The Self

 

 

Self?

You blatantly ran after quenching your desires,

then skilfully framed the body with your indecent cravings.

 

Self?

You have time and time again

stood me in front of your ruthless mirrors

squeezed this waist, then whispered to the mind:

                                            

‘This is what I want’

 

You padded these breasts with silicon inserts,

and sponge fillets, then whispered to the mind:

                                                           

‘This is what I want’

 

You slowly twisted the plastic stick and enhanced these lips

with petrol smelling reds and pinks, pouted, then whispered to the mind:

 

‘This is what I want’

 

Then you dragged me to people and places I was never keen on,

measured me in their approving and disapproving stares.

 

Mind

Mind?

All you want is more.

You have taught these senses that whatever they already have

can never be enough,

and whatever is within their reach

is surely insipid and dull

Mind, I have enslaved this body for you.

tired beyond measure I have laboured it for your content.

You have turned these eyes into two strangers who look down on me.

You have turned these eyes into two spies that follow me with their vulture squints.

 

Body

Body, you only lay here beside him because you are weak.

You have let your ferocious passions run wild,

your predator like lust heighten with no a roof or restraint,

stigmatizing me and the self.

You held your lips in the arch of his neck

stifling your insatiable impulses,

silencing your shameful moans.

Every time I have pulled back your tether, you cried:

‘don’t listen to the guilt’

‘don’t listen to the guilt’ , you said

 

                 ‘for what does the mind know of love

                                   and what does the self know of pleasure’

 

I pour the darkness

Spooning sugar crystals from a large heavy glass jar into a smaller plastic dispenser, an indolent attempt to make the mundane sweetening of  my coffee easier.

Life? isn't it the daily routine of taking from one container and pouring into another, the emptying of one space to fill another, the diminishing of something into another?

But "matter" - despite our constant shifting of objects and space- remains the same.

I hold the dispenser down, aiming at my coffee cup;

I force the snow like crystals to fall into the darkness,

I force the sweetness to touch the bitterness,

The white cream to mix with the blackness… then

I pour everything into me;

I pour the darkness, the lightness, the bitterness, the sweetness, the blackness and the whiteness into myself,

into my being,

into my human.

Broken People

A blind moth trembles inside the lamp shade above my head,

its paper wings flap violently, desperate for an exit,

trapped in the illusion of light.

I am trapped in this cognitive skull, always looking
through these two sockets for an alternative;

I leave the light on because I haven’t finished looking

I can’t close my eyes because I haven’t finished looking.

When my sadist past makes love to me, my feelings don’t belong to me, its breath hastens and with a final thrust it cups my breast and whispers: "broken people are drawn to broken people my love."

"I will captain any storm you may harbour"  -  Steve Garside

 

Ship

An insolent evening, full of ghosts of the past, your empty sighs in dusty corners

Every chair pushed back is your width, your leaving, the loss of you, the coming and going of your silhouette sleeping peacefully in my bed, where I lie not but leave empty for your shadow to fill

An emotional wreckage tonight, a drowning ship dropping its mammoth weight of not having, of not loving, of never knowing .. why?

What would you say to me if we sat like we once did? talking of our enormous worlds, of our distrust of the Gods whom we love vigorously, of our unspoken hope for each other

I look upon our jeweled memories as I do a treasure island I've lost the map to, in a far - dream like - horizon

I am everyday measuring the gulf between this love and my vast failure to sail back to you; a willing ambitious ship never learning how to yield its anchor.