NaPoWriMo Day 21: Memory like fire, whirling from the wasteland

I read T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland for the first time this weekend and was absolutely spellbound by it. This is a response of sorts to it.


Memory like fire, whirling from the wasteland


There was a time when there was something dark in me,
like the void that feeds on colour.
You could put your ear to my chest
think you'd heard my heart
it was the dark.
Forcing out something thick and crude
to well in my capillaries
collect under the skin
where it burned each day
until my mind prayed
to revel with Maenads
and beg for excoriation.

I can't remember how it was worked loose.
I would guess a human hand
with warmth and patience
and something
agreed for a time
as love.

Like a cool flame, Temptation
would have me forget.
Like it would have me forget
                   the softness of thighs.
                   So the wish to relive
                   feels not like desire
                   but something vital
                   for this puppet form
                   to jerk its strings.
Would have me forget
                   there is a part of me
                   that drags its slimy belly
                   down rats' alley
                   that knows and delights
                   in what took the bones
                   of those dead men.

But the dark in me that once held court
like the void which feeds on colour
is part of this puppet form,
its past, present and future.
Just as you would not pierce an eye
to release a viewpoint down your cheek
as vitreous humour
you would not silence that resource
that speaks other tongues
that leads you down passages of poetry
so you might know how the dark
manifested in a man a century ago
(Who would kept telling,
retelling the sermon of fire
to the ear-less wasteland)
and guide you out again.
Like the prophet who knew both sides of the vice.
Leaving no taints but something richer;
footprints of a precarious middle way.

NaPoWriMo Day 20: First Lines

Sorry for the delay but wasn't able to post this due to my Aunt's 60th birthday, this started in my head on the journey over there.


First Lines


Can be found everywhere
if you train yourself to see them.
A strange turn of language in an article.
The cadence of a thought on a stranger's face.
Nature composing a hillside with a palette of trees.
They hold that glimmer of a first line
like the seam of a rich ore,
waiting for you to excavate.
To hue the strata of reality
until that unconditioned beauty
is revealed in a poem.
Your hand will not always produce
the priceless jewels that delight the eye.
Sometimes it can't quite hold the structure,
manage to excite the depths with polish
or dent it with the chisel of cliche.
Other times they just collapse
into fragments of rhyme and idea.
No matter.
No matter how many days crumple like pages.
No matter how much the shadows of ink lengthen.
There's still time for that boundless seam,
Keep mining.

NaPoWriMo Day 19: The Dark of the Matinee

A mention of the cinema, spurred this train of thought on and yes I've pinched the title!


The Dark of the Matinee


I wish this was cinema.
I'd splice out the static,
remove the monotomy
of what I ate and defecate.
Only speak with purpose
(a script writer at my back.)
Slow steady progression, over
in the blink of a montage.

For now I only feel the drag.
The same scene gestating
before an arthose camera.
So I lose myself in the matinee
with the lovers, lost and lonely.
Learn that buried in this life,
this series of passing frames,
there is an arc.
Then climb from subterranean wonder
to find they are still showing
The Afternoon Sun
It's like the audience is on your side
and there's still time to change the reel.

NaPoWriMo Day 18: Point of Origin

I was listening to 'You're Not Here' from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack and it helped summon this.


Point of Origin


They'll continue to grind
my flesh under their gears,
spraying gore and viscera
until they hit something deeper.
Smooth as glass yet sharp as diamond.
The stench of rotting meat will part
for the scent of jasmine
from that night when,
lying beside another,
base passion was transmuted into love.
As they pause and try to understand,
my blood will take its leave
until I am as clear as the pools
in those last few woodland shrines
and they won't be able to tell,
if the light shines through or from me.

NaPoWrimo Day 17: Blessing

Weary is definitely how I would tag myself right now but we shall succeed!


Blessing


You tore down the hall like leaves
at the mercy of a kindly wind.
May your pulse find rest here
and unquiet thoughts leave you.
May the wheel cease to turn
and the upward spiral begin.
May your actions bear fruit
long past that final winter
and if you find your wings,
don't doubt, take them.

NaPoWriMo Day 16: Stupidity

Once again, I'm not talking about bus routes...


Stupidity


That feeling you get
after months of scaling that hill,
waiting shelter-less beneath the torrent
for the bus to take you round the houses,
all the houses
and still not quite take you where you need to be.
Only to realise that the whole time
you were ignoring the route that could take you home.

NaPoWriMo Day 15: Alone Again

After getting everything else typed up all I could write about was the complete disarray and I'm currently living in.


Alone again


I slouch in the detritus of life and love
with the drained gaze of entertainers
looking into the maw of the same old encore.
They say a tidy home is a tidy mind
so I rise from torpor to reclaim floorboards
from the marshland of papers.
As I re-home each wayward book, CD and blue ray
it's like sliding bullets into the chamber.
Bracing to pull the trigger on the next adventure.