Night of the encroaching thoughts

I've been listening to a lot of electronic beats lately. This is the result.

Faith Bacon

Night of the encroaching thoughts:

Mechanised dust enters by window crack, 
Leaving trails of sawdust self back
In circular tracks
on the sill.
I think: This must be Lucifer!
 I curse.
It flips on its back:
wings pasted down
Weak dust legs cycling upwards
growing stiller
and still. 
Dust is dust.

Smokers with their ointments for pains.

Rubbed fastidiously into veins.

Flowers, bushes and earth

Scent the humid, coarse air.

Reminiscent of a hospital.

And, of course,

this

persistent rain. 

I must remember to take a second breath.

I’ve hidden too long in death.

Clung to it like a balloon,

won at a fare

by a lover,

tin rifle

and
dead dog stare

Move Heaven and Earth for connections.

I mistrust how

Angels sow seeds to grow affections.

I can’t see why

They’re

not

considered demons.  

Flesh beats as wanting, death is a bone.

Existing is lonely, dying is alone.

I’m hanging out in the water tank trick,

denying help.

And I’m painted out as the lunatic.

On the fringes

Of a social circle
I can’t get out of.

Playing with rotting corpses of people I once knew, behind.

Day-freak phantasies in period costume read rehearsed lines

I re-animate in my mind,
wasted embodiment, weak limbs hardly attached.
Dust is dust.

I must remember they’re

All longing acted out
by loathing heart.

I must remember to take a second breath.  

I find five million ways to get over you.

Then given five million and two,

To leave you dangling tie high over

Suffering pit

Sky scores thunder, darkens azure

I cast forsaken

Shadow

with pitchfork

and

arrow tail tip.  

I must remember to take a second breath.

For these memories so final

That they live in death spirals of narrative, which weaves

Intricate tooled fragility into individual grieves.

Each little melancholic cog fastened to me.

A tree

Weighed with rusted scent leaves

In the autumn

heavy dew,

I draw up my fatal position.

My time passes, oh it passes.

The grieves glisten, oh they glisten

in the narrowing light

dejected I see

my
cracked

human condition.

Einmal wird das sich das Licht sich nicht länger dir zuwenden um dich zu treffen

@tellthee has interpreted the Greville and the Tombstones track, One day the light will no longer turn to meet you.

@tellthee told me her translated works are more than just English to German: they are expressions sewn as a quilt of feelings, sounds and imaginations of her reading the original. That, to me, is beautiful.

I am very grateful and love to share them.

This is: Einmal wird das sich das Licht sich nicht länger dir zuwenden um dich zu treffen

One day the light will no longer turn to meet you

I don't think this really is about a lighthouse, y'know. I'm not even totally sure the lighthouse keeper is even employed as one.


One day the light will no longer turn to meet you

Drowned books.

Dashed on broken bones,

Split out at weird angles.

Corpse shallows.

Heaving in seaweed swell.

The Sadness took them.

Can’t you tell?  

The sky is falling in, isn’t it.

Someone should check outside.
Where's light?

The lighthouse keeper says:

"One day this turns away from you"

"One day you will be left in the dark" 

Wound tracks.

Silver laid ice spines.

Over laid down sleepers.

Paper cliffs.

Words rubble down below.

Fell off trembling hand.

Spider ink vibrato.  

A happy pose for a photograph.

Smiles keep only on the film roll.
  No blinking.

The lighthouse keeper says:

"One day this turns away from you" 

"One day this shines on you" 

"One day this leaves you in the dark" 

"The smile will snap closed. 

The sky will fall in.

The lid will snap closed

The earth will fall in" 

The lighthouse keeper says: 

"The lighthouse shows us pulsing as what we are"

"One day the light will believe you"

"One day the light will leave you"

"One day the light will no longer turn to meet you"

"One day you will be in the dark"

Light blinks across books,

Corpses, travels and paper cliffs,
Collapsed skies.

The lighthouse keeper says:

"I am getting older, and I am in pain"

"I will one day go and leave you"

"You’ll think the sky is falling in.

You’ll have to go outside to check" 

"Go outside and check"

"The sky is where it has always been"

CODA

Everyone ends.

Hasn't a chance.

Still, you are the sunrise in me.

A Tempest breeze.
Rough ground in a church yard.
Detached trusted light.

Betrayed song of a strained life.

You are the stone sunrise which gets me up.

Bones and plant

Unknown source. I like the aesthetic nevertheless.

Time paces

I've looked at this for so long I hate it. So it seems it is as good a time as any to put it out of its misery.

This is:

Time paces

Sometimes there is a hell of a lot of time.

Far too much of it.

Immense plains of time.

To be found bloated in echoing waiting rooms.

The chance embrace at the sand dunes

Has gone,

So move on.  

Lord knows, it’s breaking me all up.  

Time is not on my side: yet steals nothing.

It paces, tick to tock.

A switchblade of position.

Wound back in typewriter’s bluebottle ribbon.

Struck letter spooled, once hidden

Has gone,

So move on.  

Beautiful sadness, it's breaking me up.  

Time is no protector, it sanctifies unease.

It’s chewing me up.

We are all done for now.

Cut to the end: all this: the pulpit faced,

Faith with whatever it replaced

Has gone,

So move on.  

Shifting sadness, it's breaking me up.

You'll have to wait a while for broken me

A fight to death.

Time will win the last bit of me.

It feels like there should be a chorus now.

Time lined up tick to tock preaches only raw howl:

[optional]

“Time is not on your side”

“Time is not on your side”

“Time is not on your side”

“Time is on no one’s side”

Aristotle’s potentiality and actuality

This might be a story about death. It might be about dragonflies.

This might be a poem about death. It might be about my recent mental health.

This might be finding comfort in knowing I'm not accepted or not accepting. It's OK to not belong because others don't belong too.

There are no dragonflies on me.

This is:
Aristotle’s potentiality and actuality  

Saturn would float in enough water.

I Imagine its discs would dip and roll barely under the waves.

Like a capsized craft.

Or an underwater entity from way out of the depths.  

This silt sunk and settled down here.

A deathly knowledge, then, all can be excluded.

Electrical buoyancy.

Destined for displacement from some deep oceans.  

Under the water is welcoming coral.

Hold a soul-sized breath to be at the bright of the coral.

To be an added colour.

To forget so much of rejection to believe in it no longer . 

I visited the coral and saw myself.

Under grandiose waves I swam as part of its eco-system.

A bone vibration.

“I too am of shell”: held tight to your ear, tales I will tell.  

My bones soon compressed tho’

Turned oil slick, know fear of the water between the coral.

As life exhales death

The deep quietly excises oil, keeping coral unchanged.  

An oil slick trying. Slicking and trying.

Trying to dive to reach the coral lighting the water’s bed.

“Must be close to coral by now”

Only eyes like discs dip and roll barely under the surface.  

Fragile as bubbles. Thin and nervy.

Balanced finely on the very merest edge of water tension.

I cannot convey how mere.

More spheres floating on top of the ocean.

Existing together.

Loving in a lonely scape away from submerged coral.

Without atmospheric pressure.  

Was this death growing tired of life?

Floating gently from dreary acts laid way to new lifeless

Is this a push or a pull?

The jagged coral grows tired of the roundness.

The orb orbiting,

Sees the coral as jagged and can’t understand.  

Can’t stand the touching.  

Marble blackness:

Above the heavy dark water, emitting psychedelia.

To the corpse scape:

Iridescence spectrum swirling beyond the upwards

To the coral scape: 

Up from below grandiose waves, only the oil slick sky.

If I lay still on this couch, will you tell me if I’m a sufferer?

It's been a slow process to get back to writing again.

I hope you don't mind.

This is:

If I lay still on this couch, will you tell me if I’m a sufferer?

I need to know if I’m a monster,

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.  

I seek dreams of the blessed

I sleep with arms crossed on my chest.

I awaken tired, nevertheless.

I rip others’ history and give it away,

replace it with magnetic tape memory.

Relentless failing abject misery  

I need to know if I’m a survivor,

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.  

The turn of my situation here

Leaves what is left as traits too near.

Transformed into what I appear,

My virtuous principles do betray

Smudged and shaded outside their edges.  

What if pain of grief sharpens my teeth and weakens my nails?  

I need to know if I’m a sufferer,

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.  

I feel it all, decay, all the time

Every single conceivable angle and line

All at once and again separately

I’ll write an unforgiving play

And perform it with dolls, painstakingly  

I need to know if my silence makes me a monastery

My counsel a sermon of scratched out names

A lectern of suffering preacher

Held clasped books laid on darkened shelves

High in the tower of the cranium, quietly a wretched creature?  

Through all the trouble

I keep on functioning

I keep on being.

Fluids keep on agitating

And I keep on strangling others’ sentiment

As gentle as sunset  

World of bones, dread of feeling

Lightbulb eyes cast upon me beaming

I need to know if I’m a monster,

I need to know if I'm a survivor,

I need to know if I'm a sufferer,

If what I am, I am not being.

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.

Photo of asking the devil for the answer, Jeanie

Photo credit: Jeanie Laub, 2017

"I will go ask satan" by J Laub.

I don’t know what to say to the dying

This is a rough sketch of something I've been working on. It's not exactly perfect.

This is for World Poetry Day. It evens rhymes in parts.

It is...
I don’t know what to say to the dying

Photo by Cecil Beaton, Gwili Andre, 1932

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

What worth to my words by the morning.  

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

Would they hear the obituary I wrote them.  

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

I say it’s OK, it's fine, and I’ve no idea why.  

I’m no voice of comfort to the dying.

I hold their hand tight so I know I’m not a monster.  

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

So I listen, but they never ask questions of me.

So I listen, and I hope they can speak of things they see.

So I often believed a death bed was as comfortable as the life led.

Then I needed to forgive me and them for all words un-said.

Because communication is breaking and can’t be mended.

When bones, cartilage and shallow cold breaths are at the last of a life ended.

When everything is failing and crashing and giving up the ghost.

God knows, what was important in this life?

Why do I never say goodbye?

It always troubles me.

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

I find it easier to talk about my working day.  

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

I try to talk in uplifting ambiance imagery.  

I don’t know what to say to the dying.

I tell them who they’ll meet, I’ve no idea why.  

I collect pieces of time from the dying.

Not like teeth so I know I’m not a monster.

Guest graveyard poem: 'When dying is beautiful', by Little Miss Funeral

Graveyard poetry is seldom practiced thing these days.
Little Miss Funeral has written an honest, poignant graveyard poem entitled "When Dying is Beautiful".
It deserves to be read more.

"When Dying is Beautiful" is a graveyard poem that flies.
It can be read here:
https://littlemissfuneral.com/2017/03/17/when-dying-is-beautiful/

~/~

Imagine an evening of readings by Graveyard poets in the back room of an old Edinburgh bar. Standing in front of the small, shuffling, audience under fairy lights, lens flaring through the nectar pints of I.P.A.

I would love to read Greville and the Tombstones stuff on the same bill as Little Miss Funeral.

There is super authenticity in her writing and landscape. Little Miss Funeral is a funeral director in New York. Plus, I mean, Little Miss Funeral is an awesome poet name. Think of the promotional posters for that reading gig!

We would make a good evening mix of graveyard poetry, nihilism and death positivity.

Anyway, enough day dreaming of sell-out gigs and crowd-surfing. I sincerely hope to read more of her poetic writing whenever Little Miss Funeral would like to write it.



I know you'll enjoy it just as much as I. Here is: When Dying is Beautiful

by

littlemissfuneral

When I think of dying I become afraid.

Not of death itself,

but of the act of dying.

I don’t want it to hurt.

I don’t want it to last long.

I want to slip from this life into the next.

And when I think of dying in that way,

as in being born again,

I’m not afraid.

I think of how I’ll feel when I’m with my grandpa again.

And if I think that the ocean is beautiful now,

think of how spectacular it will be in paradise.

When people I love die, I hurt.

I don’t understand it.

But I’m not meant to understand everything.

I’m meant to do my best.

I’m meant to trust in God.

What we have here is only temporary.

But one day when I close my eyes,

I will open them to a permanent love.

A love that fully embraces me.

And when I think of dying in this way

I think death is very beautiful.

You can read more by Little Miss Funeral via her blog.