After watching Sherlock – The Reichenbach Fall tonight, I was overcome with melancholy (credits to Moffat and Gatiss for breaking my tender fangirly heart with such a beautifully painful end to the second season). And we all know melancholy never bodes well for me. That, and the fact that I am up to my neck with a new cocktail of drugs for my recent sinus infection and the return (with a vengeance) of my chronic gastric pain, almost certainly equates to a mental turmoil that needs be released into poetry a la bloodletting.

It got me thinking back on these couple of years, and evaluating my progression out of the past and into the future. This new poem is the result of such soul-searching. I took a stub and expanded it in similar fashion to Blowing Bubbles, but this one had more autonomy in rebirthing itself into something quite different.

As a disclaimer (for all those who might read negatively into this, if I have readers at all), I am okay. I wrote this not in a spirit of regression into a past that has no future, but an acknowledgement of the fact that I will never truly be free of what I try to escape via burial.

Credits go to Manda for the fabric image.

—————————————

STASIS

I buried you
Deep within the flesh of the earth
Dug out with my own bloodied hands;
Watched the clay bleed under my tears
As I resigned myself to the you-shaped
Wound to decay out of sight.

I buried all memorabilia
Deep within the recesses of my mind,
In a coffin fashioned from scrap
Pieces of empty cardboard husks,
And left it to yellow and perish
At the persistence of time and mould.

I heaped the dirt of each new day
Over the ruins of a time long past;
Flooded the earth with each teardrop
And prayed not for the dove
But the halcyon’s visitation to calm,
Mirror-like, the scourge of my soul.

I grew flowers -
Entire new hopeful civilisations
As I learned to write new paths
On the clay canvas; painted over
The red scar with fresh green facades
Of smiling grass and fallen leaves, but alas

The earth that I have lovingly cultivated has caved in
Under its own weight, revealing the large
Gaping hole
In which your flesh once occupied – now it is no more
Than a harmless skeleton of a prior existence. Yet
You continue to haunt me, a ghost of a memory,
Perfect and transcendent, untouchable by time,
And I am caught in this constant re-enactment
Of history; the story of you and me that I have covered
With the dust of lies and deceit.

It is I
Who has been buried under the illusion of convalescence,
Shamelessly trying to bleach the stain of your glorified image
From the unworthy fabric of my memory. But
I made the mistake of interring you within my flesh,
Realising only too late that, until its destruction,
There the silence of your absence shall forever remain
As the reminder of the mortal experience of pain
And, as we are bound by four walls and a key-less door,
So am I jailed in the coffin of dusty memories,
Condemned to repeat, endlessly, this journeying
Between past woe and present day,
With no compass but the reflection
Of my own tragedy
In the mirror of my writing.

——————————————–

God, I think I talk to myself too much.

That said, I’m terribly glad that this final exam of my penultimate semester as an undergraduate is going to be over soon! I really need to stop throwing highly over-used keywords (e.g. “identity”, “hegemonic discourse”, “marked/unmarked”, “signified/signifier”, “heteronormativity” etc.) around (no thanks to this module). It will all end (and begin) with the half-read Jane Eyre that my man will be delivering to me after my exam!

Hopefully poetry-composition will follow.

Here goes!

I used to cry myself to sleep at night
Thinking that the whole world was against me.
I didn’t know Jesus Christ holds me tight.

I used to despair of that endless fight
That happened between my loved ones and I -
It made me cry myself to sleep at night.

Each day I cursed my unfortunate plight;
Every night I cried to a starless sky,
Forgetting that Jesus Christ holds me tight.

I had exhausted all of my might
But nothing I did seemed to change my fate;
Nothing but cry myself to sleep at night.

But now I stand, my future burning bright -
I still trip and stumble along the way
But safe with Jesus Christ who holds me tight.

His yoke is easy and His burden light
With song in my heart and dance in my steps.
I used to cry myself to sleep at night
But now I know Jesus Christ holds me tight.

I was re-reading my old poems tonight while showing them off to two friends when I rediscovered those two stubs. And an idea hit me for expanding the second one.

Someday, perhaps,
I will understand the beauty
Of just sitting back
And watching
Life fly by,
Riding the winds of providence.

And now here is the full finished masterpiece:

BLOWING BUBBLES

For Debbie, HY, Emmy and Terence

The hopes and dreams
That burst like bubbles
That little children blow
At whim – without thought,
Without consideration
For the harsh realities that follow
When the bubbles burst
And all is returned to void.

The hearts and souls
That we break like glass
That we blow like bubbles
But shatters when it hits
The hard floors, fists and walls
That we build to keep out
The shards that go flying
When our hearts start breaking.

The thoughts and words
That slip through our lives
Like sand through our fingers;
Sandcastles in pools of bubbles
As the waves of time erase
All that’s insignificant
In our quest for the things
That never mattered as much.

The lives that we lead
That were not desired
Now  make us delighted
Like children blowing bubbles.
And someday, perhaps,
I will understand the beauty
Of watching life fly by
Riding the winds of providence.

For Terence

If only I could hear
Your voice in the wind -
As the music of the spheres -
Lost in the vast emptiness,
Led astray by the roaring waves.

If only I could feel
Your touch in the sunshine
As it tenderly kisses your lips
While mine remain parted
To await our reunion.

If only the days were moments
That would pass in an instant,
I would spend my life counting
Eternity in every second
Until your return.

It starts
Like any other day;
Any other game
The gods play.
The glazed eyes meet and
In an instant,
Infatuation, intoxication
Wraps its nets
Around the heart
To squeeze
The blood
Into the stomach,
Feeding
The butterflies that swarm
In their clouds of lust
The colour of rust
Like the woods in which,
Spotted,
You allude me like a stag
Frightened
And flightened.

Your image is the
Perfection
I destroy
By touching you,
The ripples breaking apart
Your face, your grace.
All of my soul yearns to be
You
With your charm and beauty
And breathtaking purity
Of crystalline innocence
Unscarred by the dirt
Beyond this eden.

My voice longs to call you
But your name I cannot speak,
My silenced voice echoing
Only the yearning in my heart,
Which cries out for you;
Pours its tears into you.
But still
There you remain,
Calm and poised;
Your beauty has no tolerance
For sorrows.

With a flash of light
The narcissus blossoms,
Pure and clean,
Through the dirt
Which unites me
With perfection
In this fatal obsession;
With the face in the water,
Eternally effaced.

——————————-
Terence, I think you get what I’m trying to say.

I was doing some research on the Greek myth of Narcissus earlier tonight just out of fun. Who knows it sparked off a brainwave just as I was trying to get to sleep.

I am using Ovid’s Metamorphoses version of the Narcissus myth, just in case your version varies from mine.

There’s also stuff about Narcissus in Freudian theory which I can’t seem to cite any online sources on, so I shall just leave it as that. Though that bit of information is the key to my poem, to be honest.

Ok just to explain a bit, this is the flower called the Narcissus Poeticus (also known as the Poet’s Narcissus)

Narcissus Poeticus

Just so you know that there actually exists such a flower. But my title does have a different meaning… or several different layers of meaning, some of which I guess you all would have unearthed by now.

——————————————–

Oh there the heart remains
Buried under the dust
And the rust,
And the crust
Of escape
And deceit.

——————————————–

Someday, perhaps,
I will understand the beauty
Of just sitting back
And watching
Life fly by,
Riding the winds of providence.

HEARTBEAT
I hear your heartbeat
All the time,

In the wind,
Among the voices in the crowd,

In the music -
Not just those we used to play,

But every note,
Every single thub-thump;

In every staccato, rubato, crescendo,
Just your heartbeat.

In the day,
And in the very heart of my dreams,

Among the chaos
And all these nightmares,

Your voice calls
And leads me home to safety.

The world may silence me but
Your heart sings.

Above the dissonance
I hear your heartbeat.

The wind sighs
Past these ringing ears;

The eternal buzzing
That haunts me like a plague.

Breathless, I scream
To drown out the deafening silence,

Desperate to hear your voice alone -
My sole comfort;

Hope of salvation,
Your steady heartbeat.

So my heart
Labours to sing this song,

Hoping to reach
Across these empty spaces

To beat time
With your steady heartbeat

In a hauntingly beautiful duet,
Yours and mine,

I hear you
But your deaf ears don’t hear mine.

As we are bound by the four walls and a key-less door
So am I jailed in the stasis of dusty memories;
Condemned to endless journeying
With no compass but my own melancholy
Reflected in a mirror.

NIGHTSCAPES

1. HOMEWARD BOUND
They trudge home, world-weary souls
Like a horde of zombies dismissed;
Released unto the world, back
Into their respective lives.
Packed into caskets on wheels,
They embark on the journey home, waiting
To return to rest; to be reborn, till
At last they arrive at the doorstep
Shedding their skins and dreams;
The dust and carbon monoxide.
Cleansed and pure, they turn the key
And step back into the familiar
Unknown.

2. DINNER
The whole world is drowned out by the
Clatter and crash of pots
And pans, the culinary
Concert in which the households
Compete for airtime, accompanied
By a cacophony of smells – the fragrant
Garlic, rice, soups and curries clamouring
To advertise each cook’s prowess and
What’s on whose dinner table tonight.

Gradually the chaos settles down
To the gentle tinkle of cutlery on porcelain
As the fruits of the past hour’s labour
Are relished amidst casual talk
And the sounds of the television
Blaring the news and cliched dramas.
And once again, for a while,
We allow ourselves to escape reality
To the celluloid fantasies on the screen.

3. NIGHT
The student buries herself in her work
Hoping that her mother gets the cue to stop nagging
Whilst the mother continues to shout commands
On the running of the world around her,
And complains about the number of dishes to do, clothes to wash, floors to mop,
And of the husband who does not help.
The said husband snores on the sofa,
Lulled to sleep by the television jingles,
Exhausted after a day of battles in the office,
Fighting for the right to put bread on his table.
In his room, the teenager hides from the storm outside
Within his chosen reality.
Here he is no longer the underachiever in school,
But a top-rate sniper, or a knight on an epic quest.
He is a hero and honour,
Not his mother’s sharp tongue,
Rings in his ears, rising above the screams for acceptance
In a world that cannot accept his need.

4. MIDNIGHT
Gradually the world winds down to a standstill
As the doors are shut, closing off  private worlds,
Their subjects preparing for private dreams.
A muffled series of ecstatic grunts,
The soundtrack of love, is silenced
From the ears of the children next door.
The baby sucks her thumb and twitches,
Dreaming of her mother’s breast and of the long life ahead
While the old man lies, still as a corpse,
And sees his life story flashing
Across the black canvass of his eyelids
Like an old black-and-white movie.
The widow reaches out to the emptiness beside her,
Reaching into the emptiness of her grieving heart,
As she escapes into the haven of memories
And fantasies far away from her aching reality.

And the insomniac sits in front of his computer all night,
Staring at the blank screen
And searching through the vast spaces
For the words to do justice
To his tired soul.

5. DAYBREAK
Long before the sun rises, the world drags itself into action.
Under the cover of darkness, the deliveryman speeds along the highway,
Eager to deliver his goods quickly before heading home
To enjoy his well-earned sleep.
Through the vast spaces, the lone bird calls out desperately for love,
His desperation growing with each unanswered call.
And even as his heart-wrenching song pierces through the night,
He is outdone by the cracking rumble
Of the newspaper-man’s motorcycle.
Slowly, the sun rises, and the sky brightens,
Its light intruding on a dreaming world,
Rousing the sleepers from their respite.

The aroma of coffee and the screams
Of alarm clocks and whistling kettles greet us
As we drag ourselves away from the comfort of the quilts
To the bathroom, where we cleanse ourselves
From the persona of our dreams
And wash the sleep out of our faces
Before donning new skins and masks.
With a belly full of coffee, we bid our farewells
And step outside, ready for the same routine;
For yet another day in a cycle of yesterdays.