Marmalade Light

"To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself" - Anne Rice -

[inaweofthephrontistery]

[inaweofthephrontistery]

The clouds are blushing tonight

The clouds are blushing tonight,

Or is it the sky?

There’s such a rosy fever

Settling, flourishing, then off - to fly,

Taking tender steps in dance

Above wandering wisps, high:

Ascending crimson,

Its joy lifted beyond each shy,

Shadow, light in the delicate dawn,

Beaming at the rushing wren’s reply.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

I’m in love with the summer I promised myself

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Bloodstained

It's impatient in the shade, growing hot, tempered. A tyrant bellowing through the crevices, sheltered by a warm scented skin arch. A weakened tunnel. Everything soft and young cracking, shivering under its wrath. One fatal blow and it crumbles. One strike and it spreads, downhill and the smell of iron leaks. No longer a dawdling dribble, a runny nose like honey escaping clear. It streaks and burns across the vacant valley, filling, overspilling. Disregarded defence. It lingers too long in the passage, becomes greedy, to flaunt its ruddy splendour relinquished from the ravines. It keeps coming, faster still, rushing to reach the lip, a platform peak and run ragged over the cunning corners. Trickling in the lined lower lip, chin, hand, pooling. Laughing and seething, cascading, leaping (seeping.)  

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Bedroom

I look around my room and see for the first time in many months how cluttered it really is. It’s not that I’ve been oblivious to this, but rather deliberately inattentive. Lying in precarious stacks are piles of notes, prospectuses, old toys ready to be sold and picture frames, wrapped in a thick layer of dust and bubble wrap and others in newspaper from a year I was yet to be born in. My room is a haven of possessions that have no defined place of belonging; they remain untouched, in a liminal state. A pure, white line can be traced dividing the hectic grounded world that my body navigates, and the more abstract, subjective reality of my clean walls. One of stubbed toes and frantic searches, restless nights and evening shade discretely darkening down from the draping, vibrant printed curtains. A complex, finite box full of disorder that invites luck for secluded creativity. A space of subtle acceptance where ideas and worries float, fly, fumble, and are left to stagnate in stale air and then rejuvenate in the drafts drawn from the windowpanes.

Drawings and books are delicately placed, altered and adjusted in their blu-tacked compositions, almost as precarious as the ink which retains their material aspect. Each playfully attempting to keep up with a marvellously fickle mind, containing the effervescence of a child and the caprice of freshly found adulthood. Fearful fading feelings hide in the hems of clothes propped up by sturdy hangers, acting as a structure that the pretend world of dolls and daring dreams once held. A tropical paradise. The steaming warmth of the first sip of a glorious cup of tea. Each worn out item inspires an indescribable comfort. Presents and postcards popping with colour and thoughts, protected by their time are surrounded by crumbs of chocolate and shorter hair strands embedded in the flat but familiar, overly-trodden carpet. A room of imperfections to the critical mind stripped of nostalgia yet to me it is my second completely individual space, brimming with a personality I am unable to define. 

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Soundscape of silence

Dangling Feet flailing breathing, forgetting, forgetting... then breathing escalating in shavings of time, undermininng every line of trust, scraped back, now raw, etched black the burden of legs, instead of a tender tread jolting pain that remains longer than words stronger than vast chasms of adolescent shimmer, so enclosed in all expressed before, yet opulent order, not restored a soundscape of silence reverberates, aches through every high and devastating low the crunch of every echo fissuring under a flightless body no   body

[inaweofthephrontistery]

There was a delicacy about it which had been stained, as time rushed by and then fled with gentle indifference.  

[inaweofthephrontistery]

I felt bold for a snatch of time.   It was a fleeting moment that fluttered by.  

I'm now falling through fog.   Flailing and thrashing through thoughts. Stuttering, stuck, looking and losing fog, fog, fury, fog.  

Loss taints the value even of gold and the nights just draw from cold to cold.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Constantly Dreaming

Constantly, I see redeeming features in dreaming.

Swimming in docile blues, brimming with vital views of restful reticence.

Peaceful scenes of generous greens that tease out leaves in curious, paper curls.

Sunlit swirls slipping and soaring under and above coiffered clouds.

Slumbering satin skies that wistfully sigh for the wisdom of night snatched by day;

Constantly awake in dreamless, still lakes.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Contrasts

Vast expanses and concepts are the places I tread timidly towards when I am alone, in the guarded walls of my room. In a protected sanctuary, I choose to be lost, in tremendous towering peaks of unanswered points. And when I eventually find myself staring at immense features, outside of those weary walls, I longingly look for the tiny details. Those little pieces that suggest the rest are large and have grown cold from sitting apart. And then I am left thinking that maybe it is the complete contrast that really attracts me. The desire to see differences in my surroundings. The need to feel free yet confined; not lost in unfathomable flaws that are neither large, nor small. To be drawn by sharp juxtapositions that echo in alcoves, that reverberate through every happy, joy-less feeling. It becomes a requirement to see complexity in some, if not all occasions that shuffle across the evening grass, towards my demanding eyes. 

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Halcyon Blaze

a careless array of spring-like things, danced all day in a halcyon blaze, for as long as they could until the cliche,  choked and weighed against in dismay, reshuffling the good,          embedded in visions blinded by blue,  dark decisions, ridden with pain and rusty in cheer, reassurance all smeared with flaky intent,  peeking yet falling constantly stalling to reach the lonely days, that lay battered and bare,   each in despair yet the cliche would revolt raucous with light   hidden in delight grasping at the pure sight that tauntingly stood for as long as it could.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Every Shade of Night

There's a psychedelic road of worries that seems sadly smudged and unrefined.               Each black, grey, orange hue flickering yet fading, deeply confined in the mind.

Aggressive agitation, is a distraction sharpening, becoming a detraction.   With every shade of night grabbing at the dim light.

It's one laughing optical illusion, a game of complete confusion.  

Frequency, lucidity a mad drive that's pumping yet shouting all at once. A spectrum humming that seems to deprive, and ignores a need to fixate   and forget the inate.                   Now it's all a mystery, aimless devoid and drained dripping like rain outstripping in vain Yet to touch in plain sight and find it sanely sore invites a crushing sense of rushing that had slyly supposed once again to elegantly creep (unlike sleep.)

One laughing optical illusion. That raggedly, entirely remains vacant yet in chains.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

I am scared I have lost touch with a part of myself that I will never regain. And I guess I am becoming increasingly scared because a part of me knows that's true. An even greater part wants to find it again but the gentile voice of perspective is coaxing me away.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Expectation

How is it, that we expect so little and yet so much from a person? A living being that cannot promise to be constant, as they change with every breath and every week. But we hold them to each misinformed promise, because we expect, that against the odds, a faithful promise will remain. A significant truth in the shattered honesty of life. A folded scrap of paper, tucked down in the darkened crease of a couch, or a fleck of wind in a transparent void. Expectation really is a creep. Tip-toeing up in a burgundy light, taking the kaleidoscopic glint, and discarding it all in grey. A grey that occupies gloom in all its shades.  

Yet I will go on, shaking hands, shuddering. Counting down and running further than my body will allow. Alongside the devilish friend, and maybe I might just catch up with Expectation and find after all, I had imagined more. 

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Summer Snowstorm

I once saw a summer snowstorm obliterating the sky, turning each sullen cloud into a surreal scene. I was told it was a false fantasy. That snow could not exist in summer and as I walked, the battered soles of my shoes pressed against the fallen flakes, fading from ecstasy. A torrent of voices, belonging to memories, called, demanded, whispered for the blizzard to be searched for. And a lifelong journey began. Each shoe became sole-less, detached from its upper and a scarf that had settled across my chest, lay limply forgotten. Searing heat replaced the embossed detail that had been printed impermanently. The voices grew louder, the heat grew hotter and the sky stood still, untying the tracks that trailed behind and in front, withdrawing the unconscious promise. It shared the last essence of the storm itself, the double image and reflected it all in a raucous, revolving state before slipping away.

[inaweofthephrontistery]

Days That Will Matter

I wait for days that will matter. Keeping best clothes back for best occasions. I am growing tired of placing expectations for the best of my life on one momentous, brittle day that could crumble in an instant. I grow weary of the worn, patched holes and jaggedly cut clippings that coat the painted walls. Bound by peeling plastic tape that could disintegrate without a care for my sagging hopes. I forage for books from when I was four. Tales of ‘story times’ and nursery rhymes that yellow at the back of my bookcase. Simple words from a simple life. But that simplicity ceases to pervade now. My life is no virtuous verse or guiltless passage. That childish cartoon face stares back at me, smiling sturdily, dangling precariously in front of my dog-eared days.