To be read quietly.

And I shall live now,
As I always intended upon living,
For I have taken fresh air,
Into lungs that had just fluttered out the old,
And threatened upon me something dire and unthought,
And as I sit now, chest once again peacefully heaving,
The crow caws at my back door.
And some where far, the sparrows hum.

Now it is I, who am able to read and speak,
To dance and walk,
To be and be with,
To be pleased and to please.
For life is able, and only as I make it.
For it I, who was standing in my way before,
And no other.

Give in now, to the passions that have stepped beside me,
And lead them. Lead them to the brushes, to the strokes,
Oh, of which I seek beauty in.
Find me, by sand and by pavement,
By cobble and by book,
To the scent of home,
And the trickle of tea.

I am to be me.
And finally, me.

~

Note to this - I just came over very queer, a couple of hours reading and suddenly air seemed to flutter into my heart, a tremble down my throat, my quivering lungs. I ran to take air from the breeze in the garden. Unlike any anxiety, for now I breathe clearly and my head pain is gone. So near to the next seven years, have I been reborn?
To be read quietly.

John Scarlett David, aged 16. Self Portrait.

Hole.

Depths, oh how it is found and discovered!
Stumbled upon, oh trod around.
Since I read words so similar has it been reoccuring in the sweeter parts of my life.
A hole.
Just, and as is. A tunnel into the ground, or a depthless pit.
Always out and in the unihabitable,
Occasionally larger than any building,
Often thin only enough for one regular sized human being to slip into.
And then send in the ferrets!

Just as there always seems to be fire in my sky,
So does there seem to be,
the holes in my earth!
Just two years! Just two! And down by the sea the illuminated balls flew into black sky!
Just two, since Murakami warned of a hole never seen, a well to be lost down.
Oh imagine if you didn't die when you hit the bottom, she had warned.
Undiscovered you lie, in pain, amongst the bone you sit!
When did dark depths suddenly edge to magical,
Oh when was it that a rabbit tapped at his pocket, the slight of the clicking?

When, oh when did I fall?
It would appear I have always been here,
In a hole by the sea.

The Muesem.

Is it the quiet,
The dead of the night?
Oh, so may I ask of you,
A favour of your being.
Just be by, you see I've a vacant plot,
I sit here often,
Oh won't you stay?
Not long ago did I weep alone,
So sweet were my blues,
I tried my house into a home,
And oh, tired china, dim glass and heavy curtain,
I find here, by the window, I am alone again.

A crackle, the breaking of bone beneath feet in the garden,
The usual desire that you should be visiting me at strange hours,
Such is the thought that brings you not me.
Terror left my eyes just years before,
Oh vacant plot that sits in these glassy rounds,
Won' t you be the one to fill them?
To breathe life into a glimmering reflection,
I see wood, deep mahogony,
I see Gold, Oh Browns! ... I see ornate chains!
And a movement undetected.
Sir, have you taken my hand?
So cold that you are, I could have mistaken you for dawn's gentle breeze.

You see now, I am saving myself,
So simple it is when you have no desire.
But the electricity you pulse through me,
My need to create at your side,
Had it passed by me, I would have been but an empty, ornate shell,
A treasure lying upon the sands of another ocean.
But we would have ended up in the same room at some point.



And now, in ruins, my body lay beside yours.
Oh how the tourist come,
How they tap on the glass, how the children stare.
The guide, he fingers at objects, once warm in your hand,
He indicates the stare, he guides to the detail,
He works a thin point to the intricacy you left.
My eyes ache to my side,
Together we sigh,
You're broken; wired hand in mine,
A machine or two for life.
Oh, what have you made my dear?
Interest still in dusty eyes,
You smile that familiar grin,
Obscured by spectacles that light the sky.
You made it, Oh you made it.
The great inventor, don't you know?
And now we lie in wire, we lie for custom come.

The important day.

Today was not especially carved for me, today was dull and lack lustre. There was not a slice of weather that I was particularly fond of, not a scent of fine baking and I drank my tea alone, padding over bare wood floors.
I stepped into the garden once or twice, overcast it was outside, and I could barely open my eyes to the colourless glare. Not long after I had hung my sheets out to dry did thick thuds of slow rain begin to pound at the window. I went on with my day, as you always should with a day off, cleaning and catching up with myself. Whilst my stomach has been a tangle of light emotion lately, it has been bittersweet. Each day I recieve a different pain or a different pang, each day I find myself pondering on what I should just simply be getting on with.
A quick proposal was made by a friend, and so i ventured out into the reality I had left at the pub door just last night.

Ryan Dunn died today. And for a reason beyond my knowledge, the news has hit me hard. And it is rather mean to say, I should think, but it is not so much that it is he who has died (and in a pathetic way, I find, as the details surface). Remnants of death linger in the air today, the quiet of a graveyard has swept the city.
I find that every one is solemn and self-collected. Each strangers face a pale shadow of what it probably was.
I set off at a fair pace to reach Lauren's place for dinner, ignoring the change in the rain, enjoying the cool I recieved. It was some where near the start of this journey that I witnessed an accident, and 'Time Of Your Life' and 'Last Train Home' played on Radio 1.
And then the emotion swept over me, the strong feeling I could not ignore. Today is important.
I searched the memorised dates in my head and came back with nothing. What is today? Why have I the sudden strength in my chest, in my aching limbs that something will or has happened today?
Just 'She', that's all I am to all that pass me, and yet I, today more than any other, feel I have a purpose. I am supposed to let some one know, I am supposed to witness something. To spread a word. I am supposed to aid, I am supposed to be the victim. Today is the day.
And who to tell?! I battled with myself for a time, paced further into the grey haze that was the city below my step, below my view. The yellow warmth of a friends cosied home was as bittersweet as my stomach has been lately.

Of course, we have slipped into tomorrow, now our today, and that feeling went no further. I don't feel I have wasted it, however. For now that the day has slipped by, and I am still without knowledge of this feeling of importance I recieved, I shall and can only assume that it was the beginning of something hopefully wonderful.
Where my life starts another chapter.

My father always spoke of seven year cycles. And if this is a theory true and to live by, my next is certainly approaching, rapidly with my 21st birthday.

Sink.

In my garden, this morning, a black bird and his partner sqaubble.
She is closer to the tree itself, she is crouched and determined.
So close upon edge, tremble does the branch, he may take flight as he wish!

Immediate, self and other fear. Have I not the being to simply just be,
And here! I stroll casual, and here! I stumble dramatically.
Possibility and I rise to an occasion like he! They quote, and they snigger.
I am prey, and I attempt to hunt.
And bloom around me, does the threat.

There is water at my feet,
And so I sink in slowly.
Echo, is the dull thud of dripping,
Damp are the walls I attempt cling to.
And so simply, I release my back,
I feel the bones in my body slip apart,
Numb become my arms and my eyes vacant to a trembling scene.
A dull, quivering blue that holds me, weightless and quiet,
I wait and it does pass.
I come closer to a surface.
Unreligious and cleansed.
A form I am not familiar with is the self I, for my life span, refused to see.
Delicate is the skin, now young,
And straight is the hair that falls.


Gazing back, I find the garden tree bare.
And I hear the magpie scream.

Empty Says The Glass

Does passion leave behind?

You will never know any thing like what you think you are meant to,

They whispered that through countless trees,

of which I had tried.

When did honey start falling through where only sun light did before?

My world a treat if only I could move such 'Crazy Feet'.

Some one mentioned democracy, i steered a conversation toward conifer and braile.

And how might a blind man read should he have never seen a tree,

And lay his fingers upon it's bark?

Had no one lay beneath a star, and realised it was still alive?

Had it been only so long ago,

As i usually wish it to be.

Where had i been, and who had i been lately?

Oh save such sweeter thoughts for the journeys you prey to thinking upon.

Came across this from March 2010.

Parting Gestures.

The last promise, brought with it such hope.
The sweetest surprise only half wrapped,
A gift of wine in a cheap paper bag.

It was the dreary corner of the city centre, the looming, boarded doorway where you would expect to see only urine and take-away wrappers. I had been kicking along an old plastic bottle, partially burned at the tip (though of course, not by I), singing quietly a sweet, if not fickle, rendition of Frank Sinatra's Coffee Song. A slight clearing of the throat took my attention, for not many were around at this hour.
"Have you a particular place you were going?".
Her voice had a light tone, as if she had not long taken a sip of a soothing cup of tea. Her appearance suggested the opposite, a beanie hat slouched to one side over the dank drabs of dark hair hanging loosely upon an unidentifiable band shirt. I did not see her at first, for so consumed was her figure by the lightless doorway that i had assumed the voice had come from behind me.
"I suppose not", came an unexpectedly natural reply on my part.
It was then that I witnessed the inhalation of a cigarette, the tip illuminating gently the soft curve of her chin, thus bringing the rest of her into better focus. I was no longer walking, and the plastic bottle slowly span to a complete still.


She had pulled herself up onto the wall of King's Park, I had placed myself casually against said wall, between her and a scatter of shattered green glass. I watched it's slight reflections of the night as she smoked another cigarette. I asked her the point in such a habit, to which she replied simply 'Women's things'.
The lingering smell of smoke drew across our urban sky, and not a star shone there, so heavily coated in the dull orange street lights as we were.
"You see, it's only the people like us that will dwell in such an awful sort'a place like this at this hour", a distant siren laced the horizon of her words, "We may have a place to go. But its not the place we want to go to".
Not once do i recall her looking at me. She just seemed to speak, and lead. It were as though she had found her audience for the evening, her disciple of whom she could relay her stories and teachings to, and it was simply my job to take my seat, withdraw my pen and log my notes.
I did not learn very much that night, I took nothing away from the experience. But unlike any other situation I have encountered since, I took with me the experience itself. The night simply had an impact, it coated me with a layer defineable by others. I was a marked person. A person of her teaching.
She said;
"And so what if we lay in the streets at night? And what of it, if I choose to steal my food? And I do choose to. There is a dew so early in the morning, a sweet glistening dew, it's as though this entire, horrid bloody park is scattered with diamonds (here she gestured her arm to King's Park behind us, with its torn trees, its burnt patches in the grass, litter in various corners and tramp resting in a sleeping bag). The small gift of the night.
So limited are these jewels that with the hour of sunrise they are gone. And I wish only to view them, I will not steal that so plentifully given. That sort of thing just needs to be seen. The night gives you that ability."
Morning must soon have been approaching, I knew not only due to the cool breeze that swept itself across the bare of my hands and face, but from the way in which she stirred ever so slightly. The gleam of her eyes from between those drabs of hair, reflecting the orange of the lamp lights, the damp of the paving slabs.
"You probably won't see me again. I will come with the night, and leave with the morning, only to lay myself in another area by the next dusk. I never look back, I never go back. I want to see and experience all that the night has seen and experienced. For laying in its beauty warms me, it warms me bones and it puts a glittering hope into eyes that did not see enough in early life. ".
Some time passed without word after this, she sighed once or twice (though this could have been the breeze or perhaps a bus' breaks some where a couple of blocks over) and a car skidded nearby.
"What would you roam, if you took your choice?" she asked.
I pondered for a moment, but that moment mostly consisted of my believing I had been waiting for this question all my life; "Dreams".
"You'd roam dreams?"

Her leaving had much less impact that her 'appearing'. She had begun to kick her heel against the wall, before slipping down with a gentle thud. She didn't mutter another word, she leant back with a cool, half-smile, raised the palm of her hand in a motionless gesture of 'Good bye' and appeared to look straight through me. This lasted 6 seconds, she turned on her recently bopping heel and began to tread off down the path.
I watched her form sloping off into the moist blur that was my view of the city, her dull colours began to mingle happily with the scenery now enveloping her.
I witnessed her last betrayal to her teaching, I saw the bend of her arm, and the temporary glow that was her inhaling through her cigarette. She had been looking back for some time. And, still, I did not raise my hand in any parting gesture.

Lingering Five.

Half past seven, and at a loss of just what to do. There are options, naturally, an evening free to myself are full of them. I may take a leisurely bath, I may read by the back door, paint upon the stairs, perhaps bake something... I may paint my nails or moisturise my skin with an unusual limitless time.
But of course I know what I would prefer to be doing.
I do wish, and at the same battle with said wish, that I may fast forward a few months, and be sat in the evening autumn gleam, by a window that is then my own. My new predicament, possibly with my home-made curtains already clung and hung, studying indepthly the book I have been assigned on the course of which I have yet, at present, to take up. The excitement of all of this has been sweetened just of recent, oh such a veil has been thrown upon it, such as rose-tinted glasses are put upon those in love.
My veil, it is of silver and sheen, a delicate and grand material, fine like smoke and defined like intricate jewellery. It has the feeling of aristocracy, with the earthly feel of a war-wife's home.
Perfectly does it coat the scene of my hopeful and near future. Glossy, does it have my items appearing and softer does my cushion upon the window sill seem to feel. Whiter is the autumn sun that floods over me and my writing, clearer is my path from there. A winding cobble down the garden, and who to visit me but he, that day. My glance up and a smile without blinking. Broader, it does seem through veiled image.
And oh, how I am shot back to the present! How I cannot forget that just more than an hour, the sweetest, sincerest good bye! And how I may write freely of this feeling, how as much as I wish to be there in my future, do I now wish to lie here in the present, for through wooden blinds, leaking in summer sun, the veil momentarily took the present, and all I did see was he!

A goodbye felt in the hand early in the hours of our afternoon. Should it seem so naturally calm, the blue of sky sitting contentedly above the mass of grey clouds, mingling like marble with specks of the white. Rain upon twirling fingers of hands that no longer ache to sunlight, no longer burn red in stress. They are the colour of skin now, they are! And with wind slipping by so fast through car windows, we could have been comfortably falling once more.

Still lingering in my clouded sky are the familiar doubts, bouts of the unknown and worries that circulate mostly at night. Upon startled lips that still harbour fresh of flesh, a smile still plays doubtless.
And then, came that moment. That the women in the films, the ladies in the stories and the girls in their best friends cars, they had this face, they lingered in these thoughts and they enjoyed life.
Oh how I felt so warm , so suddenly at ease, for this is the fearless running I had sought in times that seemed to have no litten path away from them! Just as mentioned in post previous!
I will always want to go home, I will always will myself toward the ocean, but as of now, i am content! And dare I use a word stronger! Dare I not! So as not to jynx what may be my only chance at an adolescent innocence protruding happiness !

Bristol, sweet Bristol. You have not always been so sweet, for my welcome was sour, by early hour!
By the taking of my innocence you beckoned me in, falsely led hope, safety in a room polluted in large light!
Low wooden table, brick work on show and a flea-ridden garage ! Oh you are nothing to I!
And yet Bristol, sweet you, are proving that I took wrong path just inside of your means, not just at all!
I find that I am cosy in your archways, well trod upon your cobble, oh whether the rain falls or the night is endless, you are alight in ways I never once before understood.
Oh yes home, with it's voices, it's sand and it's nostalgia! It does call.
But now, sweet Bristol, I am here. And i refuse to live forwardly, and live just as it comes! And today, it has come to be, that familiar faces are suddenly smiling, and they are plenty! Oh just today, the sun bent around the car, and just today, the rain hailed us, freshening and gently!

As I lie in the night that was just last, they prodded at me. They fingered at the corners of the duvet, they giggled obscenely as they scattered around the bed unseen. Those creatures who have been around, who ruin me aswell as light the hope in my bones that I am not alone. I could make out nothing last night of their terrors, their lighthearted jokes. I could hear no words and feel no particular way to be. But still they were there.
Small crimson ghosts?
As his cool arm crossed me, it was less a protection than a comfort, and yet still my chest heaved in the slight fear of reoccurance. Of hopelessness. Loneliness.
Those things are only just exitting, but lingering in the garden, in houses and coverts nearby. As I look from a well practised window, I am aware of their presence, their little snarls and giggles, the goblins of the past I am leaking from slowly. Steam rises from the chimney of a home, a warming sign that I may settle.
But the creatures remind me of the need to be upon my toes, should I need to scatter again.
So tired of starting over some where new, and yet so torn still!

Sweet presence, save me, sweet present, assure that I am to be and simply be !

It could take all but one show of lips to a hand and I may melt into my present reality, undetectable and yet appreciated. I'll blink.

Rain on car windows, memoir.

So the boiler bloke is here. It is vaguely awkward. I mean, a situation where you walk in and for some reason open the tea cup cupboard is always a winner. My blank gaze did him no confidence after this, and I recommended I show him where the boiler actually was.
I suppose it's in the job description some where - Walk in, open cupboard, find boiler. He does seem pretty simple. Conversation died at 'Well here's the boiler, move any thing if need be, I'll be downstairs'. In fact it did.
Up and down the stairs he goes, not a word, just expressionless glances of a man doing what a man does to survive.
I wish and pray (in my own athiestish way) that I should never have the misfortune to look so very impassionate in my life. Dear lord, i just wrote that as impassionation. My fingers are aching to write and I have been denying this freeing pleasure of rambling, and so they taunt me with words that I am rather sure do not exsist. Although that one seems as though it may.

I had a night of restless tire, just last. It was unsettling but calm and quiet. I felt not like eating, not like drinking, vaguely sickly and bodily tired. Each muscle felt as those bruised do. My eyes heavy and dry, my lips parted and dumb. And yet, sleep would not come.
Instead, as I threw down the games controller and laid my head upon familiar pillow, I recieved slow flash backs and peculiar memory. Fearful days. The music I hid within. The bands on my wrists of which i fiddled with. The white sun shining in, acting as a comfort blanket to all else. And myself, cold with fear on otherwise delightful spring afternoons.
One evening, after school, the memory portrays. Mother, and my then-stepdad wordlessly mentioned that we were going to a resturant, not far, but a drive none the less. I had seated myself in the back, both earphones in, coated in teenage angst, listening to this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhiwRhPS1O0

The motorway was dusty and dry, the plants skimming its edges were dull and lack-lustre for spring, the washed out sun giving them a limp appearance as the cars swept them lazily in succession. Mother and 'him' chatted rather idly, but dispassionate, all ordinaire. Not like a couple in love, not at all. A couple left, that's what they portrayed.
A resturant meal with your now-family should be something of or like pleasant. Sweet, quiet, a treat. They tried speaking to me, I am aware, although there were taunts there were also comments of schooling and friendships. Light and disintersted. As they sat opposite me, my form lingering to the left of the table as if ready to make an exit, I felt as one might when being at a job interview. I kept my head down, tucked my hands in and out of my red, cotton jacket, and fiddled with the spikes adorning my arms.

The resturant was family oriented, warm and welcoming. Picture and feel this.
The oranges and reds of a plush carpet, very much like your typical Harvester. The ivory and creams of simple walls, parted by occasional beams and wooden detailing, all polished to appear older than the fibre glass they likely are. Hints of gold in the detailing, photos of farmland and bowls of fruit, soft in stroke and copied in print. A fireplace out of sight to me, not burning, but maintaining the character of the room.
The white light of an afternoon sun slipped in through the low windows, adorned in heavy red and golden curtains, it lay upon the shimmering cutlery and circular polished stained tables lazily. It gave each glass it's own source of light, aching my eyes and giving the overall effect of clean. Of sanitary. Of safety.
Not like the drear and brown of the glass mugs we had used in the house we had not long escaped from.
Only two years before this had public places given me sanctum. I felt safe in them, with other people around, other people who probably had, in my eyes, warm homes, sweet pets, and a light that stayed on all night. But not I, for home was fear in simplicity.

This day of which I speak, i gave up. But torn was my young self, and very young I was. I had not broken into a sweat, but I felt that similar trickle, cool and threatening, slip down my spine. That fear that caught in my throat when an image ran across my mind, and for time and time i could not shake it's irrational shaking of my wellbeing.
Too afraid to see tomorrow, and yet too afraid also to die. Each, for me, seemed to bring the same unknown, the same loathing and cul-de-sac path to follow. I felt it cruel that I should have only the two as a choice. And running from either was not an option, for run, we already had. This was my destiny.
Oh how warm a light could have seemed, shining back from where I had ran from.
And yet i knew that even there, the lights were out at night.
I looked to the little public that had gathered in this resturant the same night as us. I remember none of them, as few as there were, i remember no faces, no gender, no races. Only jealousy.
Might I have a mind as blank as yours? I assumed as I looked to them, eyes wide with hopelessness. You with clean slate, may I not live simply and happily as you!
From the age of 10, I often wished myself amnesia. We would go on many a long car journey at that age, back and forth, hiding, running, through the night and early dawn. I would either lie beneath a sheet in the back of the rickety van amongst 'his' tools, or slumber in the back of a car well tracked. The rain would pound at the car, or the clear sky was breath heavily upon the windows. And I would wish, with all my might and adolescent wonder, I would pray to an unknown force that tomorrow, I may wake without memory.
I made no hold backs, no 'let me just remember this or that', just simple and utter 'I don't want it any more'.
Of course, this irrationality was pathetic, and young of I, and had I forgotten the memories I cherish I would not forgive myself inwardly, of course, however, I may have had my wish granted, and never have known of such a thing ever exsisting, only the memory of asking for it to happen in the first place.

A journey late into the night, 2 or 3 in the morning, to the east and then back again, or vice versa. I awoke in the back seat, and much like a childhood memory of a nightmare once had, I burst into tears. I cried and simply cried, and my mother in the front seat responded just as she had in the Nightmare memory;
Harsh words and misunderstanding. I made up an excuse, just as I had done as a 4 year old, and told her not of the things I had seen.

And I never did.

Everything was white when I awoke this morning. And i mean just the air. And i mean the second time i woke (well, fourth, if we are talking technically, for panic had me at one stage). I adore the snow, and Winter feels so far, and yet I awoke to the treasured glistening some how. It was there like a lingering spirit.
Winter is tainted, it is true, in my previous two years it has been something of stress, sadness, grief. And yet i long so to be back in Winter, and return it to that which I am in love with again!
This morning, as i turned in the pale, his photo was prominent. It stood out like it had not done so before, not since I placed it upon my window sill. Suddenly it seemed just weeks ago, suddenly i was so young again and the usual presence lingering around the photographs had disapeared. It wasn't there. It seemed it was at home, in his body, where it should be.
Of course the daze of waking subsided, and i returned to rational thought rather quickly, but the air still was white, and so I swept legs over sheets and took the photoframe into my hands. In one, he gleamed a smile and bore a kind arm upon father, the second, he had whisked a snow white into his arms, his face firmly protective.
The selfish in me still says, it still says, 'Why are you here to protect me no longer!'. Its bitter, a voice inside constantly weeping and yet growing weak and tiresome. It's throat a mere ache to the strength it was in the weeks post-leaving.
Yes, many will have stopped reading now, and yes, I am aware I am forever talking to blank, dully painted walls.

But it will never go, not from mind, not from skin. Your colours are bleeding into me still.

Cherished, was I?, at such early hours. And cool, was I, to wake later in solemn still.
Today, I miss him. I have missed him, and always have before his leaving even. And yet, today - I miss. I truely miss. In the word I feel guilt, for today, although she is also missed, the fear that she will some how find out sits irrationally upon my shoulders. And yet, even beside me now as she could be, I feel she understands.
Today is his day. And my heart, it does wilt.
Photographs for me are such a drug. They provoke thoughts left upon dust coated shelves, they excite memories long since played and they bring me to be uncontrollable in emotion. They bring tears to eyes once so dry, they bring sweat to skin and pants to low breath. They live, to me, so close am I with the memories I hold.
For a moment, I've no words. And so i give.

~

You and I, must make a pact,
We must bring salvation back.
Where there is love, I'll be there.
I'll reach out my hand to you,
I'll have faith, in all you do.
Just call my name, and I'll be there.

I'll be there to comfort you,
Build my world of dreams around you,
I'm so glad that I found you.
I'll be there with a love so strong,
I'll be your strength, I'll keep holding on.
Yes I will.

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter,
Togetherness, is all I'm after.
Whenever you need me, I'll be there.
I'll be there to protect you,
With an unselfish love, I respect you.
Just call my name, and I'll be there.

If you should ever find some one new,
I know he better be good to you (This, is where I gaze upward, always).
Cos if he doesn't, I'll Be There. (I, this time).

I'll be there, I'll be there, whenever you need me, I'll be there.
Just look over your shoulder honey.
Just call my name, and I'll be there.
-Jackson 5.


- Written Tuesday, May 31st. 2011.