Rediscovering myself

I am looking for the joy that sang in the world
When I wore out my hand-me-down shoes
Saving my fare and walking home
Through Portuguese neighbourhoods
Listening for conversations
Whose words tasted foreign on my tongue

I can almost remember
Watching the sky grow dark with cloud
Anticipating lightening playing
Across high Victorian windows
As voices droned at the edge of hearing
From my seat on the mat

I am sure it may be found somewhere
This sense of wonder, just out of sight
Perhaps around the next corner
If I can hold to optimism
Grit my teeth in a rictus grin
And let tired bones carry me onward

I may see myself reflected in memory
Surely I am stood there waiting
Perched on a doorstep, just out of sight
Down a dusk-dusted alley
Outside the daily grind-you-down
Of this commuter-belt world we inhabit

Where yesterday’s news is recycled, repurposed,
Shrunk to fit the typeface and house style
Even opinions can be retrofitted
For safety’s sake, toned down to win arguments
Bland, dulled to match our senses
Sleepwalking through middle age

While violence echoes around the chambers
Of our video games, our online escape
The falsehood in which we lurk, concealing our true faces
With old images, carefully posed
Retouched for personal vanity and public use
Long before fine lines trailed roadmaps across our skin

Meaningless arguments abound across the Twittersphere
While the atmosphere of the living room
Takes second place and we sit, heads in our screens
Commuting our sentence, communing with contemporaries
To the whine of an air conditioning unit
And the slow, but certain death of adulthood

Who are these selfie-prone, entitled shadows?
I bite down on their tales
Squaring the circle, trend-bucking
In this year’s Melancholy
Today I will be wearing blue once again
Practising mindlessness, in search of me

Last one standing

When they came by
For a cupful of sugar
Took my old man
And waltzed over the hill

I was still standing
Polishing silver
Gonna be standing
Forever, until…

Next time a caller
I’d hoped would be smaller
Tripped on her doorstep
Got carried away

I was still standing
To see to a Mother
Gonna keep standing
Another long day

One time you told me
That things never mattered
Half the amount I
Pretended to say

I was still standing
Alone with no lover
Not understanding
Which words made you stay

Then they came by
With a warrant for searching
Hoping to find
What I’d hidden away

I was still standing
In need of your comfort
No one to hear me
And nothing to say

Turn from the shadows
If you fear to follow
All those who greet us
And pass on their way

I am still standing
Myself and no other
One day I’ll falter
But never today

Verbal Rambling

Missing, like the cool breath of spring with the windows sealed and the heating on. I looked everywhere, but could not find what it was I sought. Eventually I was drawn outside, away from my safe haven, comfy cocoon, nest of nostalgia. Drawn outside to the vast emptiness of grey. The buildings, trees, sky, pavements, even the people, leached colourless with the daily grind. Scrabbling to inject a small painted eddy with each gossip magazine, buying the gospel according to St. Vogue, Cosmo, Heat, in a vain attempt to reignite a spark of something to warm the outer echelons of wasted grey matter in their meaningless, empty, automatic existence.

Chakras blaring, I slice through the crowd in a beam of light, airy red and green, pausing to gaze at the signs, tripping over my feet and smiling gaily at the blank, vacant stares of astonished and outraged indifference. I pass them by.

Still searching, still questing, thirsty for something more than the cold, consumer products that continue to be supplied without demand. Unnecessary. The limp sandwiches, curled in their cardboard, and the leaky coffee cups uncomprehending in their crassness. And I feel embarassed for them, these minor distractions. They clutter us up, steal spare time, waste our dreams, anchor our wanderlust and tie our shoelaces together, sending us tripping, tottering off balance until our world only appears normal when viewed from the appropriate angle.

Bent out of shape, the life collects at a corner, in little pockets, much like a zit, cheerfully growing bigger and more bountiful until some officious teen decides to squeeze it to death, and creativity is lost, scattered to the dusty ends of the earth like pus exploded on a mirror. Distasteful, too much life – suppress it, cover it up with beige face paint and pretend it’s not there. Censorship, by the people, for the people. And my itch only grows, it seems. In inverse proportion to all attempts to squash it, until it is so big it no longer needs a soapbox, or a rooftop, but is ready to take on the world even without us. I sigh, acknowledge the digression, give myself a little shake and return to my path.

Oh, for my own wooden wanderings. I choose freedom over falsehood, yet build upon the cold, hard, steely-eyed framework of society. The foundation garments of rebellion, are now to be worn outside the ashen trappings of civilization.

The glade of flowers must exist within the sharpened wolf-ridden forest and perhaps it is that this little red riding hood is looking for? Stab to the heart of a problem and find only dust and bones. Soothe your way in and discover a wealth of living warmth. Fondant moisture, unsuspected, lurking in the depths. Yes, depths. The world suddenly takes on a third and an other dimension, and I find myself satisfied, my thirst slaked, comfited at the glorious mystery of which I have partaken. Colour and light bursts forth around me and I am renewed. The world shifting and righting itself upside-down.

Things settle to a more comfortable location. Tesselations occur, interacting and teasing in their kaleidoscopic patterns. Turned on their ear, yet righted, I continue to turn in the world’s wake. A spinning top, all colours blurring to an all-feeling brown of newness.

I love.