Epiphany
Poem/ Short Story time! Enjoy! :-D
The Penultimate the Ultimate and the Endless
Is it more or is it less,
Those of us to take the test,
Will rush and fall and grind it down,
To a smooth pebble lying on the ground,
Will it matter in a year or three,
And is there one who’ll suffer me?
Break it down and build it back,
You’ve got to make sure it doesn’t crack,
Coat it thick with words and care,
Guard your eyes then stop and stare,
Cautious gaze across a hazy room,
Through the darkness there it looms.
Tweeze the darkness into strands of lust,
Then weave a gown trimmed in trust,
Make it sweep like the wings of a dove,
But make it cut like broken love,
Paste it onto a frame so frail,
That it crushes it like a garden snail.
Through the reflection in their eye we see,
What they always hoped we’d be,
It’s not a person we could ever become,
And this knowledge makes us numb,
Disappointment flows on both sides of the divide,
It’s so long since either party really tried.
Lost in the wing beat of a bird,
Carefully concealed beneath another word,
Is that sound you long to hear,
Try a little harder and strain your ear,
There at the front of a rising trend,
‘Be who you are and be that person until the end.’
She Danced On Pale Faces and Thumping Hearts ( based on the poem 'She Slipped Through the Suez canal')
She danced on pale faces
dressed in lace and gauze,
-dressed for the eyes of all that watched.
She danced to the salsa bands beat,
feeling not herself
feeling as someone else.
She danced on pale faces,
her bare feet pounding them down,
Between her toes and gone from her forever.
Dressed in lace and gauze,
which flowed like a river around her hips,
pulsing and writhing to the salsa bands beat.
Dressed for the eyes of all that watched,
And stared
And shunned
And envied
And wept.
No-one danced with her,
All snuck greedy glances
from the corners of their eyes
Freedom they saw in the beat of her step
freedom and revulsion.
She danced on pale faces
and thumping hearts,
Each sweep of her hips
shocking friends and angering family.
Dressed in lace and gauze,
which burnt her family and seduced her friends,
Brown skin flirting with fabric
kissing it
caressing it.
Dressed for the eyes of all that watched,
and for the eyes that did not,
She was beautiful and terrifying in firelight,
But just for tonight for in the dawn
her life would end.
And years later, as she pushed a ladle around a pot,
breasts swollen from babes wants
and hips sore from husbands needs
Years later she remembers the night when she truly was,
She remembers and she smiles.
An Armour of Self Worth
Will you draw a circle around your soul?
Build a wall as high as your ideals
and as thick as your self worth.
Craft yourself armour
impervious to all but the sharpest tongue.
Made of stubborn pride, shame and dignity.
Will you lock yourself away
throw away the key?
As the world turns and belief frays,
Segregate yourself,
Create yourself a sanctuary
which is a prison?
Will you draw that circle
so mighty and strong
around your being?
Encase yourself in stone
and forget
Save yourself and lose everything else
Are you willing to feed yourself loneliness
with a silver spoon?
Drinking down remorse and chewing upon regret.
One day when she sun shines and you are in shadow,
You’ll watch from your fishbowl,
seeing but not touching.
Too late, too late.
What sound contains their true essence?
In the past
names held power,
They were gates
to the soul
the heart
and the mind.
Now a name is a word
a selling point,
Brand names, peoples names
morphed and moulded
to suit a market
not love or care
not dignity.
So in this modern world
what contains the gates to our being?
Are they sealed and gone?
Is there a sound today
a sound which contains our essence?
Or is there a sound which will unlock the gates
to the soul
the heart
and the mind?
As meaning bleeds like dye
from everything around us,
Are we doomed to forget anything important
beautiful
sentimental
and free?
And finally my favorite of my own pieces, named Foxgloves and based on a poem called Elsbeth by Sujata Bhatt, if you read nothing else read this. Tell me what you think, that'd be great. In fact, tell me what you think on any of my pieces :-D Poetry isn't my chosen area of expertise but my course makes you do weirdass things. <3 to you if you message me anything about them at all!
Foxgloves
Elsbeth rocked gently on her heels as the yellow sun set, humming her soft, soft song. Alone by the foxgloves and dandelion stalks naked from the days wind. She crouches and hums her sweet melodies of future but never past.
Her eyes are distant, focussed on a spot she hasn’t reached yet. She’s never seen her Foxgloves, never smelt their seductive tang, no. The Foxgloves in their own obscure way have never seen their broken girl-child, who so often cools herself in their purple shade.
Across the fields of golden, fat corn lies the house of a farmer and his daughter, rosy in the light of the setting sun. There, inside the four ruddy walls and beneath the grey mottled lace curtains lies pain.
Elsbeth remembers pain, but the cause of such agony she doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Her mothers memory is rotten with anguish, her face shadowed with remorse, lost to time and tears. Her father remembers, it’s written in his eyes. He wishes he didn’t, hates Elsbeth because she can forget, she has to forget.
Elsebeth can only think of future now, never her past. She has it all in her eye; she knows what and who she must become, where she must go. Her future is a sunrise which never sets; it is the light which sustains her as the sun does her Foxgloves.
Above, the suns last light spills across the dark sky, broken in places by soft white cloud. The corn whispers quietly to Elsbeth, adding depth to her secret song, adding a sadness and a joy. The moons cool light cuts spaces between the tree’s boughs, scattering crystalline across the foxgloves and their broken girl-child.
Elsbeth hums her future far from here, across the fat golden corn and over the ruddy house, where greedy hens peck at seed and stone, bobbing their heads in time to her wishful serenade and leaving her gifts of plump brown eggs. Where, of a morning, she will be greeted by tides of deep blue mist, which will rush across the emerald grass to meet her.
Elsbeth is a child lost in her song, buried in its melodies, her hummed verse and whispered rhyme. She is gone, far away to the fat hens and the blue mist, to a place where her stained dress will never be too white and the blue spots will not fade. She beckons me and I must follow. Elsbetth draws all to her sad song, calmly, with her eyes on a spot she is yet to reach, future but never past.
Much love.
Matt!
51°22.998'N 2°21.996'W
