
but still remains & always will;
water warmer than blood & a bandage
of elastic bands & any paper
to be found proceeded by dreamless sleep.
In the morning a red-stained scene
of failure & a shame deeper
than the track that missed its path by an inch,
& lead instead to survival.
Weeks passed without a word
until, where the track ends
something was discovered
to be beautiful & trembling with life**,
in unknowing defiance of winter.
Then a morning came when
I awoke to the smell of your skin, &
the hope
that the journey would never be
attempted again
until the time was right
& the endless night would arrive
in due time.
*New Dawn Fades – Joy Division
**Three Peaches – Neutral Milk Hotel
Old familiar sights, the smell of the night.
A cut to the back of the throat,
stops the heart beating right.
Breathe it in deep
& close your eyes,
the promenade of bullshit cavalcades
is about to begin again:
As the world still turns,
as the Sun still burns
you search
for another way to escape,
another way of saying the same thing
again…
…but the images are all gone.
All that remains
is the feeling,
the relentless bastard,
that refuses
to be purged.
Living like this, through years-worth of wine-stained
painting on canvases of lying lips,
always breaking, always confused
with nothing left I’d hate to lose,
no single cell free of abuse;
through days trailing nights of half-honest,
moronic,
worst forms of self-help:
the drink, the drugs & the meaningless fucks.
Finding then failing to hold onto love.
An endless mire in which to wallow,
& cover myself in the mud.
Carving a semblance of meaning
by short-selling future living.
Scavenging for real or former feelings
to feed the worms that never stop eating.
Desperate grasps for hopeful moments,
for some sweetly fleeting comfort…
This is what it is to be in pieces,
to be comforted by your diseases:
these interchangeable scenes, these
dislocated repeating memories,
hoping for something beyond me,
for protection by all these words,
but all along I was wrong:
words are no protection at all.
Words for Ghosts 