The Song Challenge

 A song I discovered this month is Mary by Big Thief 

A song that always makes me smile is Electric Dreams by Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder

A song that makes me cry is Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits

A song that proves I have good taste is Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles

An underrated song is Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches

A song title with three words is Easy/Lucky/Free

A song from my childhood is Mamma Mia by ABBA

A song that reminds me of summer is 1234 by Feist

A song I feel embarrassed listening to is Feel by Robbie Williams

The first song that plays on shuffle is The Scientist by Coldplay

A song that someone showed me is Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

A song from a movie soundtrack is Worried Shoes by Karen O and the Kids

A song with no words is Gymnopedie No. 1 by Eric Satie

A song about being 17 is I'm Not Okay by My Chemical Romance 

A song that reminds me of somebody is Another Brick In The Wall by Pink Floyd

A song to drive to would be Halfway Home by TV on the Radio

A song with a number in the title is 99 Problems by Jay-Z

A song that I listen to at 3am is All In The Stream by S Carey

A song with a long title is Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh by Bright Eyes

A song with a colour in the title is Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis Presley

A song that I've had stuck in my head is Sticks 'N Stones by Jamie T

A song in a different language is , "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" by Édith Piaf 

Loose threads of thought

i. Phosphorus; atomic number 15, essential for life yet never found as a free element on Earth. It was given its name for Lucifer, for light-giver; surrounded by the oxygen we breathe, it glows.

ii. You and the colour blue have a lot in common, although I’ll always associate you with red. The cliché of an ocean, of a river that meanders smoothly through my blood and feels like it’s always been there, running that river, so I don’t realise until it’s too late. I’m empty. I’ve got no more tears, no more tides. The cliché of a spreading bruise and your voice a hum, the rest just spindrift. 

iii. Am I more like a swarm than a girl? I feel buzzing under my nails and tongue, my skin a hive of nervous bees. I feel dizzy in crowds and on train platforms because what if this body decides to jump? I picture bad moments so vividly; they never happen, the person under a train, a contagion of fire, a sudden silence and inexplicable emptiness. I count and count again what could go wrong and weigh it against the fragile goodness that I try to sew, but my calculations are always erroneous and nothing can put a leash on chaos.

iv. Combustible, relating to combustion; able to catch fire and burn easily.

v. We are brittle eyelashes and frostbitten edges, oxymorons and poor translations; our hearts are begging with each beat to escape this burning orbit, to crawl away and find somewhere beyond our atmosphere, where the constellations will have a place for each of them.

vi. Touch me and you will feel it- me as electricity. the blush of my cheeks and how my hair is always messy. In this simplicity, I catch myself wordless and that makes no sense. I  don’t have words for the burning- burns that left scars before, burns that won’t leave them now or do any damage at all because it’s not a real brand, it’s not the white-hot heat I try every day to forget I know the feel of or know of at all. It’s just the feeling that comes when you’ve so long been isolated and the touch of another burns so beautifully, so warm. There’s me and not just me and a switch flicking, no noise, no static, no unbecoming. I know I’m shaky, it’s been that way for years. But maybe now it’s just the shock of falling into something good. Something safe again.

vii. Melting, to melt: to thaw when exposed to heat. To become more tender, to become more loving.

Habits

I keep writing apologies, elegies, static frames with my palms facing up or framing a face without touching it. The same songs spin in loops on the intangible record player lodged in my brain. Then there are the poems, the verses. They are not the same. I sometimes wish they would return on a loop like a record on repeat so that I could put pen to paper, but my thoughts are racing ahead of me, riding gusts of wind or whistling through leaves or between the wheels of cars without having to pause for breath, because they don't run on lungfuls of air. I sleep when I can, as well as I can, but I seem to have taken up sleepwalking. That's the only explanation for why I was jolted awake between my bedroom and kitchen with my forehead slammed against a jutting wall. I rarely dream but when I do I am always either running away from or running towards something, or someone, frantically, and it's a terrifying threat that I'm escaping. I'm always cold even though it is summer. I was very lonely, but this is beginning to change. Among my apologies and lists of wrongdoings, I also keep writing litanies of questions to myself I still struggle to answer. I have stopped writing excuses but they still linger in my mind like an itch. 

Today I trailed my fingertips against the walls in my hallway so that I had something to focus on. I sleep with my cardigan and eyeliner on. I can't ever seem to get enough air when I breathe and I am terrified of seeing my reflection in a mirror or shop window. I still want to disappear but I guess I've become accustomed to living that way, and now I'm trying to make it work regardless.

Mistaken mind, hapless heart

Teeth marks leftover from half-eaten memories 

on my shoulders and among the knuckles of my fists 

feel infected, like some septic reaction I'll always have. 

I had given my heart- no romance but compassion, 

understanding, tolerance. That mistake was my greatest, 

wanting to help, waiting to heal, wishing to understand. 

All that trust, all those beatings with the words he knew 

would make me cry, make me hurt. It's a fault right here

in my heart, hoping for and trying for someone 

who left me most terrified, most sick and shaken, 

even more so because he knew it was my nightmare.  

He shoved me back in time so I had to see it, 

feel it, be it, be in it and there for it, all over again.

“Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?”- Sigmund Freud

 

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

Open Book // haiku

Prologue: crack my spine,
read my lips, inside and out,
and between the lines.

Human

When people mess up, fail, disappoint others or themselves, or make mistakes, you hear them say, "I'm only human." Why is it that when people perform acts of philanthropy or heroism or do good in the world, you never hear them say, "I'm only human"?

Storm

Sleep is like a cat- it only comes when you ignore it.
Realisations hit me like raindrops, splashing,
a spatter on the windowpanes as the storm
goes on lowering, nebulous and bellicose.
I am unformed, I am broken. Maybe hopeful.
I am gnarled tree bark, two hundred years old,
but I wear the skin of a child and my eyes sink
into my face; yellowing light, thunder inside.

ABCB

Should somebody put me back in school?
I've forgotten things I used to know--
like how to leave someone behind,
and not looking back, just letting go.

Collage

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.