.
Someone is waiting behind an unlocked door,
peek around the frame and tell me what you saw.
I am a little bit too scared to take a look,
like turning a page in an old horror book.

You see it may be someone who likes me
and that is dangerous for stability.
The hands are motionless on a timeless clock,
it would be easier if they would just knock.

In theory there is nothing I want more
than someone waiting behind an unlocked door.
I've rehearsed this scene so many times before,
but here and now there is a storm at my core.

It ties up the insides like thick knotted hair,
the thought, the fear, that there is nobody there.
So the man in the corner whom most ignore
has someone waiting behind an unlocked door.

But the uncertainty has its own high cost,
as the door locks shut and the moment is lost.

© Pagan Paul (14/02/21)

.
I lay here coiled foetal
in my cold cot of nightmare,
the candle that canutes the dark
has long since dimmed and died.

In but a few short hours
the **** will welcome the Dawn,
In but a few short hours
my wracked shivering frame will rise.

And frozen in the deepest night
I stare into the middle distance,
my eyes daring the still darkness
to intrude on my personal space.
But my minds eye blinks once
and I travel far far away,
back through the lonely years
to my tender sixteenth winter.
Directed and ordered to leave
I faced the cold day with all hope,
as gambolling in my ears,
voices of angry authority play.

The cities arms embraced me,
wrapped me in the mantle of adulthood.
A cooper? A Baker? An Iron-smith?
Nay! For me the cloak of the Fool.
And the Court of a Lord called,
capricious capering for entertainment.
Music. Poetry. Stories. Vitriol.
From song to spit spanning an eve.
I amuse the transient courtiers,
fake love, fake hate in delicate balance,
kiss the feet then stab the heart
and the duplicity is just an act.

In but a few short hours
the night will welcome them all.
In but a few short hours
the darkness will claim their souls.

Saints and shadows now sleep
in soft warm beds of feather-down,
the bones of feasting lay cold
like the dead ash in the inglenooks,
and their minds wander through dreams
that no scribe may steal.

The focus of my madness fades
as the horizon is neatly sliced
by a shiver from the sun,
my eyes watch the darkness retreat.
I release a long-held breath
that I stole at the Dusk of a day,
of a yesterday that matters no more,
to embrace the new day with hope.

I confess.
To the moment of Dawn:
I said the duplicity is just an act.
I lied.
And now … I may sleep.


© Pagan Paul (14/02/21)

.
The vessel was empty. It was always empty.
The vessel was a body. A Nobody.
Too young to fend for itself yet abandoned to face
the onslaught of a life unprepared for.
It was a satellite, a burden, an unwanted encumbrance
upon the lives of those that spawned it.
Those that should guide, educate, encourage and love.

The emptiness had begun early
and grown into a void of isolated disfunction.
The ship of emotion sailing into a dark sunset
and the cold loneliness of night seeps easy
into the vessel already devoid and senseless.

There had been early years but forgotten
were the vessels memories and experiences.
An era of ancient history with no notations,
undocumented and lost in the ether.
No sense of belonging or conformity
were instilled by those meant to teach.
Instead the blind vessel gropes dangerously
around a world unfamiliar.
To make sense of existence.
To justify its worth.

But worth is subjective.
Of no worth to its peers it protects itself
absorbing the cloak of the worthless.
A litany harshly reinforced by cruelty
dealt out by the tongues of resentful tormentors.

And so left to its own devices
attachment becomes an arbitrary concept.
The revolving door  of brief and useless association.
Meaningful liaisons few and far between
as its walls provide protection from feeling hurt.
So the vessel was a body. A Nobody.
And the vessel was empty. It was always empty.
Always... always... empty.


© Pagan Paul (Aug 2020)