An explosion of thought
Ideas tunnelling
Early birds collecting the words
Beaks snapping
Butterflies smashing
Mammals cracking
A whirlpool of dreams
Steaming from teacups
Of time gone by
All a reflection
In a dinosaurs eye
All of this streamed by
A river
In my minds eye
A flicker
A flash
A kingfisher
A silhouette
A shadow
A stick figure
A wood preserved
In a prism
A lens
Capturing
Natures gems
Upturned umbrellas
Collecting confessions
Handles up toward the sky
In accusation
Of time
gone by
Author: Matt Johnson
I blame myself.
It’s not secret on this blog that Depression takes me over a lot.
That my depression is a chronic reoccurring nightmare that not only tires me, but the people around me too.
Perhaps last year and still through to this year one major reason for such severe blips lately is the delayed impact of losing my best friend in January 2020 .
Yes she was ‘only a little budgie’ but she wasn’t ‘only a little budgie’ to me.
It didn’t help that I didn’t lose her in the usual way either. I lost her due to my own mistake, and that is something I find very hard to live with.
As it is I’m already a person prone to guilt, never mind a mistake where a little innocent life was ruined, or ended because of a mistake I made in the first place.
I had a dream last night that she came back home and then I lost he all over again, and throughout the whole dream I just kept hearing her calls but yet never finding where the calls were coming from.
And I’ve done that in real life too. I’ve heard calls I thought were her.
I’ve sat in the bathroom brushing my teeth and heard a call that sounded like it was coming from behind the extractor fan grid.
I’ve heard calls when walking out into the corridor from my flat.
I’ve heard calls I thought sounded like her when outside but it was probably just another bird that sounded a bit like her. Or maybe she sounded like them.
I see feathers from different birds that have been either moulted or stripped off from a predator and I always stop in my tracks and look more closely, looking for her blue colour in the feather.
Sometimes I see the blue colour and then I look around and say, ‘Charlie?’ As if the feather is hers and she’s somewhere close by.
But she’s never there. She’s never here.
Sometimes I look down at a feather for a bit too long, in the way of someone trying to get past me while keeping a distance.
I look and look, and look some more till I convince myself I see blue, her blue. And it’s hers.
But it isn’t.
Sometimes I look at the feather, look around and then say aloud, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’
It might have been a mistake, but I still blame myself.
It might not have been purposeful, but I still blame myself.
And I don’t know if there will ever come a time I won’t blame myself.
I have a budgie I ended up rescuing, he has learnt some funny phrases. And it makes me laugh.
But I still
Blame
Myself.
Dead to the world
Emptiness grows like weeds
Crawling and creeping
Inside of me
Knotweed spiraling around my veins
My roots pulled
Till nothing can ground me
Life thrives around me
But the essence of me
Has long since died
Writing letters
Writing letters with blades
Addressed to you
My madness
Take these veins
And wrap them around my sadness
I am host
To all of these dragons
Waging war on this brain
My island
Dinosaurs teacup
The wind may gush
Naysayers hush
Rain pour over us
Loss become ever present
And silence us in sentence
Lost in the prism of someone’s absence
Tears may come to pass
Despair making maps
But one must imagine
A dinosaurs teacup
That never gets smashed
Prism
It shimmers still
All things perceived
In the prism of your absence
Bleed
Piercing through the sadness
Like trying to shine a light through the madness
But all that comes is blood
Running down, making tracks
A wreckage embroiled on skin
With maps of violence
Filling the silence
Sadness like an unquenchable thirst
Our skin has been shed
outside renewed
this is how it accumulates
like dust on books
inside all the days
and years spread
and every time we scream
it’s wasted breath
because in our voice
our sadness can’t be contained
It simply runs wild
Within our veins
too powerful for outside
Much too strong for us inside
The tears are never enough
for the accidental goodbyes
the shock & horror
always there, always filling lungs with empty
This is how it accumulates
Till we’re undone
one with the dirt
no more synapses producing hurt
The myth of heroism or courage
We romanticize heroism. It’s in pretty much every story there has ever been.
When someone dies we stick a ‘heroism’ narrative onto their story. We tell people that person was great and their strength in the end was ‘impressive’ and ‘inspiring’
The more I hear this stuff the more I realize It’s empty.
Not only does it hold up an image that no one can live up to.
But It’s not even true. No one chooses to be ‘heroic’
I mean think about it! If a child has loads of surgeries what do they get told over and over? “Aw you’re so brave! I don’t think I could have done that!” Yes you fucking could.
And I’ll tell you why, because you have no choice in the matter. It’s not heroism. It’s lack of choice.
Do you think when I was a kid I was stoically sat there like, “Oh it’s just another heart surgery, but I can make it. I’m tough stuff me!” No! I didn’t have a choice. Things were just done.
Heroism is the biggest myth we’ve told ourselves.
Many people have turned away from old myths about gods and the like.
But no one it seems, is able to, is ready to, leave their hero myths behind.
Even as I say that, I find it hard to detach myself from the idea of heroism. I can think of characters in stories that I’ve admired and still can’t help but cling to an admiration of. Certain people come to mind. And it’s hard to let go and say, “Actually this heroism stuff is bullshit.”
I get it. It *feels* inspiring, at least in the moment.
But it’s an empty myth. We repeat ad nauseam. But we’re also trapped into it.
I don’t think a story can exist and be interesting without some heroic element involved.
Can we ever move beyond heroism?
And as a paradox, could the bravest most heroic thing we ever do be to move on from heroism myths?
All these thoughts
All these thoughts swim
Till they run
Merging and
Words become undone
Falling away
Somewhere hidden
The thoughts gone
But the feelings remain
Without a name
And then a new thought
Falls into view
Only to fall away
Before you really knew
And the feeling grows
But the words, you do not know
And you wonder
Something
Somewhere
The letters of the thoughts
R
u
n
n
i
n
g
.
.
.
.
