Trapped in the definition of his interior,
he had become an invisible thing.

In moods deeper than dark ebony
repetitive folding and unfolding of nefarious reasons
pushed him to step outside his restricted vision.

Lost perhaps?
Or provisionally eclipsed?

A luminous slash hinged his door,
the cicatrice between brooding paralysis and explicit dreams.

............

Here on the ledge,
teetering on the cusp of obscurity and mountains blinding peak,
his sight catches a net
streaming from an open window-
billowing freedom.

A metalic thread glitters through him,
its coppery tang branching across clenched fibres
igniting his fingers, his tongue.

A mute cloud disperses.
He stands in the presence of a revelation.

Through the smoke of his eyes
he steps off the threshold
plunging into burnished sun,
his head incandescent with foreign scents.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012

How long the rumbling chord ebbs on
irregular in dull augment
of endless streaming green and brown
An audience to long ­hours spent

The soperific drone plays for  
a tired dance of ****­fting limbs
What contrast with the streaming track
That blurred m­etalic weaving score

Then all at once the score divides
The cond­uctor's signal brass  
The final movement slows and so
the blur t­akes form of brick and grass

The orchestra all rise as one
and b­ow below the luggage racks
A final clunk, the doors release,
the ­journey ends and life unpacks.

Clouds crash
like surf
across metalic grey skies

you're
crying
and as you walk
down the dimly
lit glass hallway
the faces on the walls
wave
in your breeze
of sadness and
iron oxide tears.

every surface in
your mind is
covered
in a thick layer of
concrete dust
and you wonder
how long before
your nose
takes a dive
sneezing
too often
to breathe.

there is clay
everywhere
and you can't see
the cracks
between your
knuckles
under the
thick layer of
thought.

as far as art
departments go
you're not feeling
so creative
painted or
charcoal
it doesn't matter
when there is more
brown paper offered
to you every
time you believe
you've failed.

would you believe me
if i told you that a
newspaper and a pair
of old blue eyes
reminded me
and maybe you too
that there is somebody
out there
who actually
cares.

press that
thumbtack
into the wall
slowly
pin down
everything
you've tried to
forget
and avoid
stabbing your
finger into
the perforated
abused and
continually
rotated
corkboard.

you're not
wirebound
anymore
i promise
only your
entwined metalic
thoughts.

They say that wisdom comes with age
that knowledge slowly worms it's way into your mind
that each day brings forth new ideas, new connections, new moments
that molds your not fully developed brain into a somewhat more stable shape.

I have moved another year forward
now have 22 years under my belt.
22 years of jam packing tidbits and statistics
from places I've never been,
and yet that aged wisdom still escapes me. ​
I feel as though I have Benjamin Buttoned myself
to a time before I ever existed,
an empty chasm of isolation where asking a question
feels even more difficult than finding an answer.

These pieces of myself are falling away
as easily as my baby teeth fell from my mouth
that metalic taste faded like the edges of a picture
labeled summer '03.

My eyes are crinkled,
lines mark my cheeks whenever I smile,
and my mind is fogged with the things I feel
I don't know.

Today the air is enlightened -
Rich in velvet echoes,
Urging me to embrace the outside.
Where colours play loud
And I was plain white.

... the sun looked frightened.

I breathed the life around
Felt the happiness, but not mine -
A dense silence folowed me behind,
I heard voices - "It's time to hide"
One gaze and they became white.


I looked ahead and hills have awakened.
Timeless monsters shove the sun away,
The life around was dreadfully shaken
My skin is evaporating - my feet sway;

I looked down and my legs were white smoke -
My hair is dancing all over the sky,
Breathing isn't necessary here - invoke
The soul I once had and make it stay

Between imaterial ashes and words said
Decades ago, in a basement of white roses -
Metalic touches, the unworthy innocent  
Will lie in dreams of the chosen
Drowning in my opaque eyes.

Nothingness looks surreal and bright
From here -
Slowly I will fade to white
*"And all the sudden, I can feel..."

but somehow,
i write to peer into visualising
         my thought
pattern,
   or at least, how i can construct it
on the basis that:
i just walked about 6 miles
and drank 5 cans of beer
and smoked a few cigarettes
   and sat on a bench in a public space.

i really do believe that with man
having overcome the natural world
(to some degree),
industrialised the rearing of pigs for
pork, creating the bonsai tiger
that's a cat...
      god, i dread this anglophone
existential narrative of going way way back
and then coming into the present...
   walking zombie like
in the aftermath of unearthing the big bang
and finding dinosaur bones...
excavating Hades has never had so many
pitfalls...
       but this is the anglophone narrative,
that we currently live in,
  ask anyone in Tuscany and they're like:
come Friday, bring a bottle of wine,
have dinner...
       look at my beautiful house...
ever see the *appleton tower in Edinburgh?
built in the 1960s... meaning:
too many people were on aßid...
    c (see) s (esse) **** (ah yes)
(takes a break and empties his bladder)...
who in Venice might have a care
to keep this ref. in mind,
   who on earth, if not the english
have it? i go to Poland and people talk
about the butcher's and know the butcher's
name, small world and all that...
    i'm starting to think that
keeping the big bang ref. point in pop
culture is eating away at the everyday...
   and all this talk of dinosaurs...
   before they unearthed dinosaur bones
they were drawing dragons,
giant iguanas...
    i guess the snake is the abstract
version of a dinosaur... the remains:
no limbs...
     it has to be...
  like the way i took my tongue for a walk
today...
      what with our concrete body
and our abstract counterparts....
  one word on the tip of my tongue,
passing a bench where some would have
said in spotting a *** sitting on it...
sure, the *** look, the worn shoes...
but what *** can be seen
  eating a strange fruit from a paper
bag, watching a family of: mama, papa
and two kinder, smile and drop
that small fruit into his gob?
   as i was walking with my grandfather
he asked: who is that?
  i said: a philosopher.
   evidently the conversation was in polish
and the word in question is:
  fi-lo-zof...
the church is still there, the bench too,
the memory prompts itself sometimes,
a bit like a knee ****...
  and that got me thinking about
the concept in Jewish tradition...
   ayin (nothingness) -
             so ע‎ spoke to א (adam / aleph)...
but i need to get something off my chest...
ever find a 20 quid banknote in a puddle
or a 10 quid banknote in a puddle,
and given the current times,
an old fiver on a street pavement?
money again...
    i have...
and when you do, and then later spot
a penny on the street...
or when you have actually made
your own wine, rather than bought it
in a supermarket...
  how odd it looks, that penny,
how gravity prone,
as if it was supposed to be lost,
dropped, spared the agony of economics?
i was walking the streets tonight and
i looked at it (walking and listening
to distance's repercussions album
can feel a lot like going to a gig,
it's classified as dub-step, but it's really
ambient music,
just that the real ambient music
is, pretty much listening to a very old
refrigerator, the ones that made a sound,
had a heart of some sort,
like putting your head against an old
box, that's no longer a box, but a size 0
model... that leaves you null when
considering the static transmission of
channel 0) - oh my...
how we look into the future with
so much nostalgia these days,
  forget the ancient greeks, forget the nostalgia
of philosophers bound by that rule
of thumb in the 19th and the 20th century...
we're waving: bye bye odes to that old trash,
not to be rude, but i have been exposed to
so many technological advances in the past
20 odd years that i have no plot,
no novel, apart from the one given to me,
and if i do a pish-poor job of recording it,
then woo-hoo to me, i passed the Tao threshold,
the world can happen, and i can just
enter a realm of, finally being able to forget...
still, a penny on a street isn't a 20 quid banknote,
and given the improvement,
that it has turned all Australian on me,
i don't even need to dry it off to later spend it
if it's found floating like an ice-berg
in a puddle...
             and i think: why are pennies so real?
i mean, it's staring right back at me,
it's looks almost like an excalibur...
or the profanity plagiarised with thor's hammer...
i don't want to pick it up...
    it's so gravity prone on the pavement
like a pebble, or like a copper statue of a
"very important" person in parliament sq.,
that just get riddled with communism
in a capitalistic society, i.e. vandalism...
     the penny bewildering...
   i can't visualise what i'd do with it,
because i couldn't do much with it...
        it's just copper on stone...
     a bit like looking at a newspaper
of the day lying about at 10pm near an empty packet
of cigarettes, the sort of motif of:
let's trash the place...
      it's just one son of Hades lying on a more
elongated presence of yet another son of Hades:
copper on concrete,
   the next thing that comes after
grinding sand into glass: crunchy stone
mashed up with enough tar to make up a road...
england, of all places, has particular rooting
in a history of the roman empire,
out of all the nations that succumbed to its power
it has the most fond memories of the dusty one,
which i find quiet odd, and most of the times
slightly bewildering...
    given that i don't have it...
lucky you, an ethnic mongrel, papa was a singing
Irishman, mama was a a nigerian,
and you all ended up speaking the same tongue...
unlucky me, mongrel of the soul...
escapism of polymaths, because it makes sense,
or how mono-lingual have that thing called
patriotism and a land-to-body relantionship
in general, whatever flag is being flown...
bilinguals have a memory-to-body
relationship, it's hard to avoid it, a bit like seeing
a mountain and saying: we'll walk right through it...
so yeah,
having found a 20 quid banknote i was already
scheming for the next *****-up,
   i could already see a potential for it,
i knew it was worth something...
it's hard to see that sort of dynamic with a penny...
let's just say that sort of dynamic doesn't
exactly exist...
          the penny is fixed to the cement,
it's not moving anywhere,
    when a *** asks for spare change
you just start to think: change? spare tire?
is that equivalent?
      because money, as a concept,
as the original concept for a universal language
that everyone could suddenly understand,
or just did, once the "thing" was implemented
was the original translation vehicle...
        money is by far the sole reason we have
3 dimensional talk, why we have ambiguity,
while humanity enforcing laws is always so thesaurus
prone when talking about it,
   in the root of jurisprudence...
           i can talk idle: say things thing nothing
and then become a pedestrian to concrete items,
a daffodil, a t-****... i can relaly turn on the grey button
and it all becomes vague,
    and rarely bound to be, as a whole, bound
by a glue known as mystifying.
some might call it a case of giving account
of: ibin balām...
the other one riding a donkey...
                    or as i like to call it:
   convering with the "angel" that spared me,
who shook me into an epileptic frenzy when i was on
the verge of dying, saying:
now you, do what unto yourself, what others
did unto you.
    i have to admit, drinking myself to death is
the most pleasurable event in my life...
    it's this metalic electricity produced by my left
hemisphere, most of the time?
a bit like sitting on an electric chair,
without a wet sponge placed on my head
so that the electricity can pulverize the alveoli pattern
of my neurons... keep moist, he says,
   and i just think of my brain and the colour red,
and the decay of red, first into brown, and then into black...
and how people who deny my misery to
later become: a bit annoying, gnat-like...
still, that penny on the street,
  and how i would have reacted differently
had i found a 20 quid banknote...
and how i do...
   to see this unit of the concept, just... useless!
the concept of money becomes all the more apparent,
and i know that people in wealthy countries don't
seem to appreciate the basic unit of their currency,
they prefer fixed prices, they prefer pondering
a worth of a toothbrush, priced at a pound's worth
than care for a penny... they say
    it's so close, but so far away,
how spare change is reserved for children and beggars...
how pennies never seem to add up to anything
if you see but one on a pavement...
                it's only copper... it's not exactly gold...
ah hell... what if we really did brag about
gambling on a fixed, but an otherwise fluctuation
price of a painting?
  well... we wouldn't be saying: priceless!
   a bit like the anima of buying football players...
yes, some of us like using our minds,
to study philosophy, perhaps even lension a care
to write poetry... and all the more:
in a non-manipulative care to then translate it back
into: suppose chess?
                           only when language becomes
too 1 dimensional, or at least 2 dimensional,
i.e. verb / vector... then we're in trouble,
in the quicksand, in the mud, in the trenches...
i did mention something prior, didn't i?
ah, hebrew...
            slaves in america invented the
deconstructionism of jazz and blues...
  thank you very much... dub-step and the first
thing i think of when thinking about africa
is a drum... or knowing when and when not to
knock on things...
   i don't think the echo minds playing
that game of knocking down ginger...
    i guess i am the one left with a land
that's tattooed with germans and russians...
i get the ******* grafitti of neo-nazis who
experienced something more than the blitz...
plus, i have that Auschwitz to give caring tourists
a helping hand into sighing over...
   but all that i owe concerning myself,
ibin balām... riding my little donkey...
        ever find those riding donkeys more menacing
than those riding horses? balām, jesus, don quixote...
but it's in the alphabet of the hebrews,
i can't really get over it...
hence the original muse, a single word,
fi-lo-zof... and the concept: ayin sof...
what the greeks later made into σoφια...
yes, that monotheistic gender-neutral pronoun
some of us ascribe the noun god to...
god is such an unfatastical noun...
the real fantastic noun is the tetragrammaton...
hell... i'm convinced... i'm actually converted
in a sense of not really bothering with
the rituals... the ritual i imposed on myself
is to repeatedly think about it...
    and it really is a fantastic noun,
so mathematically fertile,
Y and the x, y, z axis of the math canvas...
and trig of W that's cosine rather than M and therefore
sine... and how the H is almost like deja vu
joke, before the tangens enters segregational...
and all i just thought is more than a thousand
bulls readied for a pagan sacrificial rite...
    it's the sof in the ayin sof that's hard to find...
say, it's easy to spew enough books to bore
a thousand people over a thousand generations
if you use a system of encoding that gives no
name to the units...
   the greeks have alpha, the romans only a.
the greeks have beta, the romans only b.
   which probably means that writing can be more
easily done, and to a greater number and extent...
but thinking? it's not really done...
people would rather be perverse and hostile and
impolite because of this shortening of said
units of sounds... which is another reason why
the anglophone world is rife with onomatopoeias...
    and how i found: singing intside your head
is half a whistle, and less than a ****...
    so how did sof come about, as a concept?
the hebrews call it ayin (nothingness),
and when next to the word sof call it
ain (without) sof (end), i.e. the endless one...
   so where did the syllable zof come in here
and where did the Greeks extend that into sophia?
i can see sof, but i can't see where it came from,
sure, there's the usual noun for a sound,
e.g. ש‎ (shin) and ך‎ (kaf)...
             forget the greeks for a moment...
  the romans wrote the music, there was no name
for a, b, c, d, e... we're talking ancient greeks,
therefore all ancients... they enclosed sounds differently
back then... the greeks ensured there was some
alphabetical cohesion, like looking
into a dictionary under the rubric o,
and finding omega, onomatopoeia and oh my god!
i know what you're thinking, semitic languages
and neanderthals... why did they persist
and having become instinct? try sanskrit and 1 billion
hindus... or the chinese... they're the same...
historically speaking...
oh please, i like the cognitive impetus of drinking:
you want to take hold of these brats on the british
isles? you have some alternative suggestion?
the roman alphabet is the gateway "drug",
i.e. א‎ (man), a, ע‎ (god), á,
  or: from above... something descending...
then i start to think it's a case of articles,
even though aleph (א) and ayin (ע) are phonetically
identical, they are totally different...
it's almost like saying: ah for that one,
and ah for a one? close proximity and the rule,
that you wouldn't say an one... but a one...
funny... english is like that, hello! welcome!
hope you realise it, without diacritical marks
being, well, i wouldn't say absolutely necessary,
but a helping hand....
too many examples to choose from,
i make so many instances of it being true that
i forget to make up my life with
a care for romantic misendeavours...
so yeah... i'm looking for O in the semitic alphabet
that still remains in use...
     hebrew... because i really can't do phonecian...
i'm loooking for the word sof...
    you know, like homeland, sol, solomon...
i want to cut off the unnecessary bits
and put a word together...
i can't seem to find a full-circle of an omicron
or omega...
  i say omega, you cut off -mega and attach an -o-,
and the thing fizzes and i write bomb!
and you cut off -elta, -psilon....
                      ah... ~appa and the need to write
pass... double consonants...
     i just wanted to write duck...
like duck the ******* bomb, rather than quack?!
the semites are a breed of people
that simply hide things, mostly vowels...
the new wave of people with robots
simply write excess number of consonants
and omit them...
     they're there, but they're only there
because there will be two layers of the same language
being inscribed... given omni-literacy...
          hence the current youth congregating under
the banner of acronyms and something akin
to sign language in their use of emojis...
  :)... no, that's bad... :(....
                                              i'm still looking
for the sof...
    the closest i came to it was with
ש‎י‎ך‎,
      it would have been easier with the greek
expression of teaching the neanderthal semites...
again, i like te jews, they're the most
"docile" / persistent semites...
   i know they're not vogue, but that's why
i rather keep hebrew than arabic...
or because of my skin, i sorta have to keep
the runes for safekeeping and upkeep...
we kept them for a reason,
    we kept the runes so this wouldn't happen,
how christianity gave us a life of psyche
but erased our origin, our alphabet,
no point calling it a "big bang",
at leas the russians got cyrilic,
and turned **** into шit...
     i'm still looking for O in hebrew, semitic,
the reason is that they're such a small number
and their phonetic encoding as as "neanderthal"
as that of sanskrit and mandarin alphabets...
  and that's the prejudice...
   i don't like it... i find all the mysteries
in my impetus to write bound to them...
    wait... weren't we not the ones stressing
the vogue of our times?
    i see a bunch of torn shirts and well worn shoes
from where i'm standing...
i'm still finding it hard to find an O in the hebrew form...
am i missing something?
    i mean, ****, cut off all the necessary
bits of greek, you get roman: alpha (a-),
      beta (b-)... and obviously the excess aesthetic
so that it all looks nice... cat, kettle, scythe...
                                           key, scatter, skew...
smooth, cool, caseload...
                 our current times will be a joke th

the walker, bends,
her lycra-clad hips,
to check her addidas laces.

she has walked,
many, many miles
in this life.
all, in the pursuit,
of the, body beautiful.

and now, has the
musculsture,
of an aged chicken.
all string and rope,
under sagging skin.

she breathes deeply,
sips, from a metalic bottle
and begins,
the downward journey,
into the unenviable,
inevitablity of ageing.

she smiles and
gives me a cheery wave,
as she passes on by.

Metalic and Cold
press to my veins
in a coveted hold
your kiss is my lead
you help my stead
you clear the fright inside me

If only for a moment
you transfix me
the rise of scarlet waves
it splits the seas
only for me
my freedom lovers light

The calm washes down
to                  my   frown
      lift   up  
pure like holly water
to panting breath
you give me yet the sight
high as a laughting cloud

You save me yet
a mighty net
sterling clean and sharp
my friend your intuition
Lets me stay in commision
             My

Blood          Drops

For                  Me
       To       See

City storms and maddening proposals
why not stay simple and kiss
No extravagent nights hitting the shops
"But the economy dropped" you hear
Then lets follow  back to simpler rooms
To the uncut fields  and
life support barn frames that glint softly
through the cowboy hat reflections
Take to the tire swing dragging over seams of the hurt skies
Scraping the bottom of the barrels

Go to the old country and in
our eyes
the metalic skin does not envy us
For it has novels it wrote to speak

Lets make it new again
Pulling the ashtray clouds
And gasoline tears through the messy cottontails
Let us not be caught as we adventure
Inside thickets of pasts and childhood books

I rested on a bench on a bank of a canal.
The grey steady sky gradually broke blue.
It was cold, but the sun soon shone through
thawing the chill from my bones.
A sparrow landed beside me on the green metalic seat.
Glanced at me once then eyed
the debris gathered by my feet.
Not spying any decent morsels to eat,
it took to the sky and flew.
As I watched it go
I heard my soul whispering,
"please take me with you."

I drowned in a metalic pool.
Yet needing more varnish
each coat felt like sub polar pain.
I sought dying like a goaded swan,
yet out shone by my newly acquired nail polish
still possessed enough attraction
even in surrender,
to brush your ergo

tied a baloon
to the tombstone
of her best friend
in the cemetery
A puffy metalic-blue
number two
marking the passing
of her anniversary.

She shuddered then cried
till she spied
her sobbing complexion
in the balloons reflection.

Heard her friend laughing at her
she needed that,
oh how she needed that.

I see him there next to me
His slender tail swinging from the tree.
He raises his eleghant head
I reach out my hand and in his fur it embeds.
As my fingers stretch
His metalic claws flex.
He twistes his head to one side
Gives out a roar opening wide.
His long canines gleaming white
Reminding me that he's a carnivore of the night.
His stripes, my hands do trace
But he lets out a growl, it is not my place.
His stripes are the colours of black and brown
He wears them like a thorned crown.
I look into his firey eyes
Knowing this is all a disguise
As on both our heads we do share
A specific scar under our hair.
With our births it had begun
Him and I, we are one

honi soit qui mal y pense* revisited
and revised:
may he be shamed who
                       thinks badly of it:
better:
  may he be shamed who does
not think anything of it -
              and how does that one go?
airs my darling, airs,
chem-*** ******* -
       antibiotic overdose wankers -
that's how it goes in li'ill england -
t t t t - mind the t as you mind
r as you mind the g, and the gap
on the curve of the bank underground
station... with its metalic banshee
sound...
               ah! there we have it,
gentlemen, hold on to your wigs -
            honi soit qui rien y pense.

alone, wolfs been tracking me
around every corner I see him
big, gray, beastly, black fangs
tempting me to veer off to fear
to lose my place, panic, scream
I've seen him before, he's as cold
as his hot metalic tinged breath
Life comes to him but never goes
time to stand my ground, I need
a new wolf skin pelt to lay on

A hello from my Estranged Acidic Lover
Mixed with the scent of Lysol Wipes
I was using to scrub the Oven Door
Left me with a Metalic Taste
That raised my Iron Levels
I grew Irritable and Irrational
The beads of my sweat turned Silver
Plink plink fell to The Ground
With a heavy Speed
So I grabbed my Broom and Dustpan
Swept up the teared Weight
Covering the Floor
Before I could Slip
And threw them in the Trash

Gathered up the sticks and stones,
metalic chains that tied down  bones.
twist gibberish from  mithered mind,
poisonous scolpamine that makes it bind.
throw in  angst,  grief ,abuse and pain,
the manic , depressed clown, sudden sane,
projections coloured, in black and blue,
silvered mirror, which reflects you too,
tapping feet, to tell his story,
vibrating, whirring, hate and gory,
tangled hair, in love and war,
left the house, she went too far,
Eve's cursed with all  honest, gentle, meek,
an act of love, was taught to seek,
not in public, lies, their great shame,
it's ***** ops, they got it covered,
none Independent to Post,
All is hidden in the Sun,
With ***** Mirror,
one cannot find
junk Mail sings to tapped Telegragh.
none Express the Times,
News reels out fear, in pantomimes,
bowed to the fiddle player,
President, Minister, Senator , Mayor,
dressed in copper, gold, inked paper, bit coins,
buried in weighted tonnes, aground,
strawman arguments,  plentiful found,
mutter mumbo jumbo,
about survival of fittest,
serfs was born, to be that hitlist,
elequent etonians, buzzing fabian tales,
once bolting cheetahs, now, well fattened snails,
More occult jibes, from outer polished cups,
with poisoned inner, She passes up,
If sinning became winning,
patient, with time locked down, spinning,
weaving multicoloured threads,
of too man-y voices in her head.
Found alchemical gold  in solitary cell,
Thanks to the Fathers Heavenly spell,
unravelled her story, from sickness to well.
Omnipresent, all round, all high,
nothing hidden from his all seeing eye.
Good things come, for those who wait,
lockdown will serve the meek and kind,
the architects soon stricken blind,
believe their own lies,
think their bots are real,
love is truth, for those who feel.

A mothers kiss on a toddlers cheek.
Beaming, love. Eyes
Full. Of pure love and joy.
Warmth flowing. Boundless ecstatic embrace.
Tourniquet released.
Needle ascension.
Eyes to God.