Teenage Years

I wish that I could admit
That I would have liked to omit
My teenage years and plunge
Deep into adulthood

Then my voice was never heard
The words emerged
But they float from my mouth
And evaporate

I cried out
I screamed out
But still I was unheard
As others closed their eyes against me

It was simpler, safer
To talk to me about
Boys, first kisses
And all the opportunities
That lay ahead
A fairy tale future
Anything darker
Remained unsaid.

Beginnings/Ends

In the beginning. Yes, really, the very beginning
We were created (or so they say) out of clay
Before us there was darkness and deep waters
Desolate lands. Until God did his stuff. I’d imagine
That he must have been the star pupil in art class.

That was the prologue and we, I assume,
Are the epilogue. I acknowledge that our history
Is embedded in me. But I do not wish to be
Enslaved – every gene awash with ancestry
I want to be me, me, me and me alone.

It is Christmas here and as we decorate the tree
I watch my triplets and wish that there were only me.

Your/You’re

Your
World of dinner parties
Fleshed out with flowing honey
Fleshed out with red wine
And solid, heavy pink bosoms
Resting on an oak dining table
And you feel the eyes of that young man
That red-cheeked wide eyed acne ridden boy
Boy, yes boy, straining upwards – manhood bound

You’re
A luminous, statuesque creature
A radiant bright shape – almost a flame
You peer across the table dissecting each
Beguiling boy. You prepare to devour them
Ambivalence reigns. Get back, get back,
They silently scream but as you bewitch them
With your tall tales and this time joy replaces dread
And your rainfall of affection is embraced

Your
Embrace of decadent borderlands
You adore them. You stand poised
On the edge of some ledge. Your smile
Its widens. White teeth dazzle. You bow
You pacify the popcorn chewing crowd
Their faces upturned, they stare
And those boys remember in sleep the way
In which you consumed them one by one.

Mr Happy

Mr Happy
Originally uploaded by rielouise.

New poster above main (steam driven) 'puter desk. Hopefully it will have some kind of effect upon my mood. And encourage me to abandon the excessive use of my laptops and get out of bed!

Turning, Burning

One moment a piglet
Sucks from his mother’s pink teat
The next roasting
Turning, burning
Licked by orange flame
Over a cauldron that hisses,
That spits
At the country fair
Its juices run down

And the crowd watches,
Salivates, anticipates
The sharpened knife that carves
The slivers of meat
Pealed from the bone
Soon they will be fighting
Over the final piece of crackling
While the farmer stands straight
Stands proud, looks on

Slow Poison

I keep my destiny hidden, my gaze restrains,
Suspends the doped up boys in the auditorium
Oblivious to the way I am degenerating
I clutch at omnipotence for they adore me
Me – the girl who stands resplendent on the stage

I leap into their lives, I occupy their senses
For the duration of the show and in return
They grant me dedication fervent enough
To affirm my status as queen of this scene
They revel in my ostensible magnificence

In my repartee. They strive to snatch
Chunks of me away and my own slow poison
Corrodes my contents and I do not find
The sisterhood I seek in song and the affection
Of the crowd smothers me to death.

Solitude

Slime in tangled hair
Smelling like decomposition
Dragging my memories after me
Like a child with a battered teddy bear

I am silent, full of thoughts
But empty of courage. I am hiding
I am good at that. And I plunge ahead
Though terrified. I am a firewalker

Ploughing on. I confess that I am secretive
Scarlet-faced, hands fluttering
Insecure in my own skin. I hurt myself
On the edges of razor sharp days
That cut, that cut

I revel in solitude – those endless silences
I love them, I nurture them
I do not betray their confidences
A spell has been cast
A storm descends
A storm without a cause
A storm without a pause.

A Hallowed Interval

A hallowed interval
Between cows munching on grass, on thistle
And the newly opened, freshly exposed
Second front. Embattled, mercury-backed

Bored and blood-soaked
Re-enacting tragedies, heraldries of another age
In the language of another dimension
That seems like the breath of death.

Vapours from another country’s breakfast table
Salt, pepper or some other marinade. Beware! They ensnare.
A smiling soldier stalks forth. His bright blue eye
An explosion exposing the meaning of purity

The Hour Before Dawn

In the hour before dawn, waking
Encountering the solidity,
The self sufficiency
Of the bureau, the chest,
The dining room table
I pause. I hear nothing
Not a eye blink; not a limb twitching

A nocturnal bird beyond the window
Eyes me. Silent shadows stalk me
A dream with an angel at its core
A ghost glides down the staircase
A spectre floats in the hall
Sucking blood, they feast
And then they multiply

I flick the switch
And snap the silver threads
Of the greying outlines
Of all my fading yesterdays
And then there is clarity
As the lamplight glows
Lighting my way to morning.

Captivated

A casual stargazer,
Captivated
By the night sky
Probing into
The galaxy
Into inscrutable mysteries
Captured within
The unaided human eye
Less a pursuit
More a love affair
And we realize
That the more we know
The more we know
We don’t know.

To a Friend whose Death I long for and yet will Mourn.

My friend, I wear
A mourning band
For you, for you, for you
A premature mourning band
For you are not dead yet
But you soon will be
If I have my way

Because, my friend,
You’re no friend of mine
Cloaked in your guise
Of beautiful benevolence
But I sense the hostility
You’ve kept hidden for so long
So, my dear, please don’t insult me

By singing that song
By faking that smile
As I step into the student bar
And see you with those girls
With their gleaming golden curls
And I am speechless, immobile
Crouched in some dark corner

I don’t belong here
And you know it
Here amongst beauty
Amongst these serene and sophisticated beings
And so, my friend, tell me, where do I belong?
In some institution perhaps,
Locked up, doped up

Doesn’t matter where
I just don’t belong here
As long as you are beyond my reach
As long as I am out of your sight

And now I lacerate myself on your brittle bones
Where once there was warm flesh, soft and yielding
I had believed you’d cushion me with compassion
And instead you weave death thoughts around me
I have returned home to find my idol gone
Replaced by a daemon
What witchcraft is this?

I backtrack, making patterns on my skin
The dogs are at my throat
You’re gone, my friend, you’re gone.

Burning Books

Alien to me, this landscape
I weep and bonfires of books
Burn in the middle of the street
And the sky is stubborn, mute
It will not respond to me.

All seeing- their gaze grips me
Embedded in my ear, in my eye
I have no nails to claw with
No mirror to indulge my vanity
I am their raw material

And the are moulding me
My stiffened neck, my obscured face
Are accusations. Along with the messages
On cardboard that float from the sky
‘We will never surrender!’ we cry.

Mute Witness

In the window, beyond the glass, I see
A dark silhouette moving swiftly
Amongst twisted branches as the wind
Blasts through and I sit detached

From all that turmoil. I am simply
Too delicate you see. I am not permitted
To see the grand finale, the climax
Of decades of discontent. I've chosen silence

And denial and apathy. An external storm rages
But inwardly, a moderate climate reigns
Inside my mind, it is cold you see but clear
and calm and bathed in a wintry sunlight

I am in exile, a mute witness,
A silent watcher, moving through
Fields and forests as I savour
The rancid flavour of isolation.

As Evening Falls

Wandering through the streets
As evening falls. Museums,
Haunted houses,
Restaurants and rainy streets
Blinded by city lights

Blue to black,
Night falls swiftly in these parts
Drops like a curtain after a show
We walk into the sea
When the sun-worshippers have gone
Serenity. Like walking into pictures
Into other worlds.

Clambering over the rocks
Leaping over crevices
Waves rebounding
The moon is our witness
Transfixed, captured
Caught by the current
Night sky starless

As we await
The emergence of morning.

The Gift

When she popped out
Shot out, like a champagne cork
Pale and bloody,
Uttering a harsh, inarticulate cry
Revealing a cavernous mouth
A soft,pink tongue
Looking as though
She could swallow you whole.

And her father boomed,
'That's my girl'
(Everything was so easy back then)
And the nurses squealed,
'What a beautiful baby!'
And the mother leaned
Back into the pillows,
Exhausted but gratified.

And the baby's face erupted
Into a huge red yawn
And she swallowed them all whole.

Free At Last

Enchanté, my dear, he says as he bows
Mostly for the benefit of the crowds
I grip his hand but his mind is somewhere else
I fail to reach his granite heart
He fails to see my secret places
So off he goes, elsewhere for his pleasure

Melancholy advances. I push it back.
I am at peace. I feel no anger.
I have felt no hunger for decades
I hear loud, raucous laughter
At the door. His comrades have arrived
They barely acknowledge me

The door slams shut behind them
And I free again, me again
I am left, solitary but purified
Untainted, I find myself regressing
To childhood ballet classes and I become
A prima ballerina, performing pirouettes
As I slide across the oak floor of the hall.

A Central Vision

It is my fantasy and mine alone
Some dweller of my doom-ridden dreams
Conjured up in my head. Torn and wary
Of bone-breaking Vikings and seafarers
Displaced by time. Once warriors
Now redundant. Coated in layer
Upon layer of dust - time's debris
We push this ancient vessel
Into the sea.

We periodically refocus
Wrap me in ragged wreathes
A benevolent baby
Who for now
Lets its mother sleep
But sooner or later
I will awake
And realize that my kingdom
Was merely a apparition.

Delectable Devil

Sipping on cherry soda
And toast
The whispers in the air
A monument for you
Statuesque, blending into a white wall
With your minions at your feet

All fall down and scream and writhe
This is when I run, I hide
But there is nothing that keeps you from me
And there is nothing to stop you
From reaching out and wrenching out
The delectable devil inside.

No Laughing Mask

Are your smiles merely
Distorted grimaces
I ask the laughing
Women in the street
They cling to children
With grubby cheeks
Chins scarred by scabs
With grim, crying faces
I await my little girl,
Sitting on the wall
Outside the primary
And I am thinking
That I have no right
To stand amongst
These vivacious women
For I have
No laughing mask.

Where Are You Now?

Where are you now?
You, who showed me your pretty, witty poems?
Where are you now?
Why did I betray you,
You who were reluctant to believe
That any passions lurked
In that dull, little, dark-haired girl
In the corner?

Where are you now?
You, who judged my poetry
Like you judged the dinner I made?
'Pas mal,' you said.

You, who judged me
As I lay like a corpse
On your bed.
You, who judged me,
Called me a housewife.
'I don't fuck the house, do I?'
I said.

Poetry Reading

Poetry reading - successful but rather unenthusiastic audience. Followed by a two hour binge but managed to dispose of the food efficiently (so much for recovery). The monster inside - bulimia - has re-emerged since the attack. I feel like disposing the contents of my stomach through the pseudo-messiah's door. (A kind of 'look what you've done' statement but God knows what he'd put through my letter box in return.

Stitch By Stitch

I unpick myself - stitch by stitch
And I devolve into an uncomplicated
Ball of wool for kittens to play with
Like the leaves that fall and hover for a moment
Just above the ground before being crushed
Beneath the feet of clumsy and ungainly beings

Immortality is snatched from me,
Daily disintegration, metamorphosing
Into a shadowy spirit. I am knotted
Tangled, caught between four walls
As I rise, as I float, in the stillness
Of my parents' smoke-filled home

Still crying - these tears are welded to me
I am a swan, caught by an angler's hook
Trapped within a family. Like fish
We swim collectively. The lake is devious
Not shallow at all but deep,
Deep enough to drown in.

Girl In Coffee Shop

He watches her
Sitting in the booth
Half concealed from him
Her face hidden beneath
A curtain of copper hair
A protable Purdah
Her expression obscured,
Staring into her cappuccino
She is part of a benevolent
Coffee shop universe
Untouched by catastrophe
Untainted by atrocity

But then she rises
And heads towards the door
She pauses and then runs
Out into the knife-like rain
Her copper hair grows damp
And darker. Its glow is gone
Its strands plastered down
Her skirt trails behind her
Through the mud
And he bemoans
The ephemerality
Of living things

Attired In Innocence

Diminutive and doleful
In my attire of innocence
You foist your vision
Of what I must be
Upon me

A lamp leads you to me
And, instantly, you become
An essential part of the recipe
That resides within me
We collide, we coincide

I am sculpted marble
With a soul without blemish
Spread out for your satisfaction
So calm, so unnaturally calm
I sail on your unseen seas

I invited you in
But I did not see the barnacles
That cling to the sides of your ship
Spear in hand, you pounce and now
Everything is on the periphery
Of your assumptions

The Outsiders

The scream in the night awakens me
And the talk in college halls
Of the people, dancing within,
Speaking in foreign tongues

And drunken worlds
And lovers' curls
And the parties
To which I never seem
To be invited

And the world
Of black gowns
And mortar boards
To which I
Can never belong

We, the outsiders,
Are misguided together
As we plunge through the roof,
Wasted flesh, lacerated.

My body shudders
The earth shudders
'We should be dead,'
I cry.

Dull Dawn

In the half light
Of morning
The living room
Is a bleak landscape,
Littered with life's leftovers
A toddler's warzone
With bombarded toytowns

Shrill children awake,
Waddling on awkward
Duck feet. Tainted
By images from some
Cruel comic strip
A duel at dawn
In an imagined world

Lyrics

Why do members of internet fora suffer from cyclical amnesia?

Del Amitri Nothing Ever Happens lyrics

Post office clerks put up signs saying position closed
And secretaries turn off typewriters and put on their coats
Janitors padlock the gates
For security guards to patrol
And bachelors phone up their friends for a drink
While the married ones turn on a chat show

And they'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Gentlemen time please, you know we can't serve anymore
Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there's nothing to go
And by five o'clock everything's dead
And every third car is a cab
And ignorant people sleep in their beds
Like the doped white mice in the college lab

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Telephone exchanges click while there's nobody there
The Martians could land in the carpark and no one would care
Close-circuit cameras in department stores shoot the same video every day
And the stars of these films neither die nor get killed
Just survive constant action replay

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs
While angry from Manchester writes to complain about
All the repeats on T.V.
And computer terminals report some gains
On the values of copper and tin
While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs
For the price of a hospital wing

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before
Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
They'll burn down the synagogues at six o'clock
And we'll all go along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Transparency

I am transparent
Like the paper people
Made out of tracing paper
Cut out by the careless
Hands of small children
There is no blood, no bone,
In me and others are able to see
My ephemerality
I am pale and wan
Like a bare tree
In the last days of winter
Set against the luminescence
Of the other guests at the
Christmas ball

After Death

(Originally published on Usenet and dedicated to Sarah C R.I.P.)

Numbed.
Initially
But anger soon arrives
Always unwelcome
A corrosive sensation
And our entire bodies
Scream in unison, 'Why'
A howl  is ripped from us
And rushes through the night
And flies through the universe
And reaches you
And you are finally aware
Of what you meant to us

Disrobe

Darkness descends and we disrobe
Our roles are our attire
And now we have no need for them
What we say is not what we are
The image we present is just a facade
Why don't we permit ourselves to be real?
Why don't we permit oursleves to live?

I am healing now
The day is done
I stand beneath the clouds
Letting them rain on me and
My Grandmother's ghost grasps my hand
We share our spirits and our souls
We will flee this chaotic land
And we will reign together

God's Eyes

I feel God's eyes upon me
I walk through the light
Into the night
I am sucked into a dark
And silent sea
I confront the dawn with empty eyes
And a dead heart
I hear Him whisper,
'This is how it must be'.

Newborn

New Born II

Newborn

In the midst of May you came
We were as one, seeking the sun
Awaiting the cock's crow, the streams flow
Over bristling, frosty land. Milky clouds
Over still and silent cattle, glory-bound
Before the daylight becomes faded, jaded
Across a calm sea, a quiescent ocean

Your tears- each droplet - glistening gold
You emit guttural but glorious sounds
I elevate you to my lips to drink
That surge of emotion. I am at one
Within and without, the heart and the flesh
This deep river was born
To be in motion

I whisper worthy words
Into your ear. I command
You yield. I caress
You seek sensation
More than meaning, retreating
Rhetoric. You are mortal, alive
Not battery-operated. No need to wind

Your clear eye, a cloudless sky
A wholly exquisite fact
But it still does not satify
I need to fill it, to replenish it
With brilliance. I contemplate
The spring snowfall, the prospect
Of a monarch's crown, of future renown

A land in which idols
Are exalted and illustrious
This should be my inner landscape
Not these distraught,
Dark and troubled thoughts
My desecrated domain invades
Devoid of dreams

Decorative Doll

Dressed in heavy sweaters
Dressed for the cold
I stand still - a decorative doll
You drape yourself around my shoulders
The answers lie in your hands

You will not relinquish me
You pledge your sincerity
You vow to cherish and defend me
From ghosts and from trolls
How can I leave? How can I escape?

I invoke an hypnotic incantation
A magical potion, a magical notion
I petition the Gods as your arms
Become ever more tightly wrapped around me
Then they fall away suddenly

As I kick back, I hit back
And now my protector
Turned predator becomes
A part of the swirling dust
At ground level and I smile
And say 'Good riddance.'