January 2023

My past has no shadows, as shadows need light to live.
Life is a dance between light and night
and the darkness of days.

My present has shadows, but no dance
of happiness or merriment
of being a worldly presence.

My future is unrefined, undefined
as the sun may never rise
above the horizon of maybes and likelihood
of a waltz.

Like treacle. Like treacle I say,
my mind gone blank;
Mindless blinkers steer me
towards the sea
slowly 
towards a sea 
of treacle, like treacle I say
my mind gone blank;
Treacle, like treacle the path 
my thoughts wander
these days
my thoughts wander
wade
through treacle
– towards no end. 

The longer I live the more pain at every remembrance, every recollection, and every revisitation of the forest seeded long ago. 

The longer I live the thinner my skin, translucency revealing an alien presence: someone there but not there; broken branches and crumbling bark. 

The longer I live the less words seem to matter, they shatter like aging glass mirrors meeting fists in fits of alienation; no windfall, merely trunks uprooted by the wrathful wind of ages. 

The supposition of a loveless life lacks visible proof – evidently; ghosts twirl in soft tissue with superstitious choirs belting ditties behind veiled doors. The phantasm of a lovely life never becomes the protagonist; blindfolded mice line the corridors, searching for Roquefort; no pudding can be found.

I fear their faces. Vague outlines in the morning mist drawn by dry fingers like tokens of love across a steamed up shower shield. 

I fear their blank faces and peering grey eyes staring back at us;  delineated tadpole people ambling with the trepidations of drops slowly sliding down through moisture abandoned on vacant shower shields. 

I fear their faces, low brows and blood-red diamond eyes splashed by hostile water; a shower head spewing out lies to entice our rotting corpses to confess; to bathe in sulphuric acid without need for shower shields. 

I fear their faces, and the new day they bring. 

Like the Heartless Like, red turned white, the Sarcastic Thumbs-up lack a first digit: the Wooden Club of approval crushes every skull, washes every mind – blank.