God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out,
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys:

Myself, arch-traitor to myself;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me.
Break off the yoke and set me free.

Well now I am aware
Of the newest anarchy towards your reasonings
An enterprise of not feeling anything
This practise of not making a sound.

Even the hollowest, little laugh, catapulted up
Through the roof of your mouth, and reflecting
Off the top of your tongue, can still be too much.
In earnest, even if it's an eighth of a sound, its apex
Is too much to drown out, I hear it everywhere that

It throws me towards. Holds me by the throat and it
Knows me now like it wants me to find out but then
Hides itself, like the chime of a bell, ringing off the hem
Of the dress you wore on October 30th of 2012, it is a
Sound that'd I'd never be able mute out, that comes
To me unexpectedly, and it takes the rest of me to keep cool.

Now the inches grow, and the moon men climb inside of
My mouth. I want to yell. Scream! But I can't even shout.
The words inside of my hands write, but the ink has dried out.
I wasn't sure but now I'm sure that the time has come and
That time on the clock is now. Call up the whales, undress for
The moon, I'm making Rice Krispies because the penguin girl

Is coming home soon.

I feel a tug on my sweater.
The air grows dark as I,
Full of despair,
Turn my head to find what
Being is at my coattail.

I feel a tug on my sweater,
I turn as the space ahead of me
Is occupied by essence of loving magnificent person.
I turn and see the beautiful world, as a
Being, is at my coattail.

I feel a tug on my sweater
And I question her as to what she came to
ask, and she speaks to me in song.
So lovely are the words uttered from
She who is at my coattail.

So lovely are the words uttered for
Me, a desperate shrew. A hollow shroud falls over
Vacant eyes dripping empty tears onto
A careless walkway. Her serenade sing a sort of
Happy suicide into the icy veins pumping
Soft slush into my heart.
Then suddenly

A chorus arises and I am renewed,
Invigorated.
"Sing goodbye to sorrow,
Save pain for a time when you need smile.
For that pain, in it's essence,
Is only a memoir of hardship that will
Remind the hollowest of souls that
There is happiness."
That there is love.
That there is hope.
That there is wonder,
and wanderlust.
That there is reason.

when there is nothing left
but the need for sleep
all the body can do
is close the eyes
it will not need
for a time
and find the hollowest
part of a calming memory
to tuck away into
releasing the need
to hold anything
save the desire
for peaceful
slumber

from deepest rest
there can be a return
to the world where
possibility re-awakens
and with morning
the opportunity to
go again
to attempt what had
the night before
been unimaginable
and impossible

MChallis © 2014

Gray suited mad man sitting
in an armchair with blue eyed
sight beneath the depth of words
lit his and hers cigarette and releases
the smoke desperately imprisoned from
its birth by mouth by lungs dissolving
in the space of sickly white walls
where it mixing with presence
it passionatly dances in ephemeral
lustfully mediocre air
He said
in the morning I was a corpse
impatiently waiting for time to
breath into me a smear of life
I washed my hands I smoked
I turned on the radio and let
the music flew its way to an end
I had a glass and then another
and another until I thought it
safe to finally put on the mask
of smiles and unchanging
incarcerating compassion that was
supposed to dwell in all of us
She smiled
suspiciosly touching her hair
as if she could not tell whether
she liked him or not
She asked
if this face of yours which is never
to be found in the sketchy mornings
is not in fact your face, then what
do you wear it on? Don’t you suffer
from suffocation
from overheat? Don’t
you want to live as free?
He smiled
raising a glass to his false lips
that taste so much of a sin but not guilt
He said
something so cold does not mind
the sunshine and that which does not
breath the lack of air
I wake up dead and leave the house living
but only to an untrained eye for
hollow can see another hollow
trying to hide itself in deceptive depth
my eyes are the mirror into which you
cannot look for you do not understand
the important unimportance of birds
multiplying each year just to multiply
or of trees that grow and are cut down
no matter the time when woodcutters
step on gentle summerbreeze
you say it is so it is
and others it is but it cannot be
drowning their lives in never changing
reality achieved by praying and LSD
they fear what I have to say
it is not and it must not be
He fell silent
reaching for another cigarette he
realised she was puzzled
She said
but isn’t it you who drink all day
just to forget the scenery of pain?
He smiled
He said
and isn’t it you who give yourself
to all those men to hide before
an unreal reality of nothingness
She shrugged
for he was right that it wasn’t
disarable to drunkenly watch
and name the colours of the rain
Nothing else was said
he paid and they left
afterwards they lied in his bed
he smoking a cigarette
She said
don’t tell me that there was nothing
you have felt for your heart was
racing with your breath
He smiled
thinking
but have you seen my eyes darling
O you poor deceived woman
only they tell the truth hidden in
the hollowest corner of the blue
that lifeless soul cannot be fed
that simple mask to put on in the morning
cannot enliven the dead

the pledge of loyalty
so oft given
yet it has the hollowest
of rings
the tongue has a variance in it's path
it attaches itself to the other side
of treachery
the eye is keen
trust the one who
shows integrity
to your team
and your team alone
a tongue which gives
your side its unwavering
trait
is the one
that has the markings
of a mate
take into your fold
the person who speaks
true
not the one
who proffers
a false ruse

the hollowest point
went through my hand into you
and took you away

the hollowest congratulations
is a nuanced muffled commiserations

funeral bells chiming alongside
wedding bells fuming during the ride

spreadsheets and graphs
not dictums and Acts
but one thing lies in common
man's pact can be determined by Acts.

nasturtium climbs up the side of my childhood home
in the same spot I planted it when i was sixteen

the rest of the garden is gone

i feel like an outsider driving past the place I
lost my first tooth in, and nobody i know lives there anymore

i wonder if the new family knows how many times we ended up laughing so hard we cried, and i wonder if the
heights marked on our doorframe were painted over
the second they got in

when we moved out, the pictures hanging on my wall were stuffed into boxes that i still haven’t unpacked as an adult, and the echo of my completely empty bedroom was the hollowest sound i’d ever heard

growing up is dull, growing up is forgetting, growing up is moving on from everything that made you exactly what you are today, then learning to live with the change