waking up s t r a n g e
froydir
d a y s
some words that fell through the cracks
i wake up & i am a word. i speak myself.
i wake up & i write what is there. some ageless waif securely lost in the depths of europe’s ancient forests or a mountain spirit hiding among the rocks & boulders high on the side of the volcano’s sloping massif. living off the sound of chuckling streams & sunlight lancing between bearded trunks. fruit falls. rots on the ground. gravity pulls at my chest. there are horses in a field by the road. one whinnies & gallops across the grass. its tail raised & billowing like a banner in the wind.
i wake up & look: there’s the string you pull from your throat ball of yarn unwinding red or green a drawn out wail you don’t recognise as your own.
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i wake up & i am in a forest of swords. x is written in the sky & every sharp tree is jostling its neighbour in the frigid wind. like old men huddled against the cold they shield each other. their tapering roots buried deep in my back.
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i wake up & the tree of knives throws sharp shade across another day. its dappled hide reveals each cut that shaped me. shorn sheep red fox. try following my trail through the tall grass where it disappears into a whisper. listen
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i wake up & i have a name steeped in oceans & dreaming seed. a boat launches from the reeds. traces silver across the open fjord. writes my name in blood & you follow the line of it with the tip of a finger dipped in fresh unease. say it
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i wake up & pretend to be an inanimate object. the grey dawn light threatens with unwanted visitors. a huge slug that slimes all over you. cold blooded & spineless in its mindless greed. let me out
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i wake up & there’s no walking. i can’t seem to get my feet under me. all day i’m on my knees lighting fires an animal tied to my back huge & wet & snuffling. wake up
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i wake up & this body is a rock slide. a crumbling mountain i grip with my two hands. the earth groans & splits. gravel spills forth a river of sound.
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i wake up & i want to be a stone i want to be my own gravity. you can pick me up i will fit in the hollow of your hand a cold smooth curve into your palm throw me hard.
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i wake up & it’s like i ate all my feelings i’m so tired & so full all i do is sleep. a torpid lion draped across hot rocks the feathered shimmer of noontime shade passing its sigh across my golden hide.
i wake up & a thick current of blood is rising in me. i look for the angel bursting from a tranquil sea. the winged whale rising from the boiling surface of earth’s red lake. today we will swim underneath the nebulae screaming our rage & lust for another kind of existence into the deafening silence. i am awake.
i wake up & make myself deep like the mariana trench. giant squid weave their graceful dance through the dark of me. just like my heart they are wide eyed & red all over. come into the water. i will wrap you tight in my arms so nothing can touch you ever again. don’t forget to hold your breath. every breathing body is someone’s door into this world.
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i wake up & all my blood falls out. look at me pale & ghostly all these hours on my hands & nothing i can do with them.
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i wake up & i want to bleed out like fog into the green. furry donkeys huddle in the mist resembling some kind of rearranged woolly mammoths in an ice age landscape. geological time is everywhere & i an imperceptible glitch in realtime hardly here at all.
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i wake up & it’s the deluge. there’s a field of white stones. winged & falling screeches. all the rage that blows out of the sky in you. out of the falls & falls & an avalanche of water battering. i pull the broken feathers from your limbs & the sky is screaming a door in the world called you.
i wake up & walk up the old road. someone asks me: am i going in the right direction? i don’t know where they want to go & they won’t say but they still want an answer.
yes. you are going. you are going & whichever way you go you will get somewhere. maybe you can make it right. wake me up when you get there.
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i wake up & i wish i was glow-in-the-dark instead of this lump of frozen rock radiating nothing. you might touch your finger to my side & see every spinning electron fly out of its orbit. do you feel warm now?
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i wake up & there’s this huge spaceship hovering in the sky above me its belly patterned in lights like pinpricks of stars. i was dreaming of flying. the earth so large an enormous globe hanging in space as i hummed against it skirting its slow slow curve through blue refracted light & into shadow. can you imagine the whales roaming through the deep waters of planet-circling oceans. how their brains must s t r e t c h to fit the vast dimensions of their world. we are always just crawling across the surface of things. no wonder we are cursed with dead end thoughts biting their own tails.
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a circle standing in for a sphere. wake up.
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i wake up & the sun is rising. there’s a tiny patch of blue in the grey.
thank you for reading Š froydir 2016