A love poem to life's little threats

You are an organ recently removed
leaving the chest a gaping chasm.

An apparition you see in the mirror;
it should be you, but it’s an impostor.

The pattern of scars badly hidden
on the arm of the girl sharing your bus.

You are the service, now  interrupted
suddenly by the ‘person under a train’,

the acid you put on your tongue to see,
expand, discover, but all you could see

were ways to die and nowhere  to hide,
no one to trust and no reason for it,

no reason for any of it, none at all.
You know where my skin is thinnest,

and where my backbone is weakest
but above all, you know how I trust.

Whatever you are, no need to disguise it.
I will trust you until it’s too late.

You are my ignorance. You can use it
how you wish. I’d rather stay open

to people, to strangers, to experiences.
I’ve looked into the eyes of threat,

I have seen it’s face. It has only  one face.
Those I trust with ease do not all share it.

You are the screams of an ambulance siren,
the screams of people you can’t see or save,

realising that nobody even knows your name,
nobody will remember you when you’re gone.

You are the door that closes with a click
when the one you love the most walks away.

You are a smile, poised to mask indifference,
you are words you’re too weak to say aloud,

the dead pigeon among a thousand others,
and among commuters in Trafalgar Square,

the slow forgetting of who you once were.
The time, the torture, the terrors at night.

You are arriving too early, we need time.
We are not ready and this terrifies us

because when you whispered words to us
it was not from behind a veil, was it?

I bite down on memories of feeling safe
and ready my eyes to face you once more.

Other worlds

How strange, she says, among those better worlds underwater
where the ocean, deep and wide as an infinity we can comprehend,
where the cold of swimming is no different than the clear of looking.
As the horizon begins to burn gold when the day breaks open
there are people still going about their work
like they do everyday, though  nothing new to catch,
unfurling sails and loosening knots,
un-moored, carried on the wind, the hunt, the home bound.
It is as if they don’t know they were drowned.
They say it’s one of the nicer ways to go.

Back to the future

In Japanese, there are no modal verbs for the future tense such as "will", "shall" or "be going to". All Japanese verbs in the basic form are present and future tense at the same time.



Tomorrow when I came back home
I was written better- the story of myself.
Please, thank you, oopsy daisy fall from
my tongue and into stories of me feeling
everything I didn’t understand, always
trying to be liked, to get a perfect ten,
to make sure they knew my gratitude,
my hugs and smiles  were not pretend-
I love you Mama and it’s not contrived-
always please and thank you and
always how do you do? Always trying.
But never learning how to have faith,
how to find the key to confidence,
how to feel all kinds of things that
I could not understand Still trying.

With a pencil, I scratched a star on the top
of a chestnut-coloured piano I couldn't play
unless I memorised the placement of fingers,
their movement, and the sound to go with it.
I did want to be a star when I was little,
but not because I wanted to be on screens
or in magazines. Not because I wanted fame.
I wanted to make people laugh. Aged nine
and Nanny is crying into the telephone,
Mama forgot to pick us up from school,
every letter that fell on the doormat
made Mama cry. Sometimes I said something
and then-- laughing. I repeat the words --
more laughing. Repeat and repeat until
those tears have changed to those of joy.
If there is a way to make people laugh
when they need to. That was the star,
the glow I saw in those people I  loved
when they would laugh. Now, with teeth
I strip the skin from words that I’ve known
since I could talk. They don’t recognise me.

The words are heavy pebbles on my tongue,
salt-white, from the wrong ocean. Now I see
a girl staring back from where I should be.
The face in the mirror is meant to be mine.
Is that right? Am I right, or she? Are we?
There are some problems I never solve
like calculation or non-verbal reasoning.
Usually I am good at tests with words.
With people too. They see how I'm scared.
I really can’t tell whether or not it’s me.
Not a body that does not belong to me.

Maybe it's neither of us. Maybe a ghost.
Their reflected voices are dropping  stones.
I should have left some space to forget
before all that I was unlearning. I wonder
of the antecedent to provoke my first exit
When I was younger, I could float, float
above myself and look down on the girl.

After the first flight, I did it frequently,
I was often on the ceiling of the room,
sometimes out of choice or in a dream,
sometimes  it was the safest place to be.
I pull ribbon from cassette tapes and
unravel it as if I too am going backwards,
rewinding, tracing ribbons like pathways
to follow them to where it all started,
look underneath all the consequences,
find a cause, or a hundred, or none at all.

Then one day I stepped out to look down.
I did not like the girl I saw, I hated her.
I had always known it was myself looking down
from the outside; harmless, like a mirror.
But from the day I started hating her, always
we have been at odds, remaining strangers,
living in conflict. At one time, in the past,
we were locked in a battle to only exist-
a struggle for power to the death- her or me.
Today we live alongside each other.
There will never be peace, but I will live.

I still see myself from above sometimes.
I see an eyesore, an inconvenience, and others
moving around me exchanging looks of disgust,
resentment for the space I am taking up,
embittered by my existence alone. I know
this is irrational thinking, I’ve learnt that.
I know it will not go away, I’ve learnt that.
But I have also learnt that I can live with it,
reassuring myself that these thoughts
are nothing but assumptions and likely
to be untrue, and the only way to be sure
is to ask. In a single sentence- these beliefs,
assumptions, thoughts, they are illusions,
and you cannot read minds, not be certain
of the thoughts that belong to anyone else.
I’m a bundle of unravelled assumptions.
I am a metaphor for lost cause, gossamer,
wrecking ball, thunderstorms in teacups.
At least that is who they say I am, was.

The world is captive, the universe messy.
Yesterday we were blind. It’s no surprise.
When I lift my hand before my eyes
I can barely see its shape. When I try
to envision a day beyond this one,
a dark tidal wave of fog rolls in, so thick
I can’t believe in anything but today.
or that there will be any more tomorrows
that I will be alive to see. Yet each day,
I wake up, time’s tapestry is woven into
yet another loop, tangling threads of time.

I may not recognise myself but others,
even strangers, leave their faces as imprints
in my memory. The way their eyes become
illuminated when speaking of their passions,
that which gives their life joy and purpose-
whether it’s satanism or quantum physics-
the way others’ faces glow, sharing with you
what thrills them; I never forget that.
And others, I forgive. I forgive again and again.
I hand out second chances like the balloon man
at the zoo, even if each time I’m disappointed.
But myself, or whomever my impostor may be,
stubbornly refuse to forgive one another.

I am afraid of tomorrows. I fear the future
lest it be an echo of the past, a deja vu.
a circle we follow to everywhere we have been,
everything we have seen, nothing new at all.
I forget who to be, who I am; but I do hope
that tomorrow remember me, even if I don’t.

Amends

I want to tell all in my family that I am stuck in a quicksand 

of grief, of growing, of growing into something 

you never wanted for me, 

these unfulfilled dreams --

and the cassette tape thats plays underneath my pillow 

will be unspooled, and burnt - the words deserve it.

I want to tell all in my family that I have a mask, a second skin

and it will not be pried off, with roots so deep --

memories drill into the earth so

dredge them up, more take their place.

I want to tell all in my family that guilt has long been my keeper

secrets, rationalisations,excuses, manipulations,

but there are no escape routes now 

and she is water-boarded with regret.

I want to tell all in my family that I have learnt my lessons

and I may always labour when it comes to love 

and even though I’ve every reason not to 

I believe there is so much love in the world.

As a daughter, sister, granddaughter niece, surrogate father and brother--

It is like you built your worlds around me.

This is my gratitude, my apology, my repentance, my amends and my remorse.

It is also my love, which I do not deserve but will make myself worthy.

Dictionary Poetry

https://issuu.com/daisychristabelking/docs/astrum_photography__4_

It's a collection of words, each beginning one letter of the alphabet, and its associations- ones that origiated in my experiece or imagination, others that were inspired by those I have adored lengthily and known only briefly, and sometimes a word simply evokes memories in you that cannot be explained. So, click on the above link and see xxx