a blog of found things: words, art, photography, disappointment & hope
Words are all we have
An evening like any other. Nothing
to tell me you were present in the world.
I received no notification
I could have missed you
I could have gone home that evening,
fallen ill, met another instead of you
Someone else would have taken me that night
Isn’t it better to be made of stone?
Or am I glad it was you?
It’s better to be grass
People mow it, weed it and
it grows wild again, never the same
I’m a tranquilizer.
I’m effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
on the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.
I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God’s absence,
or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for—
have faith in my chemical compassion.
You’re still a young man/woman.
It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?
Let me have your abyss.
I’ll cushion it with sleep.
You’ll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.
Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.
There is no other devil anymore.
– Wislawa Szymborska
My soul says, Run,
even if it costs you money and love
So says my soul
But I don’t move an inch, I can’t
Because my soul, the snake, still believes
that all that remains of us
is love
Later, my son, said my father,
if he could,
you’ll be an old man.
Later you will yearn to learn the how and why.
They’ll stamp you like luggage.
They’ll hurt you for your wishes and your dreams.
And you’ll try once and for all to photograph
the how and the why of the woman
who turns between your sheets
who sings as you expand in her skin.
And later still, son, your life
will be a scrapbook.
But not for ages yet, no, not for ages yet.
I describe myself as a feathered
friend.
I describe. You watch.
While my plumes grow.
Nights, you search for a fragile cause
set in relief, precise as a loved
face.
Insects dwell in the chapel hidden
in sand.
Many years have gone by
until this moment.
You can’t plan in the Antarctic. You can’t buckle straps
to your hips like a mountaineer and trek across the glass river
knowing for sure that the reflections of your feet are following.
The rain opens and closes as quickly as a showerhead.
Thick snow might touch your tongue before it cam tap out
the words you’ve decided on. The clothes you put on
are ludicrous in an hour: the Shetland jumper, wetsuit, khakis,
whatever people wear. You can’t even bang the door of the igloo
and run outside because you’re tired of your love,
and expect the same door to be there when you get back.
No picnics are ever held in the Antarctic,
even on the days that look sunny from the inside,
even on days when the foxes and the seals are dancing in the light,
even when you believe with all your heart that the sun will last.
It’s been said that a line can be straight,
or a street, but the human heart
is curved like a road through mountains.
If that’s the case I hope a row of horses
are walking over me on my way to you,
otherwise wouldn’t that journey be lonely?
And that same person said
when so many are lonely as seem to be lonely,
it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
It’s also been said that time
is the longest distance between two places,
does that mean our bodies have been three, near four, months apart,
which seems so much greater than the few miles between us,
but you’re as real to me as the ground I’m walking on
and the trains I ride to town and back?
And if in memory,
everything happens to music,
what would have been playing as you drank a Dr Pepper
with your legs entangled in the blanket?
Two new fish in a vast ocean swimming side by side,
sniffing out a new continent. I have no idea.
The flowers in the mountains have broken through the rocks.
I don’t know how they did it,
but I’m happy for them,
for gentle things to be victorious
even in the name of destruction.
If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.
Romantic love is beautiful. How easily it is broken.
All cruel people describe themselves
as paragons of frankness. They shout
We don’t want or need you any more! as the rest of us
run into the sea. What else are you supposed to do
on this earth but catch whatever comes to you,
with all four fingers, until your fingers are broken?
I am looking at you through music again.
Add to that the distortions of my own ego.
How cloudy the glass has become.
I tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth,
to myself as much as to you.
It has been said there’s a time for departure
even when there’s no certain place to go.
We all live in a house on fire
with no fire brigade to call.
I suppose that just leaves a top floor window
and a queen-sized duvet to break the fall.
And since we’re all sentenced to solitary confinement
inside our own skins,
and since physical beauty is transitory,
we should all learn to live with it.
Then close the door on it
when the time comes that you look in the mirror
and realise that what you see is all you will ever be.
And then you accept it.
Or stop looking in mirrors.
memoryhouse 