Connor Reid

Connor Reid Feb 2018

a deep seated treasure
staggering throughout certainty
among flowered gardens
and wheat withered

it blossoms
germinating limbs afore
yet always in touch
never lost in fall

muddy waters, cleansed
wanderlust and all
it all makes sense
but towering with trust

all else fades away
dwindling into focus
only truth
only what is natural

seeded as it sees
just glittering amongst
the horizon and its seam
it settles quiet...calm

old affirmation
fleeting and unimportant
twinkling for centuries
like it never mattered

walls built and broken
charred bones
snapped, gliding apart
revealing deeper meaning

its marrow sapphire
precious in sustenance
feeding arbitrary emotion
with endless hopefulness
and elation

Connor Reid Jun 2015

Untitled

From the stem of the brain comes spiders
Already dead and ground
Into black arachnid paste
Filling up a small white polystyrene cup

Precariously balanced atop
A faux wood computer desk
2ft from the ground and shoved in
The corner of a dingy, sterile office space

Twelve floors up and three streets from wherever
Seemingly, and willingly
Standing still, waiting, to be thrown
Across the room and crushed

By the thick rubber so(u)le of conscience
Peering into the nebula of hot exhume
Each grain of plastic simultaneously
Destroying and creating infinite space
As the bigger pieces shard sporadically.

It's cold tonight
Breath could be seen in the damp
Air of every extending cubicle
If only anyone were there
To see such a thing...

Begging for a question could only it be asked
Obscurity fills the halls and laughs
Across the windows, creating an organic
Incandescent glow, which broods
Around the ankles...

But only to those who are there...or were

The angles, the geometry
Of this vast open space - Seem to bend
When not observed, as if omni-present
And transformative - Shaping itself to jest
With the known & unknown
This midnight city is hot, buttery and populated

But stretching down, splaying -
The idea, the presence, the cold

Never seems to leak into the real world
Not even when a window opens by itself
And an outside wind rushes in,
It is escorted without even the softest sombre

All that is left is foundations creaking
In the high winds, as the battered bricks cry,
Yet this seems to only be heard from the outside
As the air settles, the structure sags
And shifts with every push - spinning almost
From under itself

Yet, we cannot see this or feel it...

Connor Reid Apr 2015

Pompeii

Contact - Pews with no use, a forgotten passage treacled, serving the timbre of resonance
Fundamental mistake agreed upon - Taken in turns, compromise youth, stripes of black tape, holding in, holding down - With such emotion

A feeling, an instinct - Complex in nature, futile in structure - Sigil-like and abrupt - Bursting forth a cacophony of irreverence
Yet, buried vast leagues underneath, the reflex of upset digestion in a tank of split hairs
Full/Frugal

This is within the borders of communication - Feedback - Crossed between importance
Cornerstones moss covered, sinking to the bottom of refuse
Candy & gum flavoured coastal reefs - Hardening on the decay of brimstone and salt
My ego is capsuled, exerting pressure equally from all angles

A fishing hook, on a fishing rod - Cast into a culture of aplomb
Plum knives, bread, buried under volcanoes - Just far away enough, shielded by brass
Squashed inside my grandmother's tin - Old, rustic and wilting
Baking our ancestry into extinction - Corroding, and creating callous embassy

Just long enough, to settle our stomachs - I dance.

Connor Reid Mar 2015

Majestic 12

Breaking waves, folding in river bends (meandering)
with an effortless grace
Cupids mouth, foaming to return -
broken and filling up the landscape.
Cracked horseshoes
waltzing across a vibrating brain,
all the worlds night
quartz, cutting drunk into
your Green city.

Banishing a sense of self
uprooting positivity, displacing our discontempt -
boil out the water from the soup of human condition.
Boredoms grace.

We're rotting, lizards tongues
wearing the past, skin deep
Imbued.
a morbid relocation of entrance
authority, a fee
Reflecting light off your face
always leading back,
back towards a tabletop nausea.

Caked in powder,
i make my way over -
licking my finger and rubbing away
at the cracks formed years ago
wandering in and out of Escher's *******,
hoping to settle mind and body
numbed and lethargic,
medicine doesn't help.

An open patio door,
grooming in the whisped brown dawn -

7.34am

God's rags, crisp
displacing particles against the mountain lip
red light brewing in the observers mind.
Cubes of water
pushing through into tomorrows wake
all unwrapping like 1,000 words
diluted into one second.

I'm tired
appetite gone
graven, knowledge of the inside of my mouth
encyclopedic and (almost) boring.
It's closed again
at the crux of abandon,
the skies youthful,
built from wood, holding up the trees.
Excess - child's play for Atlas.

Rogue, electric Blue.
Mollusc in hand
living, lipless
just outside the geopolitical borders
heading back towards maturity.
Nihil,
projects objectivity, sycamore due, borders
as happiness combed our soft necks.

A situation is only what you make of it,
we're all in on this
living together in leaves -
by roadsides
making homes where we sleep.
The sky is on fire
exploding into fruition
as hot chlorine licks against unwashed belly buttons and hair
going blind and stripping back
it breaks you.

Connor Reid Dec 2014

Langton Crescent

LANGTON CRESCENT

Shameless,
a ******.

Jeopardy has no place in the closest of motion,
signalling to eachother,
that you might be related,
or friends.
Childhoods, more than one - in a single life,
spent without knowledge of such,
such an event, in times of jovial adolescence
I was there.

But I don't remember,
brash epithets of discoloured repression,
I remove my ensconcing cap.
Opening up a can of cold worms,
static from the cold draught
which is brought in by an open door,
as everyone leaves the room.

There I am...
I was there!

Someone died here,
I'd never been in this house.
Clutching onto my mothers hand,
through forced habit & love
wandering through life
with a keen interest in 'Why?'
A stark contrast to the average
'How?' That fills up the long, tall order
of the cancerous accolade of dynamic erroneousness
that any self disrespecting lifeform would call -
'A day'.

Whom did I concern?
I was a spectator without a ticket,
being let in for free
gross mistruths passing from one ear and out the other,
intimidating externalisations taken shape in cathode ray tubes
happy to give away nothing for free
purging on selfishness as the 'adults' talk and I induce

A boyfriend.
Too much to drink.
A secret sapphic affair,
that made them happy, it made sense.
Too much to drink.
A ring at the door.
Too. Much. To. Drink.
Panic.
It's fine...Invite him in for a drink,
act like it's all ok.
I still love you both (I don't.)
He knows. (what is going on.)
People aren't stupid,
but they knew he knew - they'd planned for this.
Upset. Anger. A fight. Resolution.
Kitchen. Knife up sleeve. Make up.
She drew him close in her embrace

...

38 times the instrument was coerced to and from its target
like a nodding head.
acknowledging the destruction of the viscera
untangling the truth
the complications of the human condition
spilling onto the floor like hot milk,
tainted by the penance of basic sin
an overzealous lesson in the fleeting nature of causation.
the sand of divine comedy,
fluttering through the hands of the undeserving
emptying itself onto the floor,
every grain more anxious than the last.

Dead. Still as the motionless climb of winter across a silvered pond.

Staring at the almost ***** tangling of carpet hair,
lifted from the hardwood floor like a jigsaw on fire.
'fake' Oozings spattered sloppily across skirting boards,
not all unlike an ill **** on the cling of a public toilet bowl.
blues, reds, purples, blacks
clashing with the absence of concern
this two bedroom tenement was unwell,
discharging its secrets to the seed,
too much for the eyes of a child.
There is a reek, a stench of metal (copper?)
- enticing my nostrils towards curiosity
and a juxtaposition of absolute revulsion.

The story;

A boyfriend.
Two friends drinking.
A ring at the door.
Oh joy! (lies)
He enters.
An argument.
He hits her. (lies)
Upset. Anger. A fight.
He doesn't stop hitting her. (lies)
She runs to the Kitchen.
Knife. She defends herself. (lies)
He dies.

Septic.
"****, we need to fix this, I need your help!"

"We need to make this look right, ****...Self defense, for the police coming."

"Quickly, hit me! We need to make it look like he abuses me."

"When we're done, phone the police pronto and get our stories straight."

"I'm a victim ok?"

"Ok."

In and out.
Easy.

She's the first in Scotland, nevermind Glasgow to get away with her situation
- Lightly that is, 5 years in Cornton Vale, an all female prison somewhere in Stirling.
The other gets away with it - 'Art and part section 293 of the CPA act 1995'.
No charge. As far as they were concerned it was justified (reasonable force).
She gets what she wants. She gets her other half whenever she beckons.
Driven there. No thanks. Selfish.
But she's in love
and maybe she has a debt to pay. maybe she was more involved than she lets on.
doesn't want her life ruined. errands? favours? you name it.

Someone you grow up with, someone who you consider family.
Are they capable of mad passion? A glitch in character?
Can a good person do bad things and feel nothing?

I wince at the retelling of a story.
Buried deep in the waxy imbalances of memory
as if it never happened
jittered from clarity
like a snowglobe that never settles
laughing at the absurd
sourced from fermented sparkles
and igniting omission.
I was there.
Not long after and not long before.
Sitting on the couch and kicking my feet,
getting lost in the cushions
and brooming in the damp, familiar sniff of the 1990s.
Blinds drawn, cups of hot chocolate and endless laughter
- remembrance and reflection entwined
dividing action from thought.

I was there!
...But the memory escapes me.

Connor Reid Dec 2014

Neolith On The 4th Floor

I find myself far gone, drifting alongside the beach
of some nubian kingdom
A sharp inhale of starlight and cutting holes
of awe,
she's there for me.

but,
Not in presence,
Red clouds limping through my comfort,
keeping me safe
far far off, in its tempered perfection.

Writing my fiction, one word at time,
biting into my rotten ear,
cracked surfaces of
sugar lined castle spires
pointing downwards,
In the paradox named perception.

Release!
Stretched out in our isolation.
yet I'm alone, becoming longer,
wandering,
raiding into an artificial night
Where no time appears to pass.

Encroaching on the expectation.
for food,
be it wanted or difficult,
for lips, ink nor illness.
The coast brings in
an ease that I drink from,
when dilly-dallying,
along the mad irreverence
of a random bed that you dream of
each time you wake,
each time you sleep,
There is no content in your bed sheets.

Spiralling in and out of information infection,
Oh how? Oh how can I sleep,
when I stand with my back to space?
Splaying limbs as they exert
the last beams of recklessness
- reverting to old habits,
obsession with erratics,
no form and no care.
Riddled with a chaotic mop head of stringed stupid.

How cute.
Juiced from his tender prospects,
intent on separation
entering use
****, bored and loose
Frothy white moaning flow,
tenderly crushing
Contingency.

I avoid moving inland,
for fear of peace of mind
Combing the canal with the brisk
jaunt of my limping legs,
unsure of themselves
in amidst,
the warmest blanket on the coldest day.

An old kingdom,
founded on consumption,
tradition and extraction.
We keep our distance,
I keep my distance.
Cold water minces around my feet.

Pith/Medulla.
Falling to earth,
beneath the sedge.

Connor Reid Oct 2014

Eschar Pt. II

A man - Caked in thick, matte black bodypaint
Reeking of desolation, clinging to his skin like perfume would to a harlot
Staring awkwardly through walls, through time and space
Hoping to catch the gaze of any who hope to find themselves around the back garden on a folded beach chair.

Weightless in form, floating out from out where
Cones, rods and a pupillary light reflex as the absence of stimulation is introduced
Shifting - As if guided on rails, pulling out onto a stoop
There are no stars in the night-time sky tonight...
The trees, pylons and blackness overhead seem to bend and contort across the sky
- Covering up the hot countryside air and denying my imagination may it wander.

A feeling, polarised by dread and a curiosity
- A curiosity, to peer over the edge
Yet all I know is that whatever I do, I don't want to look over that edge
Suddenly, a traction pulls at every bad idea I ever had
Forcing me to lose trust in any control once possessed.

Tethered to the eventuality of curing this culmination
- Tilting into infinity
Smashed against comfort and lost in cymatic fibration,
Thoughts of before turn to liquid gold, cherished in an off-key harmony no longer sung.
The ground reveals itself, sporting a familiar sick green blush.

I see that man.

He paints with a ******* to my chest
Ingesting a week and a halfs worth of weeks - Burning to my delight
A volcanic pastiche of horror and abandon
- Peering into the whites of his eyes, I see nothing
Among the darkened streaked skin of his naked body
His features remained impartial, withdrawing his humanity from pretense
This performance is one that destroys my grip on actuality.

As if seeing God himself, I wretch uncontrollably at the conception of circadian fog
Filling up the lungs of our own incomprehension to repeat existence in ignorance (Eternal)
Shuddering from every sub-atomic particle to bone in the human body - 206 tremors of glass etched neurosis
The unknown, the unspoken and unborn come slithering down to remind all of its putridity.

An almost impossibly sonorous scream of agonising despair
- Echoes reluctantly through the ribbons of eventide,
Passing through every particle like ink to paper, creating a gaussian of impetus.
Making it's way into my ears - rattling me backwards, as if being shot from a cannon
I cannot turn, I cannot move, I cannot think, I cannot be.

In an instant I'm gone...

Shooting up from dormancy - Just as quick as I was gone, I was suspended back into the urgency of normality
Anxiety rushing, almost racing through me - I take a lifetime to regain my breath
And settle into composure, wondering if I'd understand.
Propping myself on one arm, my mind wanders yet my clothes and covers cling like glue - As if heavier from a nervous sweat
Looking into the featureless dark of this room I feel frightened
- The whole house sags to one side, becoming sinister, malevolent.

An ambience joins me, I am no longer alone
I am being watched and I am scared like I can't tell you...
Everything becomes sinister, even my own thoughts hate me,
Yet I begin to plague my ego with a question of identity - Internally and externally
Who was that man?
What had I saw?
I don't feel safe anymore, something feels like it could happen
Something perverse,
Reality is no better an anchor,
Setting ship in an ocean of ambiguity - Occupied by a school of Samsara.

One day I'll find myself walking out of a house onto a stoop
And I'll ask myself the question - "What is over the edge of this wall?"
When the opportunity presents itself, (Silver lined)
Maybe then I'll know the answer.