A sigh
Sadness exhaled
Lungs full of empty
Tired to the bone
of myself
depression
Agony: Poetry 4 for NaPoWriMo
The tears make bokeh of the headlights
Careening around this corner
This is the only time we felt alive
Our skeletons waiting to discard this flesh
And death didn’t half look dashin’
The way he danced and took our breath
And when your lips fall from their hinges
In shock and agony
When the anguish rolls across your face
And your lungs expand with empty space
Know this was the ferocity
That pulled us to our knees
And we were only ever sorry
We couldn’t make it to the other side
Of the storm
The savageness of being human
A contortion of years
Pass by on faces
For milliseconds at a time
Frankenstein’s skeletons within
Gargoyles screaming
Through the pores of our skin
Stories running through the wrinkles
Harbouring humour
Creasing at the thought of those we’ve lost
Skin sagging with the baggage
Being human
Consciousness a savage
Wreaking havoc
On our mammalian brains
Music is sadness
Music, apparently it has the power to make people feel emotions.
Happy, sad, angry, sentimental etc.
But for me it doesn’t matter if it’s a happy song or a sad song; it all sounds depressing to me.
Music either makes me sad or sentimental but never happy.
The happier the song often, the sadder I become.
Because it’s a sound so cut off from anything I’ve ever felt, it sounds to me like delusion and desperation rather than happy and fun times.
Happy songs seem like tears should always mark their endings.
Because that’s what music is to me, it’s audio wallpaper over changes.
I blame TV and films for this. You know those scenes where two characters say their goodbyes for the last time, and then the music plays as the camera shows one of them walking away, getting further and further away as the credits start to scroll over the screen.
Or the music plays as someone has an epiphany that will be good in the long run, but at that moment it’s tinged with sadness, goodbyes, change.
Music is a vehicle for emotion; it moves it through you, emphasizes feelings you already had but weren’t necessarily aware of.
For me, music is a chariot for my sadness, something I listen to when I need my sadness to have sound.
But otherwise, music is too overwhelming because my feelings even in the silence are already too much.
To put music on for me is like going full throttle, no breaks.
Speeding to the inevitable crash.
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
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 lady in the black
Still… I sit
Against the wind
And I wish I could
Sit against it all
Water off a ducks back
Withstand every fall
Without falling to the black
But the whispers of the dark
Always beckon me back
And I know her well
So I’m always one word away
From being under her spell
I’ve tried meditation
All the fucking medication
Tried to find my philosophy
But I always come back
To the lady in the black
A blade on the skin
Feels better than the happiness
That never seems to sink in
Or the confidence
That never existed from within
Shedding skin
Till I’m nothing
It’s the only thing
That I find comforting
When the lady in black
Finds me running back
