Dec 2011
I travel recklessly from A to B, neither from you nor to you. Emptiness in all mirrors, I am truly isolated - growing evermore envious of the faceless others making journeys by your side. In the dramatic epic where I played the rock so many years, I realise now that you were the ground itself. I was unwittingly the follower. The white dawn light has dragged the veil from my proud resolve until finally exposed, wavering in the heady winds of recent weeks.
I cast my mind over the weather of a lifetime. Electric air at birth - every light and shadow offering intrigue. Atmosphere thickening to a sterile breeze, gently directing an impressionable child. The summer rains of teenage confusion, clouds of constraints closing in. Those lightning storms of pupilage, and the stagnation of post-graduate life. What weather is the perfect for endings, I wonder? Will it penetrate the stubborn folds of these clothes? Will it be satisfyingly visceral?
I reach my notional destination, deep in thought against the background noise of these thousand faceless pedestrians. Only watching with outside eyes can I now see the primitive swinging of their arms, the futile waddles of their torsos, as if in perpetual motion towards the end of the rainbow.
Finally, like Moses, I part the crowd with an agitated flick of the wrist. The attention of each now upon me, the sickening taste of celebrity in my mouth too bitter to bear, I announce myself as I had rehearsed. As we ascend, double file, up the staircase of this glass tower, each window offers us a different perspective of the world.
Lately, I've frantically cast a haggard net over each escaping thought - seeming now such a tragedy to let worthy ones float away in vein. My memories have become but mirrored pools, flickering their borrowed light after every post-apocalyptic tremor. But when did these memories and thoughts lose their courage, lean away from the incline of experience, step back from the platform of action? I fear it is then that so stiflingly precious they grew.
We reach the sky, overlooking the sprawl of the city, the attack and decay of the distant tide. My gaze traverses the crowd of strangers, desparately seeking the concerned gaze of my supposéd lovers. You and I fell simultaneous, indeed, but only one stumbled back to their feet to tell new tales. But with this final fall, amongst indifferent spectators guilty only by association, the poetry of my own tale will rush past the perfectly repeating pattern of mullions and transoms until carved one final time, indelibly.
I cast my mind over the weather of a lifetime. Electric air at birth - every light and shadow offering intrigue. Atmosphere thickening to a sterile breeze, gently directing an impressionable child. The summer rains of teenage confusion, clouds of constraints closing in. Those lightning storms of pupilage, and the stagnation of post-graduate life. What weather is the perfect for endings, I wonder? Will it penetrate the stubborn folds of these clothes? Will it be satisfyingly visceral?
I reach my notional destination, deep in thought against the background noise of these thousand faceless pedestrians. Only watching with outside eyes can I now see the primitive swinging of their arms, the futile waddles of their torsos, as if in perpetual motion towards the end of the rainbow.
Finally, like Moses, I part the crowd with an agitated flick of the wrist. The attention of each now upon me, the sickening taste of celebrity in my mouth too bitter to bear, I announce myself as I had rehearsed. As we ascend, double file, up the staircase of this glass tower, each window offers us a different perspective of the world.
Lately, I've frantically cast a haggard net over each escaping thought - seeming now such a tragedy to let worthy ones float away in vein. My memories have become but mirrored pools, flickering their borrowed light after every post-apocalyptic tremor. But when did these memories and thoughts lose their courage, lean away from the incline of experience, step back from the platform of action? I fear it is then that so stiflingly precious they grew.
We reach the sky, overlooking the sprawl of the city, the attack and decay of the distant tide. My gaze traverses the crowd of strangers, desparately seeking the concerned gaze of my supposéd lovers. You and I fell simultaneous, indeed, but only one stumbled back to their feet to tell new tales. But with this final fall, amongst indifferent spectators guilty only by association, the poetry of my own tale will rush past the perfectly repeating pattern of mullions and transoms until carved one final time, indelibly.
6 Nov 2009
