Every year now, I note the differences:
the changes in the stones,
the retreating car park and what
is new to the waves.
It is slight. You try to hide it by
presenting the same places and
lacing them with memories that
all correspond.
But you are changing.
You take new beatings, and I can't
help but wonder if we are alike.
The process of erosion has caught
us both, and year by year,
cliff by cliff, it's wearing us down.

It was always supposed to happen,
but what if you change too much?
What will happen when you change
irreparably, irreconcilably?
Even now you are only an
imaginary home, so defamiliarized
from the dream I demand.
I know you promised me nothing.
But I had a deal you didn't know about
and you've ceased to make me happy.
I can't help but be a little angry
with you for letting the
storm break you down.

But is it really you, or is it me
who has done the changing?
Is it not my eyes and my erosion?
Is it not the attrition and abrasion
and the long shore drift
that has welled up inside my own soul?
Is it you or I?
How can we know?

In the fairy tale, Aimee was bad at heart,
a pretty shell that promised a pearl and
when cracked open, gave grains of sand
instead. It scratched the surface of the eyes
and misled; Aimee was just one of those pretty
Jezebels, cruel within, decorated without.
Her sister Aurore was the heroine,
a fatalist, who sighed her philosophy:
'What will be will be' and her patience and
good heart tugged her towards the coincidences
that always favour the light.
But Aimee was driven away by her own wickedness,
and had not the luck of the good.
All Aimee had was the face.

These are the kind of stories I am tired of because
I want to tell you that when Aimee was just a
small girl, she sat and watched her mother scrutinise
her appearance in the mirror. She watched as she
painted her face and knew then that she was just a painted
beauty, a kind that easily peels off. How little it
mattered though, as her mother smiled at her jewels.
Painted or true, her mother had succeeded through
beauty. So Aimee saw no good in the kind and the patient,
who suffered and accepted their suffering. She chose an
ambition called wickedness and she wore it like a petticoat
beneath the blue ballgown. Aimee was the kind of girl
to get what she wanted. Her mother had taught her
that her face was the only kind of fatalism she could follow.

I am tired of these fairy tales that give undefined shapes.
I'm tired of the dichotomy between the good and the bad.
I'm bored of the light always finding their happily ever after.
Just tell me the story of the dark and tell it properly.

I’ve got an ache that comes and goes,
an ache right on the brain.
Not a headache, a brainache,
actually inside my brain.
Sometimes, it makes it hard to think,
or do or talk and other times,
I seem to lose control of my face
and have to stop and think:
Did I smile right?
Then I have to test it,
shifting my mouth into something
that is possibly called a smile.
I try not to look in the mirror when I do it.
It’s hard you see, the mirror.
Can you be allergic to mirrors?
I come out in a rash when I see one,
and I can’t help but scratch it
and then it spreads.
It’s almost like going into shock
and I can’t help it, but I want to take
a knife to my face and slice it
into easy peeling strips.
I’ve tried painkillers and hayfever tablets
but they don’t seem to do the trick.
Did I forget to mention this burning inside me?
Actually inside, not my organs, but the cavity
within me. Sometimes, it will burn for hours,
though I’m not sure what keeps it going.
I feel rather hollow inside at other times,
and the measly kindling that makes me up
could hardly sustain a fire for long.
Oh, and then there’s a numbness in my arms
and in my legs. It gets worse when I go outside,
and I can’t quite decide if it’s really the floor
my legs are touching? Could it be something in the air?
Is there some kind of plant in season to explain it?
My eyes might be going too. I keep thinking
I’m seeing things. I’m not sure though, it’s probably
just dirt on my glasses.
But my balance and senses might be a bit off,
or maybe the batteries are going.
See, I can’t always feel the world around me like I should.
You know, just that feeling when you’re not sure
if life is real or not or if it’s just a dream or just a strange pointless
terrible fantasy someone had one day. You know.
Whatever it is, it’s doing weird things to my head.
Like I said, it’s an actual ache on the brain
and I keep catching myself calling myself the wrong name.
It’s not too much of an issue, but it’s a little confusing sometimes.
Oh, and did I mention the compulsive daydreaming
and the slowness and apathy and recurring wish to just die?
How long has this been going on for, you ask?
Let me see, I can’t remember.
A couple of weeks! No, no. Months. I think.
Maybe years. Yes, let’s say years, but I really can’t remember.
Yes, it has got worse recently.
Why didn’t I come sooner? You know how it is.
I kept thinking it would pass and I’m busy and – well,
Doctor, whenever I thought of coming I couldn’t help but ask myself:
Am I sad enough yet?
And the answer was no and is still no.
I want to be sadder.
You think you know what I’ve got? What? No blood tests,
no ***** samples, no examination? Not even –
Oh, you’re writing out a prescription.
Thank you Doctor, but it says here:
Smile more, worry less and enjoy yourself.
The prescription says to find the person I used to be,
and to avoid stress? Doctor, I don’t mean to doubt you, but –
Oh, okay, okay, I’ll give it a try. (But…)
Ah, and Doctor? One last thing. My kidney infection is back again.
Anti-biotics? Yes, those are the ones I had last time.
I’m sure they’ll do fine.

Today, I saw a person in front of me, their eyes on something else
and I took a moment to inspect them,
and then I realised it was myself.

There they were, wearing the clothes I had put on in the morning,
wearing the face I recognise in pictures
and standing exactly where I was standing.
But, they were not me – in that moment, they were not.
How could I be that girl, that women standing there in that shop?

The body inside is not that one I saw in the mirror,
the one who was looking a different way.
Inside, I’m more, I’m smaller, I’m darker, I’m paler and
I dress for them each morning, choosing from the clothes
not bought for them exactly,
but forced to match them, to meet halfway.
I knew it then, with a glance at the mirror person, nothing pretty would be bought today.

And it wasn’t.
Some days, it’s dungarees.
Other days, it’s dresses.
Some days, it’s shorts and leggings.
It all depends on who I’m playing as and
I’m sure that’s all okay, but then they say describe yourself in three words.

How can I describe myself, this person  I do not know?

So I go for the easy option and choose them from a list:
Quiet
Creative
Studious
And I suppose, that’s one way of putting myself into three words;
one way of putting myself into an easy to understand formula.

But it doesn’t cover it.
Three words don’t cover it.

Because really, I think I’m just an observer inside my own imagination,
an observer inside my own life and all these other lives inside my head.
I’m just the implied narrator of this person in the mirror
and all these others, who come and go in different places.

But then the girl in the mirror reminds me that tomorrow is my birthday,
a day to celebrate the fact I exist outside of my head
and then she touches a shirt, made of itchy fabric
and there’s life outside the overwhelming inside,
a life where I need to describe myself in three words
and fit into those three words and into that one person,
looking at something else, not in the mirror.

There's gold dust in the palms of your life
It glitters as the winds wish it away
You cannot measure the merit of a man
In bone , blood , and flesh
But by his mark made on the stones
Through the eyes of eternity

I wake up from this fantasy
decide real life is not for me
and go back to the fantasy.

You only get nine lives and it doesn't matter if you're dumb or smart
the heart knows not of this

to touch upon
so brief and then we're gone
and on and on until the last of
life is done

I cross my fingers
make a plea
click my heels
and think of Dorothy
another
fantasy

but we're all a bit of
the yellow brick

the growl, the rust,
the straw they built this city with

the trust
must be real or else no deal.

I'm marking time with eyeliner
sitting in the diner on the shore
with Dinah
and time is stalking me which is not a
fantasy
I'm talking reality
which
on occasion bites.

there will be no love poetry today
Sabbath cancelled

there will be the will to love
and there will be poetry

someplace

but not here, not today

the load bearing suspension
of belief

beyond busted

the mind

no mas

busted

one killing too many

love poetry seems inappropriately fruitless


there will love
and there will be poetry

somewhere

but not here

more than pointless,  
sacrilegious,
human sacrifice ruthless,
a ****** sacrilege

the world profaned and the blood spilling
is in everything and everywhere  

and has driven the love poetry out of this person


maybe tomorrow

may it be tomorrow, we will pass a twenty four

news cycle  
with the bombs gone quiet
the innocents surviving
and the god spark burner inside me will
relight on its own

but not today not here not me

there will be
no love poetry

and this

this not a poem

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