Twickenham Garden

The garden is dead.
The sun is spent
and the earth is sunk,
sullen. And everywhere
the scent of soil,
defeat. Deceit
in the shape of a serpent.

And here I stand:
a senseless piece
of this place; a faceless
participle caught
in the present tense,
in the I am, I make,
I do –

I make-do with the dead.
With the lost marble
limbs and the mandrake.
I suck venom from the snake
and sap the crocodile's tears,
for I do bring the spider love,
fear; that old self-traitor.

O the webs we weave –
the stones we've sown
into the horizon,
entwining spine
and time
like so much rope
round my neck.

Dream, she says,
of the age-old tale.
Sleep. Weep.
The fruits of my pilgrimage.
I'm in over my head,
and O, I know that
the garden is dead.

But this is not
the end of the world,
no -

It's just the beginning.

* * *

This is not solely my voice. It's just my take on a re-write of John Donne's Twickenham Garden.

I think all the late nights and excessive tea-drinking of uni life are finally starting to get to me: I'm actually starting to like Donne.

.jupiter

- Is this your first time drowning?

I'd let you speak for yourself, but I note
that in your – not inconsiderable – credentials,
it states you're a compulsive liar.
And you've a throat of thunder, at that.
You've been choking back
on atelophobia ever since you woke
under turpentine skies. Wondering why
the cat has nine times to die
and you have none.

- What happened to the sun?

You know only too well.
You gripped it too tight
and snuffed out the light.
Show me your borders,
your whalebone girt,
and I'll show you the way
the rays will pucker your skin
like a Nazi lampshade.

- What about the thunder?

Yes, what about the thunder?
The way you dialled telephone numbers
on knucklebones? The way you put your ear
to the floor, one foot in the door,
and felt for a pulse?

Each of these is a symptom of acute
sickness of the mind:
labyrinth disorder and your own kind
of Stockholm syndrome.

But I'm curious -
did you ever get an answer?

- And who sent the rain?

The answer's the same;
the same old shame
burning like a bolt
through the blue -
all that's left of you.
I am the perfect mouthpiece,
the missing organ,
and you say it all
in the way your bones
groan under stress.
In the stories I spin.
And in the way you begin
to stumble as you
carry yourself
home.

* * *

Yes, the mythology series is still going!

Jupiter – ruler of the gods. God of the sky, lightning and thunder. He had many alternative names, including 'of the light', 'thunderer', 'defender of boundaries' and 'sender of rain'.

There is only one voice in the poem. He's the doctor or the politician or the priest - the mouthpiece of the gods, who really never get a voice of their own.


You can see the rest of the mythology series here or on my deviantart page.

Tales Of A Tub

This is it:
the storybooks,
the soft carpets, and now,
at the end of the corridor,
the bath is running.

The water is tongueless, breathless.
I make a well in the thunder,
and shape a space for myself
to rock shut in the crux of a chemical
imbalance, this dyskrasia. It tastes
of finality: the salt of stones
and shattered wrists. Restless slumber.


But
it is also this:
my fists clenched on the future,
a destiny of my own design,
my own undoing. There is no aura,
no mystique – just a raw kind of power.
An open weakness. No more
tapping tables, knocking on would-
have-beens. I'll just lay back,
get waterlogged;

get ready to dream.

* * *

Dig, Ophelia. Just keep on digging.

This - this was painful. It's based on something that happened a while ago now, but I've never quite managed to tell anyone. I'm going through dark spaces at the moment, and I keep reliving this, over and over. Thought maybe it's time I let it breathe.

Again, sorry if this makes anyone feel uncomfortable.


Title's taken from Tale of a Tub by Plath, which this is in no way based on - it was just something I stumbled across again whilst wracking my brains for a title.

The New Zero

You say
there is no sense
in long nights spent
spinning myself out of glass,
the web of imperfections that
choke out my reflection. But I'll
do it anyway: trace the scars that map
the arms, the rough husk round zerospace.
Taking each new glitch, each old, unspent
love and shaping it into formulae, answers.
And if you could only understand one
thing about me, I wish it were this:
that there are two sides to every story,
and while there's one in composition,
the other's weighting,
in position.

* * *

'God, how self indulgent, I thought, but whom should I indulge if not myself? ... [They are] battle scars. "I have a heart to break" is all it means. "I am killable". ... It was never supposed to be a way of life: it was about survival.' – Emilie Autumn, The Asylum

Sorry if this makes you feel uncomfortable – god, I know full well how it can make people feel. But it's something I felt had to be said.

Title is from this song of the same name by Rasputina. I feel it fits.


Please go and see properly formatted version of this here on my deviantart page.

Fever Pitch

This is the only way I know myself:
from here to here; the clutch of gut
between an armspan. And you –
you are the whorl of pyrexia
in my chest, a knot of words
I can't quite express
except in a kind of half-rhyme,
in a rhythm that falters like a pulse.

And I know my boundaries;
that there to there's just air – a gulf
before the sure borders of your shore.
A full fathomlessness, bream-deep;
seasick retrogrades, and a thousand reams
of water to tread.

But I feel just fine,
I could run forever -

For you,
I would scale the depths
of this fever pitch,
and bring you back
what's stitched to the linings
of my ribs: too deep breaths
and a casketful of sleep.

* * *

For you.

I woke up today and realised that I am not a robot, after all.
[I am in fact, a nuke bomb, but that's another story...]


♥ Fever Pitch – The Romanovs
♥ Incident in a Medical Clinic – Rasputina
Perhaps two of my favourite love songs ever. Not that either of them is actually about love. :P

Rhetorica

It is for the best (they said).
They meant the fall. But
there is only light when the sky is rent
and I have sold my soul for another attempt
at this -

the chimeric fantasies, psychosis
in the palm of a hand. It has a certain charm
about it that few would understand,
like a clam that's swallowed a pearl
and lets the ancient words uncurl
across its tongue.

My own poetic prophecies didn't turn out so well.
I drunk a whole epitaph; my own epoch
that I picked from the pockets of time.
It was a binary kind of silence, acted out
to the knitting of heels to train tracks,
the breaking open of mouths, sealed.
They said the sighs would interrupt the songs
but I never had a melody to begin with,
I never had a voice. No choice but to let
the ceiling slip; to learn to inhabit an emptiness
once more.


Sometimes I check the empty spaces
between the collarbones to make sure
I'm truly alone. Paranoia's my symbiotic,
my rhetoric, and all I know
is that when I go out
I'm never
coming
home.

* * *

There are two sides to every story. This is one of them.
It's the most wonderful and terrifying feeling. Last time, I couldn't stop laughing for hours on end until it caught up with me. Hitting earth again really hurts.

Let's play spot the reference! There are several literary/lyrical references here (from 2 songs and 2 books). Anyone who manages to guess one gets a virtual cookie. <3