If

 

If 

you knew

if you really knew

what caused me

to hiss and claw so

to ball myself in this

vortex of spiky words this

vicious spray of thorns this

hail of caustic edges this

grimacing howl of blades this

deceit-cleaving fury this

razor-yawped pause

why

would you

reply with

your 

own

?

every time

 

It is a thousand knives, every time,

and every one of them has found its mark.

I’m not sure

I’m not sure you understand yet. I’m not sure you understand that this isn’t about you, or what I think of you, or how I really feel about you. This is about survival. It’s about running on empty so long that I no longer remember where I was running. It’s about making do with nothing until there is nothing left I can do. It’s about pain that hasn’t been salved, and injury that hasn’t been treated. It’s about extended deprivation and repeated assaults, enacted again and again, using the same clumsy manoeuvres. It’s about being victimised by assumptions about my apparent success, while my real failure is delivered in daily doses of economic strangulation. It’s about the kind of despair that engulfs, not after weeks of hopeless futility, but months and years of it. It’s about the lies that people have told me before they went on to enact the very opposite of what they said they would. It’s about the cumulative physical damage to me of being unable to access medical and dental care. It’s about losing my inheritance and all the personal mementos that I vowed I would fight for, before I’ve even had the chance to fight. It’s about the falsehoods writ large that have kept me personally isolated from the people I most care about. 

No, it’s not about you at all, unless you are one of those people I care about. But it is about you if you find dismay or distress or anger of your own in what I’ve written. It’s about you if your pain meets mine in the twists and turns of this horrible extended torment that has taken so many excruciating words for its voice. And it is very definitely about you if any or all of this thrusts a jagged blade through the tattered remains of what care or regard ever existed between us. I’m not sure you understand the depth of desperation that could require such an enormous risk. But neither can I comprehend how any of this could be a shock to you. How is it that the truth of my life has been so invisible when I am so painfully in the view of so many people all the time? How can you, any of you, have allowed this to go on so long, even after all of my best and most eloquent words had collapsed into a torrent of incoherent distress? 

No, I’m not sure you understand. But I hope you will try. 

apparent

 

          it is apparent you

          have no care for the wreckage

          left in your wake

unrelenting

 

i am tired

i am tired of

your foolish games & 

my weary hope &

the strain of

holding nothing

nothing real, anyway

nothing that helps

or heals

or holds up 

the strain of

eking out this small

choked misery

when the truth is

even when i sleep

i dream i dream of

your foolish games &

my weary hope &

these are my days &

these are my nights 

unrelenting 

&

all this

is a whip

i wove from

my life &

my trust &

my dreams &

i gave it 

to you

&

soon as

you had it

you used it

on me & on

my weary hope &

these are my days &

these are my nights

unrelenting

&

now 

you’re gone.

you got what

you wanted

i suppose

then you 

left.

i am tired

i am tired of 

the strain of

eking out this small

choked misery

& 

even when i sleep

i dream i dream of

my foolish hopes

& when I wake

i am holding

nothing

&

it’s

all my 

own stupid

fault i guess

friendship

 

          you brandished our friendship

          like a weapon but then you

          dropped it like an old toy

It’s like…

 It’s like…

this space

this space

Anyone else got any shit to fling in my direction?

Honestly, this is so overwhelming. It is coming at me from all sides. Where is the help I need? Or is this just *another* life situation that I'm required to struggle through on my own?

Perhaps

 

Perhaps you haven’t put enough effort into understanding how angry I am, and how angry I am at you, and why I am so angry. 

vigil / vigilant

 

this restless sliver

of night is a blade I hold

even as it cuts

I could be getting ahead of myself here...

I could be getting ahead of myself here, but there is a certain sort of comfort in knowing that my readership is so... sparse. Gone are the days when I pointed my blog at all the traffic-getting places, and now it's just mostly me in here, shouting (or mumbling) into the digital void, with the occasional attention of a few people I know. On the one hand, it frees up my writerly urge-to-purge, and on the other, it provides an ongoing reminder of my existential insignificance. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing but a line of squiggly shapes on a virtual page that disappears when no-one is looking at it. And, no-one is looking at it for the vast, vast majority of the time. I do not flatter myself that there will ever be any permanence attached to any of my work, least of all this. (My work, apparently, does not warrant payment and as such I have not been paid for well over two years, and this too is a fact that reinforces my personal claim to inconsequentiality in all aspects of life, especially those in which the fruits of my labours find their measure). My digital product has faded, just as I, too, have faded from the field of vision of those who might, in fairer times, have granted me the benefit of their attention. No matter. I may be tormented by the interminable injustice of it, but I won't be extinguished by it. It is apt, then, that I continue to be represented, fleetingly, by these fragmentary dots of light and un-light, in a moment of connection that will end as soon as you click away from the page, and yet persists in a dark, forgotten un-space, until next it is seen. 

I wish

I wish you could see how small my life has become, 

how bounded, how constrained. 

I wish you could see how limited my view is,
in this small house, through this ugly window. 

I wish you could see how I have been reduced,
segmented, chipped and whittled away.

I wish you could see what I can't see anymore ---
the spacious possibility of my vision,
torn down into a mountain of rubble. 

I wish you could see how foolish I have been
to believe that it could be better,
that my actions would result in something bigger. 

I wish you could see I did it for me, yes,
because I needed it, but also
for you, because you did too. 

it's just a bus

 

        it’s just a bus

        just the underside of a bus

        you already know this bus

        the underside of the bus

        you have been here seen it

        felt it blistering metal hot

        as it thunders overhead

         

        it’s just a bus

        just the underside of a bus

        you already know this bus

        as you lie crushed immobile

        beneath the bus yes and under

        the memory of hands paused

        gentle before they pushed

        

 

Why should I ever trust you?

You did a shit job of catching me when I fell. 

Note to self

Ask for help when you need it.

Challenge your backstory.

Fill the page with your words, not theirs.

It's OK. Ask for help.

Keep asking until you get it.

I know this place

The Human Condition

So after my huge blog debut, it seems that no one is reading.

I have had 5 page visits – ever! I suspect they are mostly my own, as I tweaked. Along with a couple of drop-ins from North America – of the crawling kind, perhaps. Or maybe just more of my own visits, via some far-flung trail of servers. My understanding of that mystery called the internet is as gauzy as a real spider ‘s web. No matter, there is plenty of entertainment in speculation.

I find myself pondering that essential quality of the human condition: aloneness. Ultimately I am the only person inside my skin. With the rare exception of conjoined twins, where two separate people, two different consciousnesses, share connected bodies, we are all alone.

This aloneness connects us. We reach out to touch each other, to bridge the yawning space between us, to catch a glimpse of ourselves in someone’s eyes. Just as the internet gives me a glimpse of myself reading my own page, via a brief transfer of energy, a trail of light from machine to machine across the globe, so too do we light each other’s lives.