I yearn to travel that
Road less travelled
To March to the beat
Of my own drum
Instead,
I walk the lonely path
Letting self-sorrow
Drown me in a sea of darkness
Closing my eyes to life
Living in a numbed limbo
Without hope, without joy
Gasping to feel the light
I pray for, I beg for
The courage to live my life

Kelly Rose
© May 23, 2017

casual conversations
evoked then folded
amongst the personal things
stickered and stored
i've so often asked myself
is it possible to fall in love
with every woman
that you ever meet
and if so
how do you let go
and where can you find
a removal van for the mind
for the memories
of all that's left behind
stepping out to start anew
how can i cleanse
in this irish summer rain
with it's tears of a lost love
permeating through
everything i own
records and books
now boxes on a pavement
left signing an old tune
to these photographs of you
of a time
where a photograph
was so much more
than a nine second delay
but something to own
yet like these memories
time too gets overtaken
with no distance left to run
i try to hold as best i can
from the steely approach
of the oncoming removal van

There are no records left; I asked them.

The probation officer arranged it, he was helping my brother. My trip may have been unofficially organised.

I was taken to meet the lady, I remember her name, her home clearly. Mum kitted me out in hand knitteds, summer and lace up shoes. I was shocked by the latter; I aways had straps.

I may have been 6 years old; there is no record.

We went on the bus , cook and I, to the small cottage hotel, Lelant by the sea. A bus ride from St. Ives, a short walk down the hill to the beach to play.

My host went shopping, introducing me to her friends, and worrying over my hair. The hairdresser suggested that cutting was not the answer and I was provided with a dark green ribbon, shiny, wide and expensive. I imagined the cost.

The food was unlike any I had known, just tomato soup, scones with cream that left my tastebuds traumatised. I liked the boiled eggs; I was used to them. Cook looked after me kindly and understood, told me to say. The gardener suggested that as I must pass through the kitchen garden to school, I may eat as much fruit as I liked. I did.

I liked the little school, made friends. The laceups were a great succes as I could walk on my toes, like a ballet dancer. The soles were thick. Friends were made and one girl lent me her woollen bathing costume to bathe in the estuary. It sagged when wet; my self esteem lowered.

Adding here that at that age who knew of self esteem? We just felt bad.

I was given the sweetest little bedroom in the roof, all dolls and dormers. They took away my comforter, and it seems then I walked in my sleep. Moved downstairs to the piano room where no stairs could harm me, I felt unsettled.

Yet the days moved nicely. There were little troubles, nothing to diminish the beauty of it all.

The day came when I was sent home, I guess it was agreed; there are no records. I had wanted to stay, and I still feel guily for that.

My family met me from the bus, laughed at my accent and threw the ribbon away.

Weeks later I found it ***** in the lane, and kept it, hid it.

Years later I went back. In the museum, met a man who recognised me. We were then in our fifties, and he said I looked the same.

I am not the same. There are no records.

I never was a ballet dancer.

sbm.

.
Your flesh lies in your grave,
my ashes fly on the breeze.
And our Ghosts intertwine,
link-haunting through the trees.

Ethereal energy in ivory white,
wraith-like tinged in blue.
Mist shroud figures wrapped
are the Ghosts of me and you.

You call across my aeons,
your shade is next to mine.
I reply within a veiled second,
deflowering the ***** of time.

Forever conjoined fog-twins,
eternity is our lust to save.
With my ashes on the wind
and your flesh lying in a grave.

© Pagan Paul (31/05/17)

Feelings,
sometimes a power,
provide motives to fly higher.
Sometimes,
a broad weakness,
drive the life towards darker.

A mind can burn
So white hot
That it bleaches the senses
And dislocates the soul
Did you know that?

And sleep can be terrifying
Because of haunting dreams
Dreams of huge steel wheels
With vicious toothed cogs
All waiting to catch and crush
As the dreamer slips and falls

Reality etches with acid
Ignoring hopes and plans
And the innocent shall scream
As the guilty creep away
Food turns to maggots
And drink turns to ****
And this is the intensity
Of madness

                             By Phil Roberts

I shall internalize to the point where i rise
Like a grey misty ash through sullen harbour skies
To descend on these eyes who never danced with ambition
Nor once sought to covet nor hold executive position
Sweeping through parochial house to office building
I consume this room as a deathly prison warden
Where time passes and falls in a desperate eerie sigh
Unable to cry in an endless stare of just getting by

I shall crawl through the past of these city streets
Retracing my footsteps as the years they recoil
The red terraced housing of old Hungry Hill
A young boy in his room sitting there still
Head full of dreams waiting for his moment to shine
Such foolish naivety of a dreamer in his prime
He would never tie his shoelaces anything but straight
Just getting by, the sole manifestation of a solemn fate

I shall leave as a mist to cover these countryside hills
As a wandering soul, a veil rolling down as early dew
Comes upon a house where children asleep in their beds
Let it be them that carry the dreams of lives better led
So that I may finally relent and lay myself down to rest
Not for deaths cold embrace but a warmer peace instead
In a world of all or nothing we have this life of you and I
Where it shall be enough to get by, by just getting by