2021.6 Web

It’s the precision.
Moonlight stepping strand to strand
delicate as	her hands deft on the keys
dark glitters on the edge
the edge of	hands gather notes like a
	“Charmed to meet you.”
	“Where did they dig you up?”
exhaustion saws at the edges of him	Smiles
He is soft-ragged, a breath
Moonlight like a sarabande
Strands echoing in
Where?
It’s dark and there’s only his breath
but there’s a tune somewhere beckoning
why?	“They should have left you there”
This isn’t my story	tell your own
kind	“I’m not kind. I’ve never been
	heartbeat dropping heavy through his ribcage into his guts	“What did she say?”
Nothing.		There’s nothing here.
It’s been days.	How long has it been?
Time is snatches of breath between
Sleep doesn’t		“I’m sorry.”
	“I won’t give up. I
Can’t see anything but	you.
There’s dust now.	“You know what they say about dust”
Dusk was her time
Shifting between states
But it’s night now.
The precision mocks him again, all straight edges in unfiltered light	“Say it again! Say those words!”
	Face screwed up like.
	“Face it, I’m no-one’s idea of
Heaven
His laugh caws from him, splatters down among the straight lines	Destination unknown.	“Dehydration, in the end. Simple. Well, not simple.”
		“Why didn’t he say anything?”
It’s funny, really.	“Now, there’s a word with a lot of meanings.”
Always.
He tries to cough. There’s nothing but himself.
Pain is a distant thing. He Drifting.		“Nothing to be done.”
Caught.	Diminuendo.	“I’m sorry.”
	You said that already.
DC al Fine

This came from the Day 6 prompt, but that’s all I can tell you, as I pretty much just wrote the images as they turned up while listening to the playlist, then arranged them like this.

Image from Smart News; I've not been able to find an attributed source.

2020.12 Wild Ride

This was going to be something completely different, so I’ll have to write that one another time, because I put on my “Wordless Writing Mix” and, instead, this turned up (I’m fine…). The first part of said mix can be found here.

You are dropping, the pre-beat skitter of sensation
Making you weightless.
The anticipation crests, dips, hints at
Its own resolution, rhythm insinuating itself
Until it thuds through you.
And you realise: you knew it all along.

You’ve heard it before, know where the
Hiss like a gentle ripple of feather against the
Inner skin of your forearms starts,
Each separate drum pattern like a different
Fingertip tapping, insistent,
Shimmering in your nerve endings.

This next bit drifts, earthily ethereal,
And you don’t care that this makes
Precisely zero sense to anyone else
It’s your track, your experience,
Your associations, the thud
Underpinning the drift

This music hails you,
Reins you in and sets you free,
Fleet, repetitive, wordless,
And everything you need it to be,
Summoning forests and starscapes and
Those times you danced until 6am.

It, too, bids you farewell, blended into the next
By a master whose choices speak the language
Of Everything In Its Right Place,
Fingers crooked to beckon a deeper layer:
The book you haven’t finished writing yet,
Pages of historical imagery glittering between these notes.

It blocked out sound when you couldn’t make your own;
Wordless, it was the voice of controlled insanity,
The hallucination pinned in pages
And pages, and pages of people you’ll never meet
More real than anyone you ever will, sometimes,
Heroes and bullies and victims and saviours, some of them the same.

The darker layers ground you in the nighttime scrambles
The gambles with gravity made by people
You can never hope to be, given life by your keyboard;
And surely they’re bored, waiting for you to
Tell them what’s next, stop them from endlessly
Teetering on the precipice of the call to descent.

While you eddy in self-recrimination,
The music swirls to an end, no resolution met
Except the resolution to resolve.
Your foot describes revolutions beneath your desk,
Pent in the need for tactility other this virtual frisson;
The lesson still eludes you, like the almost-words you hear.

Kyrie Eleison? Is that it? Or something less sacred,
More profound, grounding the liminal in the reminder
That humans colluded in this acoustic miracle where you
Sough across the cosmos, in tune and out of sync
With your inspiration, metamorphosing the metaphysical
Into the metatextual, with a staggering lack of shame.

And maybe that’s all that’s needed: a sharing,
And you’re getting good at sharing without touching, aren’t you,
Breathing separate air and yet resonating across the distances.
As Above, So Below, you learned that theory far too long ago,
Feeling the void at your core thrum, somehow,
In recognition of the thing the music sings about.

The emptiness shouts in layers, the kind of colourful
You only find in camouflage, and still the tunes press on,
Unstoppable as guilt; as loud as your sleepless companions:
A formless sense of failure, and the fear of being found a fake.
Never tell me all artists feel the same way –
They’re delusional in their inadequacies, I am not.

And now even the intimacy made by the use of second person
Is broken; as inconsistent, in the end, as the internal rhymes,
The six-line stanzas, the clattering stabs at insight.

And it feels like cheating to end this on a neat highlight,
Next best thing to happy ending,
When the best you can hope for, playlist on loop
Is to hold out for your favourite track coming back again,
Fast-forwarding where it’s needlessly uncomfortable,
And binge on comfort, purge the words,
Binge on comfort, purge the words,
Binge on comfort, purge the words, hope the scourge
Of self flagellation cleanses wounds that can start to mend.

And if not? You can always press play again,
Submerge.
Fade to rainbows.

This image was the first thing that turned up on the image search list when using the search term “Glittering Void”. It’s apparently a still from this completely soundless video.

2017.5 - First and Last

Not all gods live in groves
Not all skies burn.
We sought an answering pulse in the world
Stretched skins to echo
Sending an embrace to everything
Seeking answers in flesh and breath

And we found it in the rise and fall
And in the glory of the simple
Teeth chattering on that
First cold morning
One minute past dawn
And no-one told you
The way the colours would blend
And bleed and the way that warmth
Blesses.
The way your skin stretched itself
Over cramping muscles
And suddenly
You couldn’t stop
And there was nothing,
Nothing between the sky
And the bottom of your lungs

At the top of the hill
You couldn’t hear anything, at first,
Over your own gasps,
The protests of creaking bones
Too long still
And pushed to flight
And drinking in height
And the drop of earth
And the promise of rain
Seen three hours away.

Measuring distance in time
You are an alchemist
Blood flushing blue-white fingertips,
Stinging the tops of your ears
When was the last time you felt that?
When was the last time you knew
The size of your ears
Where they finished?

And when was the last time you heard
The praising skies
Echo and answer each other
Longing across the flocking distances
Bright as wingflight and
You wonder if you should want to take a photo
And you will never take a photo

This moment is textless
A grin stretching skin
Into a peerless ache.
And soon.
And soon the descent, slow and rueful
And yours.
But now?
But now you sing,
A diaphragm-deep gulder
Bellying the words before words
And this
This freedom?
This will tuck, a fold of always,
Rising to the surface
Each time you see such colours,
Each time your hear your own gasps,
Feel the span of your ears,
Freezing hot,
Each time you do not take a picture
Of the sunrise.


Those tricksters at Lies, Dreaming Podcast generously supplied some idiosyncratic prompts for NaPoWriMo. One struck me, at first because of the name, and then because it was a link, and then because what it linked to was so stunning, including what lay beneath. The poem above is a free-written piece that was the result of writing while listening. I thoroughly recommend it.

2015.28 - Harbour

I think I've nicked the first line (or something very like it) from a song I heard tonight by Rrose Sélavy, but she said I could have it, so that's okay. :) Check out her music - it's glorious! :D

_____________________

Shadows ripple under my skin.
You have touched off tremors
With the brush of your voice.
We are vibrations answering
Age-long echoes.

I know you sometimes
Want to run, escape your bones;
You twitch percussion
And I itch to clutch your wrist,
Whisper: hush, breathe,
Summon the hardest virtue,
Everything will come,
This too shall change,
All debts are paid,
Pile these heartfelt platitudes
Across your lap.

But, when the high winds take you,
You can only stomach
Semaphore and Morse,
Coarse-grained patterns,
The most casual of plans,
Permissive maybes.

And I will blaze in the grazing
Glance of you,
Feather-passioned,
Unimagined.

#22 Continuo

There are some well-known birthdays and celebrations going on today. I thought I'd commemorate someone else instead.

You probably didn't mean to be
But you are always Christmas.
I hear you and it is 1979,
My legs swing beneath my wicker
Dining chair and I jiggle
"Again! Please?!"

The virtually imaginary hero
Peers and swerves through pens and paper
But my ignorance is bliss,
Jinking in my pelting sled
To the chime of ice bells
Bedecking my fine steeds

I bank to the spray of bracing breeze,
Glee streaming from fingertips.
Glitter under moonlight.
Later yet, you guide us through
The anatomy of my abiding love
While my brother's namesake
Gambles a trade of wits
Against a desperate predator.
"Again! Please?!"

And now, with music flying
Light as a feather, I am hunched
Over the dark, heavy scent of compression,
Its precise placement
A tiny triumph of paternal approval.
Even today, where I can click
From desire to possession
In thirty-seven seconds,
The miracle doesn't stop.

Again please - more
Soaring and sinking in
Memory's waters,
Forty fumbling towards me,
I am twelve and seven and four
And you will be the one whose name
I recognise but can't remember,
Better known in a tumble of glass notes
And snow. Always snow.
Again, please. Once more.