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