SLIPWAYS
froydir
i don’t know - i get tired every morning the same sheets waking up the same careless smoothness facing pain dry wrench into the empty slot of another day
i put my face against the side of your leg this is how to be small this is how to be a dog or a person breathing in air someone in a forest mattering, not very much but the trees possessing sky & i, my breath & my body
food court smells of coffee & disinfectant the wheels in my chest whirring, gears disengaged running idle an absence of drift or current taste the urge to push through the train station copenhagen, paris, berlin - whispering down the platform stairs airborne oceans rappelling down to sluice across over light windows, as i aimlessly persist beneath gulls screaming at me to get out & i shave off another day/ take the same bus back to the land of the dead Â
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the elder blooms we are walking through its sharp sweet smell a hot air balloon rising unexpectedly to the west emerging from the park, overcome by weakness two small dogs are on the path by the crossroads one scared, the other angry i know how they feel now the hedges are too tall to look over the fence around the new house not high enough a rottweiler runs its growling cough along the inside the sun sets & i am developing tunnel vision/ every pebble in the asphalt seems to glow the puddles open doors to drowning fraught with vertigo
walking up the stairs in front of me i look at your ankles the fine bones the soles of your feet touching down intimately on each step you step ahead the rhythm of your soft tread leading & i forget to ponder/ is this the stair i want? is climbing stairs even my thing? this is the thing here comes another step i’m faltering Â
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i don’t know anything about signs & omens or horoscopes things written in the stars there was a child caught in the centre of a maze sacrifice to the black pyramid descending from above everyone cowering inside their houses, blinds drawn wishing not to see as though complicity could be avoided through blindness just like the light of long dead stars arriving, no longer real a distant voided dream of might have been eyes shut tight to violence hands squeezed into armpits so many backs turned a wall to slink along what directions you expect to find in the dirt at your feet i don’t know anything about signs
here every daybreak knocks along the pale horizon while sleep evades your bed
coming to terms with it the long chase after sleep i put my feet on backwards go walking the ramble of an internal conversation spinning along the hedges the worn feather of a rook in the grass by the hill where i pick rosa rugosa looking at the grey sky smell of concrete & welded steel beside cut grass the promise of rain hanging in the air/ nothing is gentle about this life but the world the watershed between my days & nights that tender spot
how many times can you fold a spirit in on itself before it grows too large for the body to contain
i ask the ghost of an old dog - am i dead yet? it flickers out back in the rain the exit sign above the door blinking on/off in my mind neon phosphorescence bleeding into my dreams this place where i try to love without falling apart or turning into a fog my heart a black box cycling past lives through the dreamless hours trying to recalibrate
i scald my tongue with chamomile burning away unwanted feelings this daily ritual of incendiary excommunication thinking of your oak tree hands imagining them strong & supple, wrenching my heart from its nest with their slow grace an egg rolling down a hill/ what i want
submerged in the aquarium of my room i roll over in the dark no room to sprawl there’s the clock counting out seconds a creeping dawn fingering the blinds the memory of waking up phone ringing, heart pounding not knowing what i’m afraid of/ no one will make me pick it up
the forecast keeps changing i think you’ve got my back, but you’re filling up on something other than love time drove far past those people & i’m not going back just dragging up the old poison/ i’d rather be stung by bees
how do you teach yourself to surrender how do you teach yourself to give up when every moment of inaction every pause in the breath of fighting is a terror worse than death
my right hip aches constantly & i keep thinking there’s a myth stuck in there, somewhere knocking about as though this too can be construed as some kind of attack an untold truth icy burn on my tongue waiting to spill the flightless baby birds of an upturned nest most of the time i don’t even know what i think or feel myself i’d rather just talk about something concrete & real like the young hare i saw on my walk sitting up tense in the grass ears perked waiting to see if i’d walk its way & then bounding off a soft furry study in cream & fawn i was wondering what it would be like to have that fur/ to be always covered in such soft warmth i think i would like that
thank you for reading © froydir 2015