Whitterings

Poetry. Or maybe it isn’t.

[whitterings]

I shout on rooftops

to myself.

Loud, trembling -

grasping at the words

the lessons

and the parts that matter most.

I’m quiet elsewhere, everywhere,

and quite tired, always.

It’s others’ voices, always.

From me and them.

I find myself, lost.

Stunted

and still.

Thoughts muffled and changed.

Waiting for instruction that could come too easily -

it’s wanted reluctantly. Slurped up restfully.

As it comes knocking, knocking,

knocking from years ago.

It’s all too familiar now. All too draining.

All wrong.

Blurred mirrors and misheard mantras.

Lost, again.

[whitterings]

I hide out in the corridors. Speaking to the cavern of fleeting

of transience.

I never know where next

Stuck between the walls and hard places seem to find me each time

and I’m hiding again.

Deep in my chest is a kinship

an understanding of despair and unknowing

that seeps from the ceiling to my hands to my face

back to inside. Permeating.

It gets dark quickly. Bleeding from blackness that sits in wait.

You can’t find me now. The walls close in. Stuck. Ever moving.

[whitterings]

one, fifteen and thirty minutes later

and still here.

I’ve done it all before.

It’s hard to learn the one

step in front of the next,

when the same night comes and falls in darkness.

Where to? I ask to the walls, exasperated.

I wanted more but truth brings more and less all at once.

Lately I’ve been thinking

and trying

and faltering in places that no longer matter but shout the loudest.

I don’t know where next. I stay sat here still and silent and screaming.

Say when.

[whitterings]

There’s no mirror in the shadows

I don’t see round corners.

Just back

but through outside voices

other perspectives

and I can’t feel

what’s real.

Can’t feel

what’s true.

I find self in shadows

and views.

In projected feelings. That stack against

a world that turns against me (or am I the one turning).

Dark shades

I can’t see clear.

[whitterings]

Hauntings of past selves

Layer and layer up into something that is more than a whistle through the dark.

It lays in wait.

The creak of uncertainty that you thought you’d oiled over the

year and years

of ‘self-improvement’

is a blanket smothering.

Darkness and breathless.

It’s the same.

You’re the same.

[whitterings]

Tiny dots bleeding out

they spread but they don’t touch.

I don’t recognise

how they form. But there’s a knowing that’s deep and long.

A timeline I watch

but don’t tread on.

Again and again and again.

I show up without warning and only slightly

through eyes that aren’t my own.

I wish I could see what you do.

Shield and change

and congruent.

[whitterings]

I’m so glad to see you writing again. Sending healing vibes your way.❣️

Thank you so much, this was really kind to send. I am hoping to be more active again on here. And really pleased to see you here.

[whitterings]

It always comes around.

When rot sits at the centre. You can clear your skin

but it’ll find its way in.

Pervasive, violent -

scentless and senseless

You don’t see it coming but it seeps into the quick thoughts and

sharp tongues.

I’m sorry each time, but

it’s too strong, still.

I sit on couches and roll out paper of every word I’ve ever said

and each one counts.

And I’m sorry again.

[whitterings]

Show me your insides.

Lay them out. Piece by slimy piece

until I see you all - as parts and as a whole.

I feel blocked - by the others

showing up loudly all at once

then not at all.

Unsure of where I stop and where they fuse in.

Unsure of where I start to begin with.

I sink in smiles and laughs.

My firm feet actually clouds

dissipating - waiting for it to end and grasping at nothing.

I try to trace the lines but in your brightness I shirk inwards.

It’s cold. Lonely. Except the judge.

All wrong.

I try to grab hold of you - but no where close, I was never meant to.

Just watch. Understand. As your pieces shield.

[whitterings]

Throwing paint at windows,

I don’t want you to see the grey.

I’m in trouble.

It sold me the dream.

It’s clouded in pixels and broken promises

and it sits on my chest

in my pockets

on my false smile

behind a world that felt, before.

Lock doors.

Plant new words and old lores.

It’s too late

for me.

[whitterings]

Patterns on carpet -

they slide to dulled conversations

and there’s a captured wait.

I stopped seeing bright lights.

They burned beyond reach.

And footsteps are fuller in the evening

when I’m lost to old sensations and a voice that says the hard questions.

You can smile against the real when there’s untapped moments

but it’s getting louder.

I hope the disappear comes soon.

[whitterings]

You don’t know

I put my head in my hands. A feeling beyond the looks that pierce through ten a.m, to the hours I spend too long looking at the starched collars

that are illogical

to an

XX.

Slathering expectation. I see the let down let down by the difference in forthright and downright unnecessary assumption

because I sense next steps

And there’s trepidation in the unknown.

Frowning. This is too much for the episode.

Enjoy.

[whitterings]

It always looks the same

I crawl greys and blues,

tucking the drone of morning between chains

to knock a hope

that fizzles under day.

[whitterings]

Words bleed deeper -

I throw them into

a vacuum that isn’t

And I count backwards to where it went wrong.

I’m sorry.

I could blame it on the grey matter

but I’ve stopped with excuses

but the fault lies

and I lie down with the echoes.

I feel the cold more sharply;

it splits through an innocence I catch too late

and the shadows cast too long to miss the misspoken.

It draws a hard line.

And I hear the silent more loudly and more quickly than reason.

I wish I could hold between the seconds

to hold on to something new

that I knew too late.

I fold in to the familiar.

It’s far too small and I’m far away from faith.

It’s for someone else.

[whitterings]

Hit me.

Let me catch your breath.

I brush the need you’ve never know.

Show me faces in glasses

in passing -

it’s flames in smoke

in a vacuum of choking predictions

and I close my eyes to space

because it’s a new place.

In the quiet of voices I sit,

and we know deeper -

a presence in the glass-lined shelves

and they’re bottles of lost time

and lost sentiments

and it looks feebly above the voices.

I took one.

I’ll sit in an intonation of

carefree but you won’t see me.

I reach to the space but

it’s just a tremor

beneath a laughter of form that eases through hallways

and past the shards.

And I’ll take that, too.

[whitterings]

Fine

Kicking stones in the dusk light,

a smile dusts lightly

across a frown pressed tightly.

Eyes turned down.

Alone feels better without concern

and thorns underfoot peel back a closeness that can only brush fine.

Walk further.

The horizon glistens.

Walk faster.

I’ll pass by the live-in rhetoric

that no one listens to

and the words that scream pain fall to intoxicated numbness.

laughs

sedated

meaning faded.

Constructing jaded in misplaced truths

there’s a hope that shimmers

beyond salt in wounds,

and I’ll dance, sullen in-turned,

to take the chance

it’s noticed.

[whitterings]

Thoughts fall slowly -

it all looks different from here.

The view from the kitchen smears weary reclusion:

feet landing heavily in the no-man’s land of a scripture that’s conceived in neglect.

There’s no sooner here.

The pain holds through the windows -

and for a moment the sunset does, too.

But darkness breaks to an embrace that offers comfort in too tight and the light becomes a friction

that doesn’t belong here.

The midnight steps gather in doorframes.

There’s ownership in intimidation;

heralding hands from clasps

and grasping at a hope that

it’s not forgotten, here.