Dots on the horizon, like deliberately bestrewn breadcrumbs in a dusty fairytale, become my path as I hobble through the loveless land. Broken benches snickers as I sail past on windless days. I chew and chew and chew on every golden dot, seeking sustenance in place of salvation; alas, every gilded moth succumb to the snake’s salivation – an offering made of glue to the fools following the crumbs in the stories of old.
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.
Being alive isn’t living, my life needs more cowbell. I need more cowbell to feel an urge, for life to surge out of the engulfing quicksand. Throw me a rope, pull me away. Throw me a rope – with a cowbell.
It’s 4pm. I’m still in bed. Beyond the double duvet another world awaits: the app proclaims a world at 11C. Outside the solid walls frosty cats’ whiskers gleam under scattered street light. It is getting dark again. I remain hidden.
Is there such a thing as morbid irony,
planning the aftermath of the day the ticking stopped,
planning the unwinding of the clock,
then merely wait
– for the silence
