To make a terrible thief

tremors

I'd be a rubbish burglar
I would just break in, sit down
And help myself to the food -
A gannet stuck to the table.
I rob myself every day

DopeBeastie

love this...

i've no idea what it means, and perhaps that's why


encore

tremors

the spectrum of emotional memory
diverse & distinct
as colour, sound & smell
this is not animal impulse
it is sentient flavour
triggering qualities past
i have no name to describe it
this is part of me only

DopeBeastie

lovely lovely...

thank you

tremors

any time! there's plenty more where they come from. Thanks for the encouragement

tremors

He

At the heart
of my maelstrom of terror
I once stepped out
Into a white room
Calm as a lake

Four men (or five?)
sat whispering gently

They knew each other
They knew me.

The shy black man
at the centre
was leader; yet removed,
Who the others consulted, deferred, protected

He looked straight into me

Said without words
"We know you.
We love you.
We protect you.
Here'

and then they whispered
amongst themselves again
Gentle, quietly, with no animosity.

With the gravity of
the meeting
Yet the quiet grace,
joy
of knowing
They truly were good

tremors

The most beautiful thing I ever saw
I've ever seen
Was the rose
The ulraviolet rose
That blossomed out of red brickwork
Before my eyes
Confronting me at midnight

That night.

At the heart of my terror, pursuit, chase
Dead-end
Was the flower

Blossoming so beautiful
It made me stop, dead
Gasp
Catch breath
Amidst the horrors

Beauty sprouting from
the dirty alleyways of madness
No symbollic vision this
Literal
Vibrant
Skeletal
Blooming
Shadowy insinuation
of imperceptible fragile backdrop
of gods building blocks
spilling out and breaching
the shattered dusky primary world
of my meaningless and hopeless
Despair

tremors

Raising, being a boy

I just passed a boy
Smiling, open, happy
Holding his mother's hand

Who'd want to bring a boy into this world?
To watch him start wide-eyed
and awestruck with wonder

To see it ruthlessly &
Systematically
Beaten out of him
Through comprehensive
Derision
Sneering, derisory (ritual)
Bullying, numbing; desensitizing

'Toughening him up'

Until finally he is ready
To emerge unashamed - into the tribe
With that single mature bird-call

"Yeah, and fuck you too pal"

eyedclaar

These are awesome. The whole confronted by the flower at midnight image... fucking fantastaorgasmathon.

tremors

eyedclaar wrote:

These are awesome. The whole confronted by the flower at midnight image... fucking fantastaorgasmathon.

Thanks (lots) for the appreciation. I have quite a few journals of stuff collected from the last 8 years or so. And the scariest thing about them is they are all true!

Will try and pace it according to timings and fragility..... :?

tremors

Depths

There is no depth
No pit
No door
No lock
from which you cannot escape
No rock
from which you cannot
build

tremors

Going Home (1996)

When my Dad finally
came to collect me
From that place
And take me home,
All I could think of
Was the mass of newspapers
And mess left under my bed.
What would become of them?

A nurse gripped my arm
'Don't worry,
Get out of here -
I don't ever
Want to see you here again.'
Dispatched
To the Outside World
With abrupt steely kindness.

Still, I scurried back to try
and tidy up the detritus.

What chaos to leave
For the next resident.
What if they became haunted
By my horror?
As if every image
Hallucination, vision, terror
and dissolute idea
Still lay there trapped under glass
Between the dull and faded sheets
of last year's magazines
secreted under my bed
And might haunt them too.

My life: the regimen of dormitory rituals;
Of locked and unlocked drawers
Possessions, trinkets, cryptic codes
Cheap amulets and talismen
Which only I knew how to decipher
Had already been meticulously dismantled
Dissolved, dismembered by
The Staff
And now seemed inconclusive
Impotent, insubstantial....

Nevertheless I shuffled
my legs towards the shuffling the magazines

'Leave them, Go!'

Next thing I knew
I was outside,
And as I shut the solid heavy door
Of my father's off-white car
Clunk
I knew it was over
It was finished

The viscous & solid green-blue world
Rose up to surround me
In my Dad's firm embrace.
He looking more troubled
Than me.

I was calm,
Just bewildered
Stunned, staggering
Stumbling blinking
Into daylight
Reeling, drunk, yet still on my feet.
(You would not believe the nightmares I've just seen)

I shook myself alert, awake
Looked squarely into my father's unblinking eyes,
and said
"Can we just go home now please Dad?"

chadwick

very well done
all of them
who are you?
you are good, that's who.

tremors

chadwick wrote:

very well done
all of them
who are you?
you are good, that's who.

Thankyou kindly
True, I'm me
Or was it you you left behiiiiind?

tremors

The Cedar Room

'You're organised girl'
'You've got to be the most charming organised nigga
If you ever want to walk out of here boy'

tremors

She Once Soared

When she was younger
she would fly on thermal tides
over vacant fields
and be swooping from a secret,
that noone but her knew

And now that she’s a woman
maybe she forgets
that wonder of looking down
from way on high
onto unknown,
unknowing farmsteads,
and of diving next to swallows
into glister-glistening lights

And perhaps she has forgotten
the nights
being lonely, sad and free;
but I have not forgotten
what she told me she had seen
and the sights and views she fell from
with barely a single scream

tremors

The Outsiders Walk Straight Past Us
(in progress)

The outsiders walk straight past us,
Burst through the one-way door
Rush so far and forward
We ‘re not really there at all

Desperately searching for a loved one
The familiar corridor face
Last trace, last bone, last remnant
Of a child’s remaining trait
The one you used to love,
The ones in the right place

Us lucky ones found early
With passports back to health
But if you find it darling
Won’t you Keep it to yourself?
Please; it’s no good to look around you
These are strangers on the shelf
Those are not your sons and daughters;
They’re simply waifs and strays
So keep your eyes fixed straight ahead love
Don’t peer into the corners
That you can't afford to reach.
We’re simply shadows in the mist here
Don't touch us, please don't kiss

So don’t file for an adoption
Whilst you're stuck here in the midst
Go round & round the houses
Stick or call, don’t raise and twist
Recognise your relation?
Pick them up and turn around
bags packed already waiting
‘neath that only exit sign

Pray deliver us from this evil,
Walk out and don’t look round
I’m pleading with you darling
Step away, don’t run-aground

Better to stay blinkered
Than collapse under this weight
Of other mother’s children
Who know their only fate
Deserted now (eternal)
& merging with the dust
Of single heartfelt traces,
Of poppy-leaves and rust

Don’t connect with anyone else Mum
You haven’t got the strength,
So look neither left or right dear
to see some other offspring
& condemn them to their fate,
It will only break your heart ma'am -
And none of us want to see that

So keep believing I'm not one of them
And take that to your grave
We may still yet get out ma
There’s something left to save
But linger here a second longer,
& Inertia starts to creep
That particular way
It gets under your skin
Like some ancient itching wound

Overstay your welcome
and tarry just too long -
You’ll catch a rich contagion
Of horror & of tears;
They saturate these walls
(nigh-on eight hundred years)

This man is your son girl
Don’t you see him sitting there?
Don’t argue with us now dear
Whilst the wounds are being bared
We’re so close to the end now
Just forget about the rest
You’ll only spoil it for the others
Who are yet to fail the test

You may not recognise your boy yet,
but we’ll work it out somehow
Take him now and go ma’am,
Leave those spirits well alone
Come back another day and
Find them wandering here tomorrow
In forever’s day before
In The ‘lost and found’ department
(We’re sticking to the floor)

We eternally look for something –
That we’ve only just put down
Had it just a second before you
Even came in through the door
But now you’re here
The headless searching
Is calling us some more

We’ve gone & truly lost it
And we’re not about to stop
So please don’t reach towards us
With our smarting and our pain
It could really bowl you over
And you wouldn’t want to stay

Just pick up the child beside you
And be safely on your way
You’re amongst the lucky ones
Two of the contingent
That will fight another day

But Ma your very name is on the tips of all our tongues
Each parched in its own desert
But looking for the door,
praying for deliverance
From the drought of many suns
running out of water
With nowhere left to run
Yes, see these souls as human
And your heart will surely break

So stick with me alone dear,
I'm as much as you can take
Tick the box next to my name
And free me from this hell
These are not your sons and daughters
Don’t ever let them in;
The sky is falling down now
And the walls are wearing thin.

tremors

mysticweed

These are really good. So much to take in, so many visuals, so many parts with which I can identify.
yes, these are good, keep 'em coming!

tremors

lettinggo wrote:

These are really good. So much to take in, so many visuals, so many parts with which I can identify.
yes, these are good, keep 'em coming!

merci beaucoup!

Yes is hard not to just 'splurge' everything into a painful bloody mess. Seem to have lost one major journal of decent stuff which I saw a few weeks ago, so instead have been dredging up some skeletal remains which have been collecting at the bottom of my cellar over the past 15 years, and fleshing them out a bit (or a lot!). Can get quite demanding, so I'm hoping the journal will turn up again cos those are more fully formed.

Images are cool, tho what seem great one day can become 'naff' two days later, whereas words seem to stick around a bit better (tho can also quicly become naff).

Anyway, will see what the coming fortnight summons forth!!

thx

tremors

the difference

The difference between
Them and me
You and me
Is one tenth
Of a degree

My friend who speaks at night
On his own in the yard
In the garden, to himself
Made perfect sense
When I only stopped to listen

Saw him today outside a bar
He said that place
Was 'boring'

We are two encounters away
From being flushed down the pan
The difference
Between the man with the beard & bottle
And the man with the jawbone & the throttle
It's £1000 pounds
To fall on -
An audience, a destination, a mission
A packet of tobacco, a set of house keys
A believer
One believer - that's the cost of Sanity

My friend had 165 objects in his pocket
He proved it to me, counted them out
Then we solved an equation and
An irresolvable game of chess
And returned to swearing at the nurses.
40 years old and half his life
Running, swearing, justifying
He was the only decent conversation in that place

A place to leave your wallet
Where it won't get nicked
A place to walk out to
When you are forced by the throat
To the wall
That's a home

The floor
So unforgiving
Is where they trap you
Five men, scratching clawing sweating brutes
Violating my being
Pinning me down with a knee in the back
So hard it makes you squeal
Makes you kneel
Makes you piss
Makes you weep
Makes you find no man
Is tougher than the floor
Always the floor
So unforgiving
So bleeding
So breathless
So unkind

So i get up and swear back for 3 months
And then I'm better

The difference
Between you and me
You and them
Is one of degree

A phonecall with nobody on the end
A conversation with a half-day delay
A game of tennis with no ball
A raincoat on a sunny day
For us
That's enough now
To be locked away.

But I'd rather stay with my friend
With the bottle and the chess board
and the giggle
The one who knows who he is
Knows he is misjudged mistreated
And is so much more forgiving
Than your floor
Always the floor
Dented like plasticine
Your knees in my back
Elbow in my throat
Ripping at my spine

Just fucking talk to us why don't you?
But your coffers are bulging
Whilst we pay the cost.
One degree, I'll prove it to you
I've got 7 objects in my pocket
I'm one of you
Make it 17
I'm back again

I should write a plaque of prose

These people you fear
That you're so frightened of letting free
Letting be
There's fundamentally nothing wrong with them.
There's fundamentally one thing wrong;
You've got them trapped
With a knee in the back
And the floor
Just never,
Ever,
Gives

(28.7.2010)