Poetry

Dignity

/ wordsforghosts / 2 Comments

The Seagulls used to be Angels
according to a Nordic legend that
I probably don't understand.

They have become this way, it seems,
because we simply,
                slowly
forgot about them.

& as I stand outside in the warm night
                smoking,
I can hear them squawking
a seething, teeming mass of white feathers

& cold hard beaks poking at discarded
styrofoam chip boxes,
                ketchup packets
& chicken bones:

all the detritus out here by the coast
in one of so many forgotten towns…

The thought that these
strangely mechanical seeming
beasts could once have been
our sublime idols seems oddly appropriate:

Now that we have
desire as disposable convenience
what need do we have
for the Magnificat;

for prayer or pilgrimage,
supplication, meditation & incense
or any attempt, no matter how naive
to transcend the brutish fact
of materiality;
existence & mortality?

So the seagulls scrabble among our waste
like avian beggars, safe
only because wings bring freedom,
& ignored or else quietly despised
by the normal
& respectably employed,

like the homeless people
who hide & die
behind the houses
& in the filthy streets.

Dignity is denied to the forgotten.

The marionette parade

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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.

The Cave

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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.

Different colours, different shades*

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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

& again…

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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.