Candleships

These cobbled streets contain all that is lost from the world
Between their cracks. There’s an avalanche
Waiting to begin under each and every speckled gravestone,
To be set into motion by a tourist’s stray toe.

Think of the creatures living beneath your feet,
The malleable soil soft as sugar under their patty legs
And the crusty remains of the family bones
Mixed in amongst the rubble.
The kingdom in which insects make their home
Is the most wondrous kingdom of all.
There is no delusion, and most of all no succumbing
To the social pressures we humans create.
An insect does not try to squeeze its thorax into a corset
Too small to contain its ribs,
Nor do they worry themselves
With the unmentionable subject
Of weight.
They are content masses under their skins,
Not wishing to shed them,
As snakes or humans strive to do;
To switch their cells around
To make a painting out of plasma
And the very marrow of one’s bones
Simply for a critic to look at it and say
That they have found true beauty here,
Lying silently in a cold, cold grave.

We all end up under those cobblestones eventually,
Sticks and stones will break our bones
Before our words can begin to desert us.
We become the earth in the heart of this Earth
And from our earthen backs, our powdered bones
Support the roots of the towering trees.

I wish, I wish, I wished
And wanted, and they told me that it
Drew away so much from my character.
So I stopped wishing for things that I didn’t believe in,
And I made up my own gods to play with as a child does
In a make-believe castle built out of cardboard or laundry baskets.

Of course it was wrong, I was wrong; a blasphemous being made simply
In being a follower of a religion of my own making.
Gods cannot hide from the world
In cardboard castles or laundry bins,
They must seek to thrive above it.

For so many years, I looked up to the sky
With eyes full to the brim of nothing short of wonder.
I stopped believing that society would ever help me,
And so I made up my own gods instead
To help me live through my man-made Hell.

Now, I am a skidding track for off-road trucks;
People rush towards me with eyes closed
And after one quick kiss, back off
Because I’ve scared them so,
They’re shaken through their souls.
The ground-up fragments of bone
Upon my spineless, arching back
Yield only to haywire trucks,
They form a battleground
Suited for everything but love.

No one wanted the girl with
The crooked back,
And how I wished to shed my skin
And trade it into the gods of my own creation.
But even they would not make a move to save me,
Because we can’t rid each other of another’s Hell.

So this road-bump girl lay bleeding
For the longest time in the porcelain sink,
Only wishing to be washed down it;
If only to be met
With a timely surge
Of untimely death.

This is the story of a girl

Lost in the treasure trove of a monster’s house.

And how she begged her gods to save her skin,
But even they refused to stoop so low.

Be braver than me, little sparrow.

Let your eyes open and sop in the beautiful,

Horrific contrast in this dank, dark world.

You have more than I ever did;

You have the power of an unbleached mind –

Unaffected by the surging currents of society.

You know not what opinions are deemed acceptable,

You do not try to slither your body into a mould that has a

Smaller waist, thinner thighs, bigger breasts;

You do not yet wish to shed your skin.

I wish there were more to tell you

About the good that lies within

Each and every person you will ever meet.

No one can ever be purely evil.

Search for something more, darling,

Within everyone and everything.

You deserve so much more.

Look out for the body alone with a book,

Gently lift their chin from their chest, and their

Nose from between the pages and

Kiss them on the cheek.

You are a Queen,

And you have so much to bring

To the world just waiting to see you stir.

You are a bubble of potential

But not everyone

Will leave your heart

Intact, and in fact, even I will probably

Break your heart someday.

So right now,

I’ll leave you alone my dear,

So that you can better

Judge exactly who

The bastards are.

A teaspoon screeches along a china plate,

It scrapes and spits the varnished seal along its edges,

Like a chainsaw chewing plaster.

A bag is ripped and from within

Its armoured belly a little flag emerges,

Whistling in the wind,

Providing the royal fanfare for the

Precious uterus and within it smells and steam;

Leaves just waiting to be brought to life.

Plunge, plunge,

Into the drenching darkness

Of the burning bite.

The little bag’s pores open wide, and

Its dyeing life-blood is released

Into the pristine purity

Of this liquid’s might.

And around, and around

That little silver spoon goes,

Travelling in the currents

Of the rich, dark sea.

I am not a sine curve;

I did not start this tumultuous journey

From the point of zero;

I was never nothingness.

I am an expression full of substitutions,

Filling in and filling up

And exploding off into every direction

Ever imagined.

I am every permutation

Of the atoms I consist of

And every combination

Of every star in the

Tiny slit of the universe

Visible to me.

I am infinite, brought into being

Because of the universe’s existence

As a Mobïus strip;

Whichever meandering path I have

Embarked on will eventually bring

Me back again.

I am what exists between 2 and 3,

Your average infinity which

Can be halved and halved

Forever.

I am comprised

Of everything;

I exist in twists

And turns

And tessellations,

Folding out

And out and

Out.

I am an asymptote;

Always extending,

Forever approaching,

Never reaching.

I wish I could live and love

In a symbiotic relationship,

But I need help to control

The amplitude of my emotions,

So I substitute the whims

Of being sixteen for therapy.