Your voice lulls me to sleep.
Your snoring fails to keep me up.
Your moving in bed does not wake me.
But when you get up in the night
your absence screams in my ears,
it prods and pokes at me
and I wake up with a start,
finding a loud, obnoxious empty space
interfering with my sleep.
I don’t lose sleep over you –
I loose sleep over the empty space
where you should be.
Today the sky is low overhead.
It’s paved with clouds – small and hard;
It presses down, hue and weight of lead.
You feel hemmed in an empty prison yard.
Today the sea is cold and oily-still,
reflecting cobbled sky – grey shades on grey.
Today the pain is harder to conceal,
as heavy blankness saps your strength away.
Today it’s hard to leave the past behind
you try ignoring sky and sea in vain.
They press too tight, you panic, deaf and blind.
It’s hard to move, but harder – to remain.
You trudge through empty, foggy, silent streets
the road is uphill. The hill is high.
One foot in front of other, body leads.
Insensibly, you walk into the sky
And on you walk, along the cobbled sky,
the sea above reflecting endless plain.
To see the world anew. To say good-bye.
To greet the sun that burns support away.
We long for answers. For a way to clear
the shadows of doubt from the mind.
We want uncertainty to disappear,
confusion and complexity – unwind
onto the straight and narrow – a pier
above the murky waters of the mind.
The only way to go. Nothing queer.
No thread of Ariadne to unwind.
We wish for clear weather, warm and dry,
but clear thinking quickly makes it clear
as wind sweeps all the clouds from the sky
the rainbows will also disappear.
The grand evolutionary procession:
striding elephants,
lumbering rhinoceri,
stalking lions,
gliding giraffes…
We walk tall next to them, leading our children, hand in hand.
Most of the ones on display are better adapted than us,
a lot are bigger,
a lot are stronger,
a lot are faster,
a lot are more vicious,
but none are as dangerous.
What is it that separates us from the rest?
Some of them use tools
some of them have complex language,
some of them sacrifice themselves for others
some of them murder the members of their own tribe…
Each specific characteristic is shared.
But in no other species do all these traits combine
to form our unique capacity
for self-serving
self-indulgent
self-destroying
self-delusion.
There is another train, mummy!
– Yes, there is. But it is not our train.
– Why is it going, then?
My well is deep and almost full of sadness,
its waters dark, its syrupy contents
attracting ants and flies and other creatures:
some birds and mice that sunk under the surface,
preserved in sugar – feathers, fur and bones,
like little gods, demanding adoration.
The lure so sweet: abandon hope,
abandon disappointment, strife and effort,
become an angel, paragon of virtue,
of feathers so smooth, and white, and silky,
forever undisturbed, forever perfect,
forever still.
Intoxicating poison
of sugar, death and mystery fermented –
the nectar of the gods,
the well of legend
containing waters of eternal youth.
Dried tears of rain
streaking the window.
Tired late train
slogging through the dusty landscape.
Long summer day
dragging into the past,
unheeded.
