Stranger's Veil - do not pause
I didn’t like today I didn’t like what I couldn’t see because it meant I knew things I couldn’t hide away. I wanted sleep, a deep uninterrupted sleep, I wanted the silence to suffocate my mind, I wanted to choose ignorance over influence, I wanted to stop thinking. I laid still closed my eyes, stepped out of myself and watched my head drift slowly down onto a barbed wire pillow. I turned my body slightly to find a comfortable place and opened my eyes too late to stop a screaming angry fireball entering my thoughts. I was at my own execution and I could see through the blindfold. I no longer had control over what I saw, heard or felt…this was someone else’s life flashing before me;
It’s not a house nor a home but a scaffold of bones, circling around you scenting the clones yet you seem unconcerned about the shivers and moans. Did you see approaching in darkness a claw skulled guide with an umbrella head and elephant hide, wearing a thinly veiled conscience which acts as your pride. Here comes the snake that crawled with a plan weeping all of its secrets from a watering can. You try and catch ice from the stuck frozen tree but you get fog in your shoes and a chill you can’t see. There’s a shadow of stone that looks lost and alone as it stares at you from afar, and you become unknown and overthrown by the falling crumbs of a rusting star.
You die to get sleep from the howls from the deep but the demons keep saying, there’s more to this than a cry. In the hollow of the haunted is a ballet of whispers that move with stealth and grace. You never hear the patter of tiny feet yet the footprints are on your face. A night so gripped, mean and tight lipped with its coat hanging on to your fear. You can’t shout for comfort nor swallow your prayers and you know that no one can hear.
The blunt razor lives of the carrier bag wives heading to the homes that never squeal, It’s the severance pay of a redundant day and the needles that you can’t feel. And the hopes you once sailed have long been impaled by a lance that will never shift, as you helplessly sit by whilst those who ask why wave as they also drift. The sea of faces sat in traffic lines surrendering thoughts of the ties that bind, with so much to do much less to enjoy, this is a prison on a ship not ahoy. The dust from the cave freeing dreams you can’t save leaving only a print of where you are, it’s a coffin a grave your own personal slave of a statue walking through tar.
The supermarket church and a cane made of birch starts the march of the single files, as you stumble and lurch hanging on to your perch as you remember the walk down the aisle. The charm of the new the processional view and the wishes of those who were near, if only you knew now what you didn’t know then sedation would have made it so clear. And the children arrive and the world comes alive to the screams and the cries and everyone flies offering words to the wise trying anything for size photographing the prize as the memories come thick and fast. Tiredness doesn’t befriend the drudgery that descends as misery transcends the jagged sharp ends of the good things that didn’t last. And hung on the wall are the wonders of it all watching your drained life go past.
And worn is the tool of the mind we can’t fool as the masks that we wear to pretend that we care build small mountains of smoke that helps only to choke as we laugh at the joke that use to be hope that can no longer cope. This gasping for air and crawling through mist knowing the fire is out from the last time you kissed means that respite is on a list of things that will never be done. You’re a long time dead a dumb man once said to the passengers his words once ferried, yet we stand here today fighting our inner decay and dying long before we are buried. Those wishes now fishes as you wash all the dishes in a room that falls silent to you, the doors they’re closing as your life hands it clothes in to a machine that simply spins round.
The chewed repetition of your false position gives no ammunition to the battles you constantly face, as you search through the cellars of those crumbling stellars that once gave you something to trace. The thunder and lightening never seems frightening when you stand at the window and stare. The darkness of grey skies offers you allies to help you get through another day. But weather can’t help you tighten the belt that you use to squeeze out from yourself, it changes the way you see in front of you as you stare up at the shelf.
(C)sj2009
