In frustration
he sat down on the bench outside the closed down railway station
and wrote of his dissention.
But in a moment that was lit by pure genius and invention
He decided there and then
to make a statement of his intention.
In fits and starts he penned those parts
that appealed to his sense of duty
but true to form
and as sure as I was born on a
Wednesday
I knew there was no way
the statement would ever be made.
This case is laid to rest.

A stocktaker takes no stock
A paradox?
Point duty can be blunt
when hiding or when on the hunt
but shunting these random thoughts aside
I train myself to pay attention
to the statement that
details tales of an unpaid rental.
But no mention of me being mental or unsound.
No sanitoriums for me
or phychopaths that come for tea.
Just peace
and the bobbing of a broken time that floats in brine
a hat that doesn't fit my head
a statement that I've never read
intentions that I never made
not laid to rest at all
but instant recall is what sets me apart and makes me the best.
Test me
Test me
Testing, testing two three
Just checking in
To check that you've been
listening.

A groove
Cut too
Shallow
A shoulder
Too high
Unsupported
Raw layers
Veneers
Exposed
Rocking
Back
And forth
Till something
Splinters
And cracks
No amount
Of glue
Will hold this
Together
Rabbet
Rout
Remove even
More of
The material
Myself
Repeat until
The pieces
Hold fast

He comes a trip trap tapping
sometime
rapping at my door,
the labour party spokesman and
he wants to tell me more,
holding hands with the conservatives
what gives?
Is it love that's on the go?
No,
just another quite cute coupling on the
latest manifesto.

She’s beauty, she’s grace.
With blood in her veins and heat circulating through her frame,
You could compare her to a furnace.
Carrying energy throughout her body and distributing it evenly where it’s needed.
It’s the pressure, the turbulence, the years of experience that molds and forges her heart into the form it takes.
Her heart is made of ceramic, shaped into a wide-mouthed or funnel-enclosed hollow and glazed with painted flowers, or abstract patterns, or tales of wars and legends featuring holy beings and storybook beasts.
Her heart is the fortune of archaeologists and antiquarians alike, the field of study of historians, the apple of poets’ eyes. They seek to wipe every speck of dust that obscures every stroke, every detail, every scar and fracture they seek to decode.
Because as beautiful as ceramic can be, it is brittle and delicate and easily fractures as hearts do. Because if there’s one thing ceramic and hearts have in common, they can only withstand a certain amount of stress for so long.
Because every scar tells a story. No visible fracture can be just a fantasy.
A scratch from heartbreak, a mark from rejection, a line from quarrel. A scar from unrequited love, a scar from a failed test mark, a scar from falling over while biking. A breakage from inner demons.
We are the same. We suffer the same.
Yet the painted flowers, the abstract patterns, the murals telling tales of wars and legends featuring holy beings and storybook beasts, they all elude us, because we’re inclined to focus on the debris before us.
We’d rather walk around the debris, walk over the debris, avoid touching the debris when we’re well within our ability to repair and mend the debris.
Gold for recovery, silver for hope, platinum to mend her broken pieces.
Gold to crown her a winner, to declare her triumph.
Silver to ease her troubled mind, to give her hope anew.
Platinum to strengthen her, to enlighten her, to remind her that she can rise up again.
Golden joinery, or kintsugi, as the Japanese call it — it’s the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, or silver, or platinum, holding its fragments together by a tight bond. It’s meant to treat breakage and repair as part of the history of the object, rather than something to disguise.
She’s beauty, she’s grace.
Her heart is made of ceramic — and gold and silver and platinum intertwined, a story of heartbreak, rejection, and quarrel conquered by recovery, hope, and strength, and proof that she is more than her heartbreak, her rejection, her storms and trials and tribulations.
She is, quite literally, the cloud with a silver lining.
Her heart is art.
But it need not be displayed in a museum case, or in an antique shop window, or a gallery chamber.
Because she, in all of her beauty and grace, she is the museum case, the antique shop window, the gallery chamber.

whatever we speak, it's hardly going to
be spoken of.

which means two                   kettles...
mind you: target practise
                    or as i mind
the 2.4
                of said: superman
in Iowa...
do i care to mind?
well, **** me!
   they verse in acronym
i.n.d.i.a. & c.h.i.n.a.
akin to a billion...
i'm tongue tied and heaving,
       *das bōt...
this doesn't help the aesthetic...
with prolonging dies
the excess o...
                  kaiser schweizer min took!
      whatever that means,
they say funny accents in ****
to **** a thought of a zeppelin...
yhwh: or the hollowing-out,
awaiting the god to lift us out...
           Pythagorean umlaut
into a macron joinery...
            depending on your aesthetic...
Kreisler schisser...
                          twins anti avid,
interchange s and z...
                                  Charlotte
and sharpening, shearing and cheering,
and so many excuses...
         the chard and the sh and the charcoal
and the shattering of, of the chatter:
                  cheap and sharp
or the acute variations of śarp & ćeap...
or what the first H represents:
an upper punctuation marking,
above the letter,
              Y or gamma γ vs. Υ (upsilon)
            in latter phrasing comma...
   or what's pinpointed with Y
and what's later replicated in trigonometric W
of sine and cosine, as is Y the tan divergence...
excesses bound to later and latter...
how to differentiate? the lay'ter
from the latté of not mopping up the surd
h and the vocalised h that's asphyxiating
within catching breath asthmatic?
                      people forgot punctuation
in the same way they forgot diacritical markings
but at least they got a pretty picture
and dyslexia, and iconoclasm, and
modern illiteracy;
as said modern conspiracy theory:
far **** away from 1990s cartoon network...
        everything you just said: doesn't
prop a need for me to buy things;
which is why, i guess, you need
a drugs trade that's the alternative
of consumerism.

I have been too long in the world.

I am frayed at my edges
chipped
cracked and broken in places

I have been too long in the world.

Have listened too long to the
THOU SHALT NOTs
the
I WANT IT ALL MY WAYs
the
IT'S MY RIGHTs
and I have let them dry the lake of my soul
with their drains and siphons

I have been too long in the world.

I shall use the golden joinery
of the Japanese art
to honor my frayed edges
weave a golden, or silver, or platinum
thread through them
fill my cracks and broken places with lacquered metals

I have been too long in the world.

other edges, smashed to smithereens,
will be left as they lay
jutted, stiff
while the softened, smashed powder from them
I'll keep in a medicine bag
and mix it, as needed, with my blood
stirred into a salve, a queen of healing

I have been too long in the world.

my thousand-times-broken heart
repaired and repaired and repaired
and re-paired
I will wrap like the gift it is
with the gold of Love
while laughter falls from it
salve regina


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

The door needs to be kicked in.
No gentle open and whispered hello
It needs become of splinters and dust.
The glue of its joinery to shatter and crumble.
The latch which would open smoothly
With the simple request of a raised hand
Needs to be driven shattering through wood
Sending formal wooden trim embellishments flying.
The myriad of small retaining nails will be extracted
Reversing a collective hold they held resolutely,
Pinned by hammer blows so long ago.

That door needs to come down.
To lower hinge will give way completely,
Leaving some screws still biting desperately
Into a fragment of the wooden frame.
The hinge at eye level will twist apart from our blow
One side remaining stuck in place on the frame
The going with the door as it disintegrates.
The pin that held it together in smooth harmony
Soon will dangle pointless on half a binding hinge,
Still now – the mechanism prised-apart.

The door shall be destroyed.
Our collective force irresistible – it will fragment.
Once trees were felled and sawed into planks,
Smoothed and shaped and joined in the build.
Now we need to render it all into firewood.
And where once stood a blank, heavy door
There will be light and air flowing through.
And the only hint of the barrier that was before,
Will be a final clear, metallic note
From the pin that finally falls
Upon the smooth stone floor.
A single note will ring out
And lead into a song of freedom.

The Japanese have a method called Kintsugi,
or golden joinery
which is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold.

She is a Russian doll,
shedding her old self
for a new one
each time she looks in the mirror and
hates what she sees.

She is porcelain,
cracking with every gesture,
every comment, word,
every snide remark.

But that's the beauty of Russian dolls.
Every time she shatters,
a new her steps out timidly,
squinting her eyes at
the bright bathroom light,
mesmerised by the yellow of it,
wondering how she's never come across it
in her dark chrysalis of abuse.
How could something be so beautiful and guiding
yet pierces her sight with every glance?

The remnants of the old-her
cuts her skin
as she picks them up
and pieces them together
with pure gold acting as cement.

A thin smile is plastered onto the dolls's newly-repaired face
as it is picked up and placed onto a shelf
with all its old selves
and they are ready to comply.