Your absence rings
In my ears
As if
Every voice
Not yours
Is a gunshot
Reverberating
In my skull
Your absence lingers
In every musical interval
As if
Every note
Sustains your existence
Behind my eyes
Yet my mind’s eye
Continues to blur you
As if you’re fading, still
Not quite a ghost, but not quite true
A shadow
I must hold onto.
Photograph by Matt Johnson AKA Silverbackgorillapoetry
Freedom is an illusion
We’re all imprisoned
By something or other
Tethered by a thought or dream
Or perhaps a nightmare
Or something else somewhere
Maybe someone or nowhere
Imprisoned in our individual encounters
With ourselves in the mirror
Reminding us we’re not who we envisioned
Smiling underneath our emotional contortions
This rag of flesh
A world for life
Microscopic critters
Replicating themselves
As we duplicate ourselves
Simulating one another
Looking into mirrors, looking into reflections
Looking into ourselves
Studying the world
And in the world we are reflected back
And hoping no one noticed
We don our masks.
The more you resist the more it sticks
The more you distract
The more it comes back
Try to let go
The more you hold
Try to stop thinking
The more you think
I think I’ve found the meaning of life
It’s irony
I etched onto my face
A fucking clowns grin
An inside out frown
So you wouldn’t know
I was down
But I’m down and out
I took my clothes off
I shaved my hair off
And I walked down the road
Police picked me up
And took me to the hell hole
And they wiped my grin off
They said I was crazy
Said this is who you are
The man with a perpetual frown
So they sewed up my mouth
And pulled the strings
Until my lips smiled
Like the skeleton beneath
They took me to a clown show
And they stood me on a table
Shifted the corners of my mouth
Looked at my teeth and then turned me around
Said I came third
Pinned a rosette to my collar and cheered
But I was the only clown
And then I pinched my nose
And the crowd laughed out loud.
Wrestling with these thoughts
Pacing up and down these four walls
Trying to contort myself
Into feelings I don’t have
Hoping to Box myself into the calm
Contorting myself into someone
I could never be
Wishing I could just
Pull myself up by the bootstraps
Twiddle and twirl my moustache
And be the man I keep thinking I ought t be
An epitome of man and calm
But with assertiveness as my next charm
Perhaps if I part my receding hair to one side
And wear a pair of matching socks
Suit and maybe a tie
To strangle the feelings in a noose
I’ll become the man I envisioned
Instead of the patchwork of a man
Barley complete and far from calm.
I fight like a stickleback
When I’m home I’m the strongest man inside
And I would beat anyone who troubled me
But out there I am meek
A boy playing hide and seek
Hoping no one notices me.
Ugly
Fugly
Staccato of laughter
Echo
Echo
After time
I don’t hanker
Staccato of footfalls
And dripping taps
Remind me who I still am
And have.
Drowning
realising there is no rafter
Pastel face smudged away
No happy ever after
Paint a crooked smile
A clown, a gargoyle
A monster
A crocodile
Frankenstein
Fucking mouths
Hostile
Mutant
Ogre
The periphery
Of mirrors
Framing the freak
The words on my lips
“Please don’t look at me.”
In shades of neon light
We sit
Smoke shared between
Lingering like ghosts
Hosts of the cancer
Delving deeper in our bones
We’re crying
Without tears
Cuz we’re so fucking full of empty
We can barely breathe in the nicotine
And everything is false
It’s all smoke and mirrors
When the sun unlocks her vault
Blue skies misleading
We might just think it’s not our fault
So take my hand
And we can vanish into the smoke
As the orchestra plays it’s song
your absence is in every note
your absence is in every tone
You’ve become the music
Something I can’t touch
The music is the memory
Of you being here with me
And it hurts.
You were so small
And the biggest thing in my life
Now your absence follows me
I am not the same.
I cannot carry this burden
But I will not let you go
Your absence is all I have left to hold
I merged and became one with the walls
I heard it all.
As
they
put
their
hunting
trophies
on the wall
Little did they know
I heard and
felt it all
If these walls could
talk
You’d have a shock
I can hear the clock
Tick, tock
Time is running
Running nowhere
Tick tock
Gotta be somewhere
Time is locked
You won’t know
Till the aftershock
Tick tock
Tick tock
Backwards in reality
Forwards in make-belief
I merged and became
one with the walls
Not a wallflower
But a nail in the hall
Hammer, hammer
Oh how
ghosts
in time
stagger
Clamour, clamour
Hear their cries
Sledgehammer
