Sum of your parts/words

Crying and praying

Eventually I figured out that tears can't make somebody who has died come alive again. Nor can they make somebody who doesn't love you anymore start to love you again. Praying is the same thing. People must waste so much of their lives praying to God and crying. The idea of the devil makes sense because it gives people someone to blame for their misdeeds. And the idea of God may make sense because people are afraid of these misdeeds, and if they believe in God and the devil there is this idea that both are playing a game of tug-of-war with them. They never know which side they are going to end up on, and that can explain how, even when people attempt to do something good, what they do turns out badly.

The OA

I made this because I think everyone should watch it. It was written and produced by the girl who plays the protagonist, and is pure imagination, pure beauty.

Birdsong blues

Lullabies are sung to me by the murmur
of autumn leaves in the trees
but my ears and heart are closed to them.
The night, twitching like a shadow,
is broken-winged with spindly legs
that crawl across my visual plane.
The birds used to be there, I heard them.
Now they are not, and all the time
spent writing poems, I am looking
for the end of a the tunnel.

Picture frames rattle as trains pass by.
Those travelers, so tired, I imagine,
look out of their windows at the blur
towards or away from home,
not knowing that they are heard,
hoping that someone, wherever they go,
is there waiting for them.

Once, there were words.
Now, there are none.
I meant it when I wrote 'lonely'.
And when I said 'some days'
I meant that it feels like
the whole world wants
my silence; my absence.

Missing

I still look for you, not as often as I used to,

but still, I do, mostly everywhere.

Don't worry, my heart only fractures -- 

   just the touch of a break -- 

half the time I cannot find you.

Once, a handful of years back now, 

I was troubled by the presence of absence.

Not only regarding the linguistic complications

dragged behind by that phrase. 

It was in the places where I could see --

  I could feel -- 

something was missing. 

Something that could exist but was not present,

an eternal secret, an unheard answer,

leaving behind a void, a pit in my stomach.

Now I feel the same blunt ache, less and less,

but time to time. I mourn her -- the girl 

I almost was. I mourn the life I could have lived 

that's nothing but nothing now.

But when it fit, it did so just right,

as if my body was built for your winters.

What good are hands if not for holding

and being there to keep us warm?

My head was pierced through, attempting

to recall the conclusion of a dream 

I almost had --

-- it's too late now. It's already tomorrow 

in all the places that count.

Scrappy words

Sharp Objects colour mood boards

Voices Without Faces

A pantoum

There will be voices that call themselves yours.
Without faces, they could belong to ghosts.
They may be your words; they may be an illusion.
I don’t know- language is my fortitude and fault.

They could be ghosts, whispering phantoms.
If I could ask them, I don’t think that I’d dare.
Because my language is faulty yet a fortune.
I spill all attempts to say something beautiful.

I don’t think I would dare ask who is speaking.
The quiet is a sort of kindness, anyway.
Spilling my attempts to say something beautiful
I would not want to hear. I do not want to hear.

Anyway, the quiet is a sort of kindness.
The words may be yours; you may be an illusion.
I do not want to hear. I do not want to hear them.
Voices without faces that call themselves mine.


Playlist // nostalgia

Love oddities

Only a few months ago my ivory-white skin was an atlas of bruises, a map marking the grip of something(someone) there to hurt me. I thought that I'd never trust a touch again. I'd never feel the warmth of leaning in for a kiss. Then you kissed me and all my bruises came undone, my purple-blue-yellow mottled skin turning from the darkest dust to the clearest dawn, still lilac but pale and dewy. I wonder how you managed to take so much away with your hands, inhale such pain with your kiss. How does one touch something and make it stop hurting- perhaps not completely, but far less than it used to? And why would you choose me to touch?

I should be out there thanking anyone who has ever loved me just for trying. I have been told that I am loved but that I'm just too much. Which is at odds with the all-vaulting feeling I've always had: that I've never been and never will be enough.

What a strange world

The world certainly is larger than one things,
and unfailingly split into sums of parts and parts of sums.
Plurality in the psychosphere. Sometimes,
do you wonder whether you are living in a dream?

Am I okay?

There is something about this darkness- it conceals the best of us and reveals the worst and maybe that’s why roads are always deserted during the little hours.

“Are you okay?“

Sometimes when I’m on the street my knees buckle, and my eyes start to loosen, and something is disturbing because strangers ask me if I need help.

Sometimes my breath gets caught in my throat for no reason other than because it doesn’t see the point in rising out of my lungs.

Sometimes I am making a point, talking about an issue I feel passionate about or want to debate, or am answering a question, until I realise I am living alone and I have been talking to empty spaces.

Sometimes I wonder if I were to swim far enough into the ocean, I would just let go and dream and get swept away by the waves.

Sometimes I am afraid to look at myself in any mirror or reflective surface, afraid to smile, afraid to be the girl I should be, surely.

Sometimes i stare at my hands and wonder about palm-reading, attempting to etch the lines in them- heart, love, life - but it’s all in the head, not the hands.

Sometimes I don’t know were I am or how I got there, what time or day it is, what the hell is going on, and whether I’m broken.

Sometimes it’s like the sky is scraping against my scalp and my fingers are rattling, meaning I’m nervous and over-tired, which is why I see glimpses of men in my peripheral vision, who were never there when I turn to look.

Sometimes there’s a ringing in my ears, the vestiges of some old argument, which makes me

wonder what I could have done.

Sometimes there’s just not enough. Sometimes there’s just too much.

Yet there’s something building, breaking and churning, roaring, shattering and collapsing,  tumbling amid the dust clouds rising, rising, rising, rising -

What did I do? What is defective in me and can I do anything about it and most importantly, will the people I care about worry too much or care too little? I don’t know, I can’t breathe, and oh god oh god oh god oh god what do i do what do i do what do -

“I'm fine, why do you ask?"

Honestly..

My imperfect scribbles are no more than that.
I am not talented. I only would like to be,
because the only way I can get by is finding
the right words, constructing the right sentence,
so that all the tangles in my mind finally loosen.
When I find a way to write it down, it is resolved.
I'm not a talented writer. It's just another need.

Poem written using strange associationss

The pavement and sky are cold, and my hands like birds.
Morning songs are more like the groan of a garbage truck.
Wheeling, wheeling, it all may be a rat race.
I never won a race. I never won anything.
Running breathlessly towards something old or new
And ripping holes through time and space
I realise I need it- my own time, my own space.
Nothing really belongs to me and I don’t belong to anyone
Or anything else. Possessions are sentiment incarnate.
Sentiment can bring me to my knees with tears.
There are bruises on my legs turning blue and purple.
Once in a blue moon, I’ll share the secret.
There's a dark side to everything. And a sea of tranquility.

A playlist of beautiul murmurs

The Act of Murmuring from daisy christabel on 8tracks Radio.

What I have....

I have a name.
I have a home.
I have a past.
I have hope.
I have been loved.
I have been resented.
I have been held.
I have been hurt.
I have believed.
I have belief still.

I have known those who do bad things.
I have known those who do good things.
I have been to boarding school.
I have cried in the shower to make it less painful.
I have seen the twin towers pierced by planes.
I have enjoyed examinations to keep my mind still.
I have never been resilient.
I have never been aggressive.
I have never spoken up for those I should have.

I have travelled to many faraway places.
I have taken a lot - too much- for granted.
I have cried at my mother’s wedding for joy.
I have cried at my mother’s words for shame.


I have spent months in hospitals, my families on holiday.
I have spent years recovering from what put me there.
I have scars that most likely will not ever fade on my wrists.
I have not have done that if I’d known the mess I’d make.
I have most likely done it anyway as I wanted to bleed.

I had someone who thought like me, who inspired me.
I have seen this person in a casket and read out a poem.
I have been refused the allowance to go anywhere alone to cry.
I have been beaten up by my larger yet younger sister.
I have also been slapped by her on that day.
I have wondered why grief could lead to violence.

I have grieved until my mind fell apart.
I have made assumptions, assumptions, etcetera.
I have fabricated a persona for myself.
I have torn that patchwork apart.
I have seen how little I know who I am.
I have questioned who I am, and if I am at all.
I have heard and seen non-existent enemies.
I have battled that which nobody can see exists.

I have won trophies before yet having won meant the world.
I have helped others until pieces of sanity were reassembled.
I said the wrong thing to the ‘right’ people.
I have said the perfect thing to the ‘wrong’ people.

I have shaken and stirred.
I have mended and made.
I have apologised countless times.
I have no idea whether I’ll truly be welcome.
I have a feeling that I am just like extra luggage.

I have no dissolution that this is not anyone’s fault but my own.

Innovation/Courage?

This poem ended up in a completely different place than I thought it would, but I like it like that, to just go with the proverbial/prosaic/poetic flow.

Thought: This is going to hurt me at the end but
I’m going to do it anyway- and so I could stop looking 

outside to place blame. With a rock in each hand,

I began beating them together repeatedly, saying- 

“This is how they discovered fire. This is how the world
really began as a place for us to thrive and develop all the

cultures, incredible scientific and technological advances,

the great movements within the circles of art and literature,

and music, and  the stock market, and the world we know."

It fascinates me.  The place that Something so suddenly 

exists where previouslythere  was Nothing. All as the result

of friction. I like how when you take two things that aren't

meant to fit together is the only way it works. 

Now, let’s smash our hearts together,  or grab onto the other's 

hand, but with vehemence, thinking of that rock, to see

if we, too, have the inspiration and spirit to change the tide-

o there is never a cessation of creativity or innovation,

be it scientific pr medical, linguistic and literate, 

mathematical or technological, and perhaps, even cultural.

So much has yet to be discovered and all I’ll never learn it.

I often wonder whether I will have the chance to witness

advances made by their innovators in years to come, and

that people in the years to come will also take for granted

finite and eventually arcane ways of doing things, because

after all ,we spend most of our lives working in the same way.

Maybe from this distance, it appears that what those people

in future generations will discover and innovate will seem 

small compared to what you once have done. It’s not. 

They are the same hard workers, within different parameters.

Self-destruction is easy and it is boring eventually. 

You could easily kill yourself right now, or you could

do it sitting right in this one place. 

I dare you to bite down on your own heart and look brave.

Repeat- I’m weak, I’m weak, I’m weak- whilst quietly

Feeling surer that you are strong and courageous enough

to chew up your heart and choke yourself. I mean, 

It’s not like it’s anything the world doesn’t do to us anyway,

Whatever- I might get some semblance of a poem out of this.

Cut up and amended Plath poem

Even the silence was silent, and it was you,
all up inside my head; I couldn’t quite make it out
that spring that came with a roar beyond and above
these figs, all looking so rusty, so ugly, the way
they plopped to the ground. some people getting less
and some more. I must not have always been like this.
There is something so demoralising about watching
the habits, gestures and behaviour of others;
I’d never once thought about it before.

But life is loneliness and one can never outrun it.
I am simply my own silence. I close my eyes
and hear the world in constant motion outside me,
happy, I have been inadequate all along.
I am my own silence. All I heard was the bray
of my heart- this is the song of a mad girl.

I need to fabricate an outgoing nature so
that I might gather the guts to want something.
There is so very much I want to learn, and
I came dangerously close to wanting nothing,
So from here and now, all that despair, the feeble parts,
every hellfire of every nightmare and each time
the blackness gallops in at night- I intend to live it,
feel it, and somehow find a happy home far from fire.

All the world I must have taken for granted,
viewing it through small cramped eyes, always so
introspectively passive and melancholy.
Now I’ve learnt more of it, I am not so easily fooled
by false faces dressed up and painted blue and red.

There is a way out and it’s not a constant, I know this.
From that despair and woe you can come ricocheting
towards a sense of fulfilment, laughter, and even hope.
The trouble is that we always boomerang back- but it’s
just a matter of time- for a time I believed in mermaids.

When you kissed me I felt my lungs fill like trees with
something beautiful but certainly annihilating.
Dying is arbitrary, Anyone can do it but why want to
even if there’s no meaning to be found and even if
madness itself takes you out on a moonlit waltz.

 A fellow student asked- who are you? I am. I am. I am.
A girl with horrible limitations, too many neuroses
and a desire for companionship, other than an illusory
feathered thing that sits on me nightly. She replied-
I don’t know who I am either, but why drives you?
I do it because it feels like hell, because it feels real.
Committing suicide is not creative expression, she replied,
and it’s not a statement, and you have a life to live, so why?
The words were released, held in since ten years old
when I first tried it; the words that I couldn’t explain.-

I guess you could say I’ve a call, I said. One moment
and she put her hand on mine, and lowered her voice
to a murmur, said, cut the telephone off at the root
so the voices won’t get through. I shut my eyes and
wondered if I had really made her up inside my head.

Not without trouble

Imagine: star-crossed, eyes crossed out.
That was the first time a thought came to me,
but so very short across my eyelids and while
you laugh backwards I only want to move forwards;
the poem will come but not without trouble.
I am always in trouble, Their favourite topic: my trouble.

Nightfall headfirst, wings rustling in the breeze,
feathers dripping fragrant in my hands; I begin to write.
Clipped wings, shining heroism; I continue to write.

Imagine: a girl leaving church and clicking her tongue
enticingly, telling me- bring yourself to speak and
take off on mountain climbs, feel the highest place
from where inevitably I will fall and scatter my heart,
my brain matter, having to piece matters back together.
A girl who didn’t easily take to being told what to do
by her own voice inside her head nobody else heard,
and it is asking: Why me? and Who are you?

Then, as soon as a glance, I’m a child on your knee,
freckles scattered out from underneath the floorboards,
tears dripping in ink onto the pages; I keep writing.

What I do want? A clear mind, a mighty pen, approval.
I do not want your castles unless there are flowers there
and I did not see a single petal, I had no sparkling drink
so wrote and watched the joy bubbling from your lips 
to the polished sound of a champagne flute.
What do I not want? To need as I need, to be as I am.
To know too little, to live too long. No, I don’t.

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

For you only know a heap of broken images

'Popularity Contest' is the name of the exercise

I have this book called Smash Poetry and it's got some very quirky exercises in it but because I've been a bit shaken up lately my attempts to be write from my scrambled mind have been futile, so this particular task attracted me. I don't need to explain what it is- you'll figure it out.

I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.
You're barking up the wrong tree.
Take a sad song and make it better.
He's got a chip on his shoulder.
Live and let live.
The play's the thing to catch the conscience of the king.
Dying is an art, like everything else.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond-
The flowers you planted, mama, in the backyard, all died when you went away.
This the stuff that dreams are are made on.
Two heads are better than one.
I think I made you up inside my head.
An eye for an eye and the world goes blind.
The lights are on and no one's home.
So the women come and go, talking of Michael Angelo.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed my madness.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
If I should die, think only this of me-
Catch 22.
Curiosity killed the cat.
I took the road less travelled.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
I carry your heart in my heart.