I find no I in we
our minds merged
where does me end and you start?
we’re gonna need surgical precision
to free me from your hall of mirrors
but what if there is no I left in me?
Who is I and what did you do
to extricate I from me?
Am I an abstract thought
reflecting back at us?
though there is no I in us
but a u for you
So, I suppose I must be
the other part of you that makes us we?
Am I a man made in your vision
a puppet on a string
strung out by your historical revisions
hanging out on the clothesline
left out to dry in the rain?
Do the soles of my feet
walk without soul?
waiting to be returned
to the I you carved out of me?
Pulled mind
Their voices always travel faster than the truth
Always found in the gutter after the lines have been run through
spark me up a cigarette and burn away these untruths
I can’t see for the smoke and mirrors
The string that keeps my mind wrapped inside has come loose
and I’m trying to tie it back together before they notice I’m turning footloose
tying up the laces, weatherproofing my boots
I’m burning up these heedless warnings
you were never meant to mean a thing
so why does my mind keep drawing these useless strings
I’m pulling at tethered threads; all this white noise and dread
stirs things inside my head
my teeth clench together, and all these neon nooses pull my neck
there is too much information
but nothing about you
I’ve been making ghosts in your image
I think you’ve been making me too
Drawing me in your visions, trying to pull me through
but I never was your puppet
even though I’m always drawn to you
but it’s all for the same reasons I’m repulsed too
this hate is closer to love than it should be
yet I have seen through you
but it’s all just white noise buzzing in my head
Their voices always travel faster than the truth
Always found in the gutter after the lines have been run through
spark me up a cigarette and burn away these untruths
I can’t see for the smoke and mirrors
The string that keeps my mind wrapped inside has come loose
and I’m trying to tie it back together before they notice I’m turning footloose
tying up the laces, weatherproofing my boots
I’m burning up these heedless warnings
leaving a trailblaze no one can cut through
I’m highly strung, wound up with no wind down
pulling at tethered threads; all this white noise and dread
stirs things inside my head
my teeth clench together, all these wires become nooses
pulling me into the void from which I had fled
Another letter from Mammaroon
Dear friends
It’s funny what you remember when you miss something. See, it occurred to me recently that there was a great forgetting down on earth. We’d pour our filth out into the world, and then when we glimpsed the ripple effect in our environment, like stones in water, we’d remember for a second, a moment, maybe a little longer if we could hold onto the abstract long enough.
We’d sit, mourn, sigh, and shake our heads, ‘What about the whales?!’ We’d ask, ‘What about the curlew?’
Then, in the next breath, we’d turn and pour more filth, always re-forgetting.
I only remembered our great forgetting because I’m here in this fish tank on another planet. How far removed I have had to be to realise is…nothing but shameful to be honest with you, dear friends.
I miss the way Herons flew like a rope with wings and how the squirrels pissed me off by chewing my bird feeders.
The early morning dawn chorus would irritate me after a sleepless night.
In other news, though, I married Spoon, not because of love but boredom.
Sitting here in this glass tank, I know what a goldfish felt like; if his memory is bad, surely it’s from the tediousness that rots one’s brain from such an oppressive home rather than from biology. I remember having a goldfish that knew when it would get food, and I am much the same when the mammarrians throw in some food.
Occasionally, when the boobacious little spidery mammarrians come and stare at me through the glass, with even smaller ones standing beside them I take off my t-shirt, and I take a run-up to the glass and the little ones skitter and hide behind the slightly bigger ones. It passes the time and amuses me no end!
Yours faithfully
Holden Mcgroin.
Broken enough
Sometimes, I wish you had told me that the happiest we’ll ever be would be fleeting
Just a moment of lightness between the heavy blows
maybe I’d have been stronger if I had been shown
how to ride along with the lightness before it was blown
but now I just panic in the throes of it
‘it all ends in tears,’ says the voice in my head
‘don’t trust these moments you’ll never see again.’
so I keep turning away
trying to stick with what I know
this misery that sticks a lump in my throat
but it’s comfort just to know
that I belong in this little hole
where tears fill the core
till I am broken enough to feel whole
Betrayal
‘Discover nature’s majesty,’ they say
cataloguing moments of serene
but the music runs through
matching the mood to now
looking back, photographs displayed
memories of what was but will no longer be
How can you take this, the loss of what we see
how can we live beside this travesty
our hearts beating against the gravity
our history bringing us down
and to look in their eyes
and see death has prevailed
I am trapped in their strife
at our human betrayal.
Not me, not I, look there at them
Keep the faces within
disembodied voices crawling
a shattering of skulls behind eyelids
peeping to tomorrow’s byline
author unknown
hatred the tagline
the other freaks are calling
Finger pointing
‘Not me, not I, look there at Them.’
contortionists contorting
fists clash, skulls smash
twisting, cavorting
freaks on freaks in blood
sheep calling sheep sheep
over the fence and mawing
grazing on the zieteigests distortion
groomed into war and extortion
And so the chant goes
‘Not me, not I, look there at them‘
‘Not me, not I! Look there them’
A scribble in my chest
‘Write down your inner monologue when you’re feeling the heat.’
but all the words are just one jumbled mess
A scribble beating in my chest
The stallion and the misunderstood
Do you know what it’s like to feel like
At any given moment, they’ll take away your rights?
When all these people keep on arguing on either side
and you’re just trying to keep from dying inside
trying to be unknown
in a landscape of hatred
keeping to the edges
I used to think I hung around these places
cause I wanted to be alone
but now I think I was pushed
pushed to the side
Sometimes I think I’m strong
but mostly, I just think I’m wrong
my stomach churning with all the news
as they preach to all the masses in their pews
I laugh at their ignorance
and then it all burns in my lungs
their fingers pointing to all of us
and I hear their teeth clash as they speak
hungry for the blood rushing to my head
and I think of the look in that horse’s eye
tangled in barbed wire, the flare of the nostrils
as fear curdled his blood
and I think we are brothers in blood
The stallion and the misunderstood
The long black train
Trying to learn to be captivated by the moment
but
All these thoughts get away from me
and I give chase
never catching the momentum of now
but all the tomorrows
like how one day
someone I love will slip away
And I want to fight against the indifference of the universe
but it wouldn’t fear me anyway
I could bend and break all the rules
But time will still etch itself onto my mother’s face
I could photograph all these candid moments
light capturing my father’s face
but in the end, even the lights paintings will fade away
and I wear a mask of calm
But these butterflies are held
each flutter pulls a different trigger
and time keeps rushing
The long black train that can’t be stopped.
The sound of mourning
The snowflake falls indifferent to it’s own impermanence
just as the greyed feather glides from its pyre
heedless to the swan that carried it
the world doesn’t mourn or care for all that we carry
and the wind screeches only what the listener tells it
silverbackgorillapoetry.com 