Disjointed Thoughts

Life is full of turns
Dance through life,
Turning into different people.
Turn to face fears,
To bow before an audience.
Turn to explore the unknown,
Turn to run back home.
Time turns everything into something else:
Destroying,
Decaying,
Renewing,
Creating,
Aging,
Combining.
Turn good, turn bad, turn evil.
Turn over rocks,
Squeal at crabs or treasures,
Lost on the beach.
Things turn gradually,
Or quickly.
Turns lead to dead-ends,
Or corners,
Or more turns.
Infinite possibilities.
Leaves turn colours,
And seasons turn.
Turns are proof,
Of ever-ticking time.

I am a fruit bat –
The runt of the camp:
Angular, peculiar, tranquil, and shy,
With chocolate fur and golden-red, leathery wings.Huge, elegant wings too big for my body.

I'm fond of venturing far away,
From the dense forests and deep caves,
Into the attic of an aging house.
Dusty records, Old, torn fabrics, Ancient instruments,
Relishing the past.

Watching the twinkling lights of a busy town sparkle on the horizon,
I delight in the unexpected find of fruit.
I glide and swoop over lakes,Lap at the cool water,
And draw the light of the moon into rings beneath me.
Screeching and waiting.
Waiting for the sound to bounce back off the moon.

I fly but I can’t land.
My fragility is coloured by clumsy, twig-snapping dives.
Then suddenly the trees far into the magical forest explode with bats,
A pillow fight at midnight.
My secret flight is over,
My comrade, darkness, and I fly back to the group.
No one notices me melt into the swarm,

No one noticed me leave.

I wish I wasn't so darn awkward...

Severed

Another hot, ruthless day in China, the same yellowed sidewalk, the same distant couples with their minds remote from the lives of the beggars, and vendors, and death and despair of the lower class. As a teenager, I lost my arm in a factory, condemned to join the horrors of Shanghai. My parents beat me. They burn my legs and bruise my back so I will evoke more pity – more money. I know this is unnecessary for I have already been reduced to nothing.

A young girl – American? Canadian? – scuttles past, knuckles white, face flushed. A normal day in my life frightens her. She is like a fish picked out of the ocean and forced to grow human lungs and breathe the filthy air. I see the street from her perspective: the sun diminished to an orange blob in the thick pollution, so many bobbing black heads, vendors with sticky, yellow teeth and pale, cracked lips, like rotting fish with itching hands and threatening eyes, grouse, beg, chant, lure.

“Watch! For pretty lady?” He winks, she squirms, he smiles. A man throws an apple core at my bare feet.

“Real tiger!” coos a man, stroking a large orange rug. She escapes into a building – to her, a looming cathedral – a sanctuary.

This is how it will always be: vendors, like vultures, air pungent and heavy, cold fear, squawks and curses. And I sit cross-legged against the grimy wall, following the tourists – whose origin I ponder – with my sunken eyes.

How can I do more?

How can I possibly do more?
How can they?
You’re Jealous.
How can I do more?
Innovation.
But I lack it.
Organization.
But it means nothing.
Love.
And I have it.
Love.
And I need it.
Love.
But I can’t do more,
How can I do more?
Resign myself to this?
Wait a sec.
Is this okay?
Enough?
Enough.
Is it ever enough?
No,
Really, truly.
No.
It will never be enough,No matter what I do or how much more I do.
Sad?
Maybe.
Are you going to try and beat it anyway?
Maybe.
That’s called naivety.
Is it?
Maybe. That’s called vacillation.
Why?
You hesitated.
Did I waste it?
What?
That-which-shall- not- be- named.
Time?
Shh.
Well?Yes.
So? Did I?
You bet.
Huh,
I think I get it.

Love and life ... oh

I sigh a tear of pain and love seeps through my pores. I sigh a sigh so strong and salty, clear, true, heavy, and wet; I sigh a tear. A tear so beautiful. A tear so pure. I sigh and sigh and sigh. And sigh ...

* * *

Eating yoghurt...
Then I am aware of the spoon.
I see my face upside down, stretched, elongated.
Moving it in my graceful grasp, light bounces off it, streaks across it, and jumps off the tip.
The hollow reflects a world behind a dark grey screen, the colours and shapes distorted.
I sit there bending the world out and further out of reality and suddenly I don’t feel so grounded.

* * *

Still life: She leads a lonely, translucent life, the glass does. She stands tall, she is tall, she fears only being dropped, shattering. She knows everyone’s hands, she feels the thumbs like salamander suckers, and she sees the patterns of fingerprints. She judges the consistency of lipstick, lip-gloss, Chap Stick, detests the cruel scraping of chapped lips, or sick, slimy lips. She sings when caressed over her rim, she tinkles with cheer, she frosts with ice, and sweats in the heat. She leads a still life. She is a still life. When I drink from her, I wish I could make her live. Make her move. So cold, so warm, so unpersonified. Still life. Harsh life. No life. Good life. Life. Are we even to judge it? Life. Does it deserve a description? Life. Life. File. Live. Live life. Life golden and don't live glass. Don't live like a glass. But can we choose to live life any particular way? What we do means nothing. I can't believe that. We might as well be glasses, unable to choose what we are filled with. We do not choose exposure. We cannot beat being vulnerable. We are filled with what we will be filled with and not what we fill ourselves with. Who pours the milk here? We are never able to lift the jug. So naive. So child-like. So pathetic. But we choose anyway. And we aren't embarassed. In fact, we don't even think about it. That's life. What it is to us. What is always was. That it can't be changed. A truth. I think. For now. A temporary truth. If ever there was such a thing it was now. Was now. is now. Can never be now. Because now's gone and here and gone and over there. And we can't ever think about life because it's one layer of liquid below us always forever. One layer of liquid that we never chose.

* * *

It’s heavier than I expected,
Dusty and scratched,
Faint engravings encircle the bronze base,
The handle is dull and the sides shiny from many hands,
Many wishes.
I pause just once more and then rub, circling my hand over its swollen stomach.
A purple mist drifts out of the mouth and I close my eyes tight.
I clench the handle.
And staring at the lid, its jewels seem to glow.
Opportunity.
I wish for opportunity.
I understand the risk.
It could come and go,
A tragedy could result from a wish.
But I’m determined.
I will see it.
I have to.
For this is not a world that I would choose to command so easily.

This is a world I would choose to accept.

This is a world in which I would choose to love.

Poetic Rumination

Vanity:
Are we all so vain,
That we are so old,
And cannot be blinded with beauty anymore,
Because our eyes are so aged and dim,
That we have made beauty so frightened of envy,
That it flickers in the shadows of,
A cloud, a leaf, an eyelash,
Are we all so vain?

Games:
Is suicide a game?
Well, then what is a game?
Checkers, chess, dominoes?
Eliminate, checkmate, dominate,
Win or lose, love or hate,
Black and white, a grid-like fate,
If life ain't joy it's second-rate,
Can love be shunned, can love be late?
Is hell or heaven merely bait?
Locked away beneath a grate,
A plastic piece, a candidate,
For which hope can never permeate,
Who yells Just wait, please just wait!
But a clock ticks and a dice rolls on a glossy plate,
A warped reflecting, scratched-up plate,
And you walk with all but a steady gait,
And your death is merely a determined date,
Your power's gone. Exterminate.

Questions:
A question mark is a coily thing,
That makes a sentence weak and thin,
It throws the words up in the air,
And leaves the speaker standing there,
Wide-eyed, trembling, cold and bare.
A question mark looks better in pencil,
Sounds like a rising scale,
Tastes like … a whistle?
Can be a treacherous hook,
Sharp and pointy with a sinister look,
Or could be made of a malleable wire,
Passive or even red-hot with fire,
Or a question mark can look more like an arrow,
A path to the answer, more straight than narrow,
Than if we had avoided it,
Because of its shape, its feel, its grit.
A question mark makes you think,
It makes you stop, pause, swallow, and blink,
A question mark is the very beginning,
And the very end when the light it dinning,
Of everything.
A question mark is more than the digestion,
That the statement was in the form of a question.
It is the diving board.

Lost:
When I see you,
I see a shrivelled heart,
But still as potent and steady,
Fiery and vibrant,
As ever,
In a copper wire frame,
That is bending in on itself.
A much too delicate work of art.
I see a lampshade of fine wispy hair,
I try to see the ever-glowing light behind it.
When I see you,
It is magnified and blurred with pearly tears.
I see a fossil,
Caked in compressed, dusty, dirty, strangling Earth.
When I see you,
I am hopeful, thankful, frantic.
I see a gorgeous metallic dragonfly with mirrored wings,
But they have bent in on themselves,
And you are reflecting your pain,
Into that swelling heart,
That just can't take anymore,
But needs so much more.
When I see you, I can’t bear to see you,
Because your appearance has betrayed you,And when I see you,
I know that when I leave,
I will cry.