My autism's a part of me,

But it is apart, you see.

...

Who are you?

With your ‘normal’ view.

Are you just one thing, or are you a person

With thoughts & feelings, that are your own unique version.

Preferences, ideas, talents, and dreams?

That are bound by senses that meet at their seams.

Are you fat, short sighted or visually impaired?

Are you ever wondering why I just stood and stared.

Those may be the things that I saw the first time I meet you,

But you’re more than just your ‘normal’ diagnosis…. True?

As an adult, you have control over how you’re defined.

Your normality means your perceptions are refined.

So why would you single out one characteristic of mine that you can make known.

As a child, I am still unfolding, I’m not fully grown.

Neither you nor I yet know of what I am capable.

If you think of me as just one thing, then one thing’s inescapable.

You run the danger of assuming I have no chance of achieving.

And my heightened senses know this, it’s only you you’re deceiving

For I am not endowed with any ordinary sense.

You need to know this before I commence.

You take for granted sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.

Never once realising that these things can be as painful as hell

For me.

You see.

My world often feels hostile, and makes me so fearful.

I may appear withdrawn or belligerent, whilst others are cheerful.

Or mean to you, or antagonistic,

Defending myself, then going ballistic.

You tell me we’re going on a trip to the shops

And out of the world my safety net instantly drops.

My hearing, you see, is hyper acute.

But I’m put in the car, though I loudly refute.

At the shops, walls of people jabber and whoop.

The loudspeaker booms and adds to the soup.

Music blares and lashes and whooshes.

Tills beep and cough, a coffee grinder swooshes.

The meat cutter screeches, a baby starts wailing,

I’m starting to malfunction and am rapidly flailing

As trolleys pass creaking, and fluorescent lights hum.

I’m starting to panic, but also turn numb.

My brain can’t filter the input, the voltage is massive

I’m in overload with no chance of staying passive.

My sense of smell is stratospheric.

That fish on the counter is NOT atmospheric.

The man in front hasn’t showered today,

That Stilton cheese – someone take it away!

A baby goes past, it’s ***** needs changing.

Things are going faster and turning deranging

They’re mopping up pickles on aisle two with some bleach and a rag.

My stomach is churning, and I’m starting to gag..

And there’s so much hitting my eyes!

This trip has turned into the world's worst surprise.

The fluorescent light

Is not only too bright,

it’s that flicker.

The space seems to be moving, getting quicker and quicker.

The pulsating light bounces off everything and distorts what I am seeing.

I don’t know what I’m doing, or saying, or being.

There are too many items for me to be able to focus.

The world starts to drain me of my internal locus.

My eyes try to compensate by tunnelling my vision

Fans on the ceiling, twist my senses into nuclear fission.

All this affects how I feel just standing there,

and I can’t even tell where my body is in space, do I care?

You’re yelling at me now, and shaking my shoulder

But the fiery fog is down and is starting to smoulder

It isn’t that I don’t want to hear your instruction.

I just can’t understand, due to mass self-destruction.

You're shouting now, but what does "£$%^&&% NOW! !£$%^&*" mean?

My senses will **** me in a collusion so obscene.

Once we’re back at the kids home, it all feels less absurd.

And now when you speak, I can hear every word.

Simple instructions, that I know off by heart.

And I cling onto these so I won’t fall apart.

You tell me what you want me to do next and I’m able to reply.

Now I’m happy and it’s easy for me to comply.

Now I’m OK and I’m running about

And performing my ritualised songs, which I shout.

Then a visitor grabs me saying, “Hold your horses, cowboy!” – This means danger!

I can’t stop the horses, I’m me, not the Lone Ranger!

And I’m thrown into panic when what you mean is, “Stop running.”

But I don’t know that! Those stampeding horses are coming!!

That’s my life, you see, it’s not “a piece of cake”

When there’s no dessert in sight and you’ve made a mistake.

When you say, “its pouring cats and dogs,” I see pets flooding from the sky.

Tell me, “It’s raining hard,” so I won’t fear the animals will die.

Puns, sarcasm and allusion

Simply generate confusion.

Tell me facts and keep things clear

So I can live, yet not in fear.

It’s hard for me to tell you what I need when my senses are reeling

When I don’t have a way to describe what I’m feeling.

I may be hungry, frustrated, frightened, or perplexed.

But I can’t find the words, and lash out, angry and vexed.

Be alert for my body language, or my gestures and obsessions

Then you’ll handle my feelings like your own treasured possessions.

Watch out for me compensating for not knowing the right word

By mimicking my favourite film star, or something just as absurd.

Rattling off words or whole scripts, which will leave you confounded

That I’ve memorised from Disney, because they make me feel grounded.

They may come from the TV, or speeches, or a book

And though they make people give a funny look

I just know that saying them gets me off the hook.

Show me, show me! I’m visual, you see.

And I’ll understand rather than you just telling me.

And be prepared to show countless times.

I’m listening, despite my ritualised rhymes.

Visual supports help me move through my day.

They relieve me of the stress and I feel OK.

I don’t have to remember what’s happening next

For I operate on a visual text.

This makes for smooth transitions in my life

And we’ll finally progress without anger or strife.

I need to see something to learn it, because spoken words are like steam to me;

They evaporate before my mind's eye, and are gone instantly,

Before I even have a chance to make sense of them,

They've died in the ether, leaving me in mayhem.

I don’t have instant-processing skills.

Instructions and information are my life giving pills

Images can stay in front of me for as long as I need,

and will be just the same in years, for they'll never recede.

Without visual help, I live the constant frustration

of knowing that I’m missing big blocks of information,

Not to mention falling short, by being a misfit

And I'm helpless to do anything about it.

Unlike other people, I'm unable to learn

If it's normal interaction for which you do yearn.

I’m constantly made to feel that I’m not good enough

And people are stern and people are tough.

They think I need taking in hand and need fixing.

Never knowing the world and my brain are tranfixing

I avoid trying any new things, for I'm sure I'll get 'dissed'

And another grown up will be angry and get 'real ******'.

But no matter how “constructive” you think you’re being.

Look for my strengths, though they're hard for the seeing.

There is more than one right way to do most things.

It may look like I don’t want to play with the other kids on the swings

But it may be that I simply do not know how to start

They just think I'm weird, and set me apart.

Teach me how to play with others.

Remove my autistic shrouded covers.

Encourage other children to invite me along.

They might learn something of value from my life's different song.

And rather than spend my day as separate, secluded.

I might show an ethereal delight at being included.

I do best in games that have a clear beginning and end.

Random play is something my fears won't transcend.

And just one other thing, a sort of confession

I cannot interpret a ****** expression

Or body language, or other peoples' emotion

So in group situations I'm resigned to demotion.

I want to learn, I want you to teach me.

Reach into my mind and help me to see.

If I laugh when Tommy falls off the climbing frame,

It’s that I don’t know what to say, nastiness isn't to blame

Talk to me about Tommy’s feelings and teach me to say,

“Are you hurt, Tommy, I'll get teacher, then you'll be okay?”

If you don't I'll meltdown or blow-up, and get in a stew

And this is a thousand times worse for me than for you.

For my mind will go into overload

My sense of equilibrium will start to off-road.

For I'm well past the limit of my social ability.

As those off road lights glare at my own disability.

If you can figure out why my meltdowns occur, they can be prevented

And my behaviours will abate, less frequently lamented.

Keep notes about me and a pattern may emerge.

As your understanding of me will gradually converge.

Remember that everything I do is a form of communication.

It tells you, when my words cannot, how I’m reacting to each situation.

My behavior may have a physical cause.

Think for a moment, just have a pause.

Food allergies and sleep problems can affect my behaviour.

Just look for signs, for you might be my Saviour.

Because I may not be able to tell you about these things.

That blunt my affect and cause my mood swings.

Throw away thoughts like, “If you would just—” and “Why can’t you—?”

You didn’t fulfill every expectation your parents had either, that's true.

And would you like to witness a constant rewind.

Of the traumatic deficits by which you're defined?

I didn’t choose to have autism.

Or to live with this division

Remember that it’s happening to me, not to you.

But without understanding, my chances remain few.

With love and support, my horizons are broader

But I can't live my life by other peoples order.

Patience. Patience. Patience, are the three words we need to live by

For my dreams to be reached, and my confidence fly.

View my autism as a different ability

Rather than as a freak show disability.

Look past what you may see as limitations and feel for my strength

I may not be good at eye contact or conversations of length

But have you noticed that I don’t lie, or cheat at a game

Or pass judgment on people, and make them to blame?

I rely on you, if you can make me your personal vocation

All that I might become won’t happen without you as my foundation.

Be my advocate, be my guide

Be my strength, stand at my side.

Love me for who I am, and not what you know

And we’ll see just how far I can go.

Matt Revans 2014
©Copyright

.ah here comes england with its eccentricities, ah hier kommt polen mit seine christentum: where anyone can be a messiah, as stressed by the byzantines.

my first love was the love of the english grey,
(in honesty mentioned it was
the double-decker first, since
i fancied myself the great bus-driver of
the no. 5 bus back home)
earl grey came and said: ‘i can’t look
at these skies without sunglasses!’
and so it was, mid-autumn with sunglasses
at loss the sun-worshiper
enter the moon idiot,
looking for accents, looking for anything.
in england they called him das deutsche -
for reasons believable enough;
the luftwaffe eagerly anticipating the tunnelling
centipede that is the euro-star train-tunnel:
the panzers are rolling in!
the panzers are rolling in!
strange he never minded the coal-miners as useful
as minded by edvard gierek von silesia -
to the dispute of silesians not ex-patriated to saxony
(oh wait... texan boy doesn't sound as
nationalistic as minnesota boy?).
ooh pokey poo... writing about germany
became so **** so recently, i forget that i started it:
here’s to the english language’s chirality of s and z,
actually being superimposable:

from words in the socratic sense as encoded by plato
i don't get a bunch of ideas... virtue
does not make me ponder it with meaning or definition,
i only see the kabbalistic sensibility
of anti-alphabetical sequencing as v
i                   r               t               u          e...
otherwise              e      i    u             r         t         v;
almost sounds like s.t.d.

why didn't existentialism every take off in England?
fair enough, the Poles aren't exactly saints, but they'e not
exactly  vermin... one Muslim should have learned
his history better: two naked swords, against the Northern
Crusaders - but, n'ah ah, he didn't, i told you,
never trust an Egyptian with monotheism,
he'll bury the artefacts in a desert for
2000 years... and then we'll
have the cult of Baφoμet and
the prickly skinned crusaders saying:
better the extra-**** and **** than
the headscarf... and they burnt at the stake...
got crackly pork skins with them
as if it was a hoax to remember: that's what really
happened. μι or qui or any softened
carrot: yellow gets van Gogh, blue gets
Picasso... i guess orange gets O'Hara...
it is the age of Baφoμet and the Knights
Templar... you sorta think that
agitation with amateur terror will slow
down the process of coherent and systematic
far-right activities? i swear you shipped those
Syrians into Germany for a revision
of the holocaust... i'm ******* sweating with
anticipation while i swipe left for a
kippah scalping and get a Syria monk
out of it... perhaps a date... but you know...
i'm not that much of a talker...
my mother spent 3 months in 40 degree heat
that kills... the arabs are heating the cauldron up...
soon, you'll be wishing you'd have lived in
Siberia... and i'm not kidding,
global warming is debatable in Iceland, Britain,
and New Zealand... not on any continent
we know of... 40°C... **** the **** old me!
i'm not even wishing for old age...
when this thing we cal an orb and relate
it to only one Grecian element: earth
isn't air... and we call the vest godly Venus
and Mars and Juniper -
well... why bother even thinking
about keeping up-to-date
when nothing we write will be written into
stone? i like the delusion it will be,
blame Chinese employment of youthful
unemployment in countries where beauty
is fixated on tourist vomiting down your wedding aisles,
the existence of european communism
curated the beneficiary of competition
capitalism gagged for like a sad gimp clad
in torched and fetish leather...
but that went, went to the chinese...
or a russian Babushka said: democracy, whaaaa?
ca Ching the Chinaman...
                    n'oh h'oi! thirty thousand
eyelash strokes to a pictured idea per second,
all i have is Mongolian far way, in Kazakhstan:
chum Chou chew - juggling out the dribbles -
                     hey, you're on the verge of
equipping the cinnamon men their potency
to breathe a billion ***** in a square mile...
   of hillbilly... i'll bet you a 100 to 1 and say:
               pucker blow-lobe chips are on the house:
hence the cheesy smile: anthropoid digital tunnelling
        all the way to Palestine, and the new U.N.
                  and that fake thing you have:
no matter how many billion dollars,
it won't equal a single spoon, or hammer.
it's that sort of thing that's meta-metaphysical -
or some other benzene variant prefix -
get smart, live love, hurrah Marquis de Sade!
patron of old age; while your granny said:
lessen the lesion by probing it darling.
       Tokyo tribes? the weirdest film i've ever seen,
the **** aren't even Asia... stop telling me the
sun is too bright... Buddha walked with excess squint...
and he managed it without a tap-tap-boom stick
to mark out 2 square metres...
   happy are those living in a greenhouse,
  surface mirrors, and sea,
but on the continent, they joked that palm trees
would be grown in the Baltic circumference...
hello dodo... but then the amateurs appeared...
   beheading, blowing themselves up,
a library of one... what they have birth to isn't
as spectacular as giving your voice to Cabaret Voltaire...
   they are creating a new breed of khaki stiff-necks -
ostriches and the gargantuan plan of over-easy -
i know the ***** ones, the ones siding with the left,
they think they're political, only in the sense that
their politics is a proton-neutrality,
the idle life... the life worthy of no political involvement...
the easy life...            the life of respected repudiation,
centrist silent populist party name and manifesto
combined: status quo.
     the only generation that might talk of old
age as a zenith, an ultimate goal enshrined in
the furtherance of mankind's potential is the generation
of my grandparents... only my grandparent's generation
can boast about achieving old age...
   which means no artistic profit -
      only my grandparents won the lottery that's lasted
for donkeys' years... my parents haven't,
i haven't... my parent's, and yours, haven won
the mortgage lottery... so communism was a failure
because it was deemed to be a failure
   in the span of not even a trans-generational decade?!
   trans-generational decade?
   me... father, grandfather, great-grandfather,
  great-great-grandfather... etc.
               it was a failure because i inherited a bicycle
that didn't have two wheels... how am i supposed
to join the ******* circus in capitalism on a monocycle?
this ain't ideological warfare... this is 1 billion Chinese
we're talking about... and they're not going anywhere.
but my grandparents are the only success story of
communism reaching its potential -
                  sadly, you ought to know,
i'd rather invest in euthanasia than in retirement plans,
given the fact that most of you, don't even
have a potential to begin with a mortgage.
the reason why existentialism never took off in England,
is because Darwinism got mingled with history,
a timescale crushing next week's Monday -
and gone to hell the whole joy of routine -
routine the parachute, routine the sloth of time -
existentialism in England never took off
because current affairs in life were too problematic
to be thought of as boring: the canape of / for philosophers...
come on, Heidegger: being and beyng? obeying?!
Darwinism sorta of gave history a quantum dynamic:
a scratch of 19th century, a nibble from Hastings...
bish-bash-bosh... 19th of September 2016...
existentialism never took off because of the dichotomy
between the synonyms: life and existence -
as if the two differed so much -
well, the Pope knew how to deal the theological
*****: death and the after-life - same ****,
different cover. where these words ever so despairingly
coupled? life: no mention of: out of every instance,
and existence: out of every instance - rekindled
fetishism of avoiding mortality's river of set-out
change? it looks like it's just that...
                               currency of political correctness
these days?   the grand implosion:
    Ritter Templer und Zeit βaφoμeτ.

A bed of
a lad in

A lad in a bed of creased sheets catching crumpling dreams as the night falls apart,

I'd better start something or better to be snoozing?

Okay
It's
Friday

Friday it's okay and two sachets of sugar with one spoon of instant,
it smells hot and tastes sweet

My eye's full of glue and my head's a marshmallow, the day ahead looks so deep and my breathing is shallow,

Nobody says,
poor fellow.

Goblins live in tunnels-
at the end of the garden

They wreak havoc-
when everyone is sleeping

Tunnelling into dreams-
spreading their poison

Powerful potions-
to confuse waking from sleeping

It's here! It's here! One of the Best
And Brightest Days
Now's the Time to rev-up our Ways.


That Glazing Star, which spits the
Rays
Shone brightly through Helios, the
Highest Display.


Beaches un-roll their sleek-forming sands
As Pools de-frost their blue-tanned waves.
Swimmers do dive, and enjoy the Save
In Iberia's Coast rescue in Grand.


There are many Events in
This Hot-Baste Holiday
Worry not; For it will slowly
Pass Away
About a month-two - quill, quite awhilst
Just enough for me to produce
More Words in-rhyme.


Writing on Holidays must always be fun
For Experiences like these, pressed
Under the Sun
Tram-Tracked Thoughts, which does
Hurt to remember
Will be preserved - thanks to November.


Family, Friends, Extensions and Strangers
There the Bunch starts to get all blokey
Boring Concepts, birth these Megaphone Chaps
You world prefer to dance on their laps.


Maybe what I said meant something else
Those Words of mine touched Heart and felt
Such gradual boredom - in time I agree
For tunnelling Facts, with Evidence plead.


Nevertheless, let the Holidays sing
And let our Lives live that Full Extract.
Be Happy, Gay and Humble in Kind
For once the Headmaster whistles, you'll
Have a Sortie ahead.

The summer roars in, but why do the leaves fall?
This is the season of the spring,
and the flowers revel in their grandiloquence of colour
but right outside the window where you and I lay
studying for hours on end,
there is a tree that sheds its yellow leaves
speaking of an epoch of time where once it was young and all green
and then I think of you and me;
how the summer is tunnelling through the happiness
that beset our lives right now and we are sedated.
I walk with you for miles and talk with you along the way
and we skip over one topic to another,
as if we were making our own house of cards.
I eat with you everyday, and you let me be with you;
Just like that yellow-leaves-shedding tree,
I wonder if what we have will one day tumble into oblivion
and I will only have memories of you on my phone
and in my heart that then might ache.

In animal death, a breath of relief
Tunnelling through the airways for one last
Sigh of non-defeat, of exaltation and release
Not to be, or better, to be free of mortality
Made immortal with passing life
Taking strife by the neck and repeating

I am no longer your victim

In animal death, a universal strength
Where no obstacles lay before happiness
And instincts are not policed
Your fanciful dreams of green treats, fulfilled
And failing kidneys can rot as they please
Please, shed only a handful of tears
On the graves of decomposing beasts
Released from the shackle of domestication,
For the ones that suffer are surely the living.

Caught in the maze
Of amazing veins
****** cells excel
Tunnelling thru’
Vessels and vestibules  
Mind oscillates vacillates
In chaotic amplitude
Like a pendant in pendulum
Of wishes and vices
Divine and devilish
Wise and unwise
Pride and prejudice
Dual mind is in duel
  
Behind the temple
Brain at home in skull
Will and wit seated well in skill
Rein, rule or roam and ruin
Embroidered and embroiled
Embodied and emboldened
Meditate, mediate,
Cogitate, agitate
Churn and spurn
Nurture the soul within
Explore the radiant light    
At the end of the tunnel
Mind, the deity on duty
As mysterious as its Maker,
The Brain behind the brain

Dealing with OCD
is like losing your mind,
You can be in a room
full of people, yet all alone,
Noone can ever know
when the horrible thoughts
will come and what they will be
you just feel a buzz, a hum, a drone
in your head and you try to block it out
but like Sony Xperia apps
running in the background,
they are there, infernal
consuming the bandwidth of your soul
there is a fine line between delusion and sanity
a clutching at straws, a search for help
pleas and pleas fall not on deaf ears
but endure it you must
until it runs its course
tunnelling on, pushing you to the edge
straddling the fine line buoying
bobbing, dancing, fleeting-
drowning you in its wake as you gasp and gasp
OCD is horrible and misunderstood
why it hit me, I know not-
when it came part of me, I never agreed
I just woke up arrested, paralysed
by the most unutterable thoughts...
I suspect it happened when I met
the thin woman with the one eye-
I have known no peace since then
Paranormal paranoia rules my brain
and I am mooted, glued in the vile filth
of guilt, shame, anger, helplessness-
like a generator running on fuel,
incessant the tyres do not stop burning
alone, sometimes, I ask myself
why? why me Lord?
the cup is too heavy for me to bear
and ghouls have made my mind
an open playing field and I cant break free
at times I wake up and its gone
I smile and dress up-
try to think normally, eat and sleep
but itchy insomnia rages on my skin
beads of sweat and shaking, my mouth is dry
I am afraid, frightened and I cower
OCD is crunching my life, slowly
and sadly noone knows...they just dont know
why I say 'off' things sometimes
they suppose its the preoccupation
of a busy mind, and busy I am
wallowing, silently, stewing in the prison
it seems there is no escaping this

I spotted a fortune teller at an old county fair
while knowing the answers I still looked for some there.
There was no love line or fate line she could’ve read,
I told her I bet there’s no sun line, life line or trace of a head.
She met my eyes with sadness written all over her face,
and told me out of all people that I was her worst case.
She traced the inside of my hand intently trying to see
then she asked me had I recently been burned severely.

In my death bed I’ve been waiting patiently for sleep
sadly I’m not the one it wishes to greet.
With past scars and present fresh wounds tunnelling down so deep,
loss of blood and mind so I’m left as just a sack of meat.

A loving caress to each feature
but succeed in only poking the bone,
and every single living creature
dies completely alone.
She was a rainbow and I; charcoal grey,
they all choose to go but claim they wish to stay.

The beeping bouncing off the wall
steady like sirens or alarms,
and at the end of it all
we all die in our own arms.
She was a rainbow and I; charcoal grey,
I still catch her glow but it’s fading away,
I know it could never last, but I still have to pray,
‘cause I am the past and she’s only in today.

I’ve acted strong and kept up this ruse,
atleast I can say I’ve always been brave,
but when I’m not digging up the past, ghosts or clues,
I’ve steadily been digging my own grave.

No lines, no ties, not a single strand.
I’ve got the palmist right in the palm of my hand.

How long I have been in the dark....

A fate less holy,
A mission undefined,
Heart that cries,
Tears that bleed,
The abysmally charged traveller
That I have become walking
Until tendons fade away,
So my knees have scraped
The fugitive hope of the ravine.

        The space of loneliness
        Between these shoulders
        And the tunnelling that
        Devours the necessity to seek
        Out a hope,
        Something to fight for.

Saving grace within the dark,
Because dark is not dark
Without the light to show
Its depths,
its attachments to the misery,
This Earth, home of humanity
Trampled by the inner search,
The strength of hope is the light
Of the world.

Oh but the ravine does not falter,
Its crescent flow like a carving
Knife to cut away any luminous
Idea, the idea that cannot die,
And we are all formed in the light
As we leap into the abyss
In a battle for the sanctum of the soul.

     Where is the philosophy?
     The ideal that love can conquer
     Love, faith of the child
     In the blind advent?
     From the origins of water,
     Many drown in the depressing
     Motion of the blind lights that
     Surround them.

Hope is not sterile,
The idea cannot die,
Familiar to the dark,
Because we overcome,
The obliterated redemption
Is but the whole of the world
Saying you cannot.
Confronting the sea as a rock
To the crashing waves,
Bewildered by marches on the darkness,
Battered and bruised,
At the edge of death,
Purpose is here as we open the light
And reveal the eyes we always had.

     Deep, deep into the dark,
     We have been thrown as swift
     Grenades of light, the explosion sudden,
      The sight revealingly hopeful.

And God is watching the children
He made from dust to confront
Ourselves in a battle of reflection,
Every mirror needs the light
To see the truth of themselves,
Here the nocturnal night
Fights for every soul,
Dancing at the depression,
The sadness of menacingly
Prideful elitism.

    Sweat, these deep meanings,
    Who wants to think on them?
    Ignorance, blissful warrior
     Of the dark,
      Death to the fire inside
      That fashions the sleep or hope,
      The individual loses that which makes
     Them, and here in lies the ravine
     And its war.

Outcast, fighter of the dark,
Depressed warrior,
there is a form of light
In the confusing shadows,
Away from that voicelessness
That does speak,
Shed the ancestral burden,
Leaping from one horror
To the next horror,
Reveal that which is hope,
When you from before when God
Molded you as a form of light,
And though you may think
That you are just a flash,
Remember that every star twinkled
Its light before the last gasp.

Come out and reveal
The fire that yearns,
Feed the hope as a fire
That swells, a fire that burns.
You are the instruments of new
Beginnings, that which
Was rejected, that which was cast
Away like falling winds,
Winds that bkew you to another day,
We pass daily from the darkness,
As if from sleep,
We battle now in the void.

And though we are small
In the vast darkness,
We shine as cosmically gifted
Luminaries, shining as
Fragments in the night,
Eternal hope, a form of light.

I'm tunnelling
In a downward spiral,
Getting deeper than the
Scars you left on my heart.

Lost afloat on a raft
On an ocean of my own tears
Led by a misguided attempt.
But the blood -
It consumes me so
Yet it is so mesmerizing.

My mind,
My own personal time machine
In which I find myself trapped
In thoughts of you.
The thoughts they screech,
The noise so piercing
It's destructive.

Breakout I must.
But before I even try -
Oblivion beneath me,
As I fall.
Am I free?
These chains still hold me,
Imprison me,
My vision so fine and sharp
Yet still I am misguided.

In this raft afloat
In the ocean of my mind,
That you created.
Slowly crumbling apart
Like everything great, it falls.

But alas hope,
The light it calls!
Until I realise
My only escape
As I slowly drift away.

Artificial city-dwellers
Discard all humanity
Carbon fired tin cans
Pierce the serenity.

Anonymous collisions
Fifty floors below
Each passer by a stranger
You will never know.

Pedestrians, travellers
And their vehicles
Droplets in a river,
Altering the tidal flow.

Irrigation passages
Absorb the elements
Hedge fund panellists,
Bankers and workers flee.

Eye rolling baby boomers
Sit, tutting one by one.
Nervous millennials adorned
In clothes for moths to eat.

Breaking point carriages
Century old tunnelling
A lone foot tapping
And quiet page turning.

Brakes hit the track
Piercing the murmur
Eighty jarred necks
External motion blur.

Sliding carriage doors
A not-so-subtle beep
Dust kicked from dawn
Falls onto the city streets.

Blue tower inhabitants
Busting out of the seams
Water molecules collide
But nothing sinks the fleet.

Smartly suited eye-darters
Push and pull for space
Rolling up the banks
Humanity erased again.

I settle on the brickwork
Until the storm retreats
Circadian commuters
Run to rest their feet.

A few lonely meanders remain
Wondering down the beach
Forlorn festivies fog over
Swinging shop-signs squeak.  

As the lighting rig descends
And once blue ceiling stains
The beige brickwork turns red
The high tide admits defeat.

Pink light turns to navy blue
A faint moonbeam lights the sky
Obscured by one cloud then a few
Vague incandescence frames the scene.

The streetlights flicker overhead
One worn out passenger now leaves
Shrouded, cold, hungry and fulfilled;
Abandonment for some is peace.

This far divided land

Where the rice grows free

Has always had corrupt men

Stopping their life's dreams

It's in their veins

It's not that easy

To make it flow on out

For a thousand years

The same has been

Even when a million men

Wearing blue denim jeans

Came marching in

To change our ways

It's not what this is all about

While the people we trust

Pop out of man-made holes

And look like they've been

Tunnelling like moles

Where the enemy lines

Have stood for a thousand years

During the day

We're all so polite

But in the night

We all have to go and fight

The un-invited western men

Always seem to lose sight

Their communist fears

Were ingrained in their mothers womb

And will always end in tears

Where the streets smell of Pho

As you pass on by

And if looks could ****

If you dare to say hi

The aromatic love incense

Wafts in the fog filled air

Where the market crowds come

And traders buy and sell

The lonely planet guides

Write of this unusual smell

The local giggles should tell you

That you don't really belong there

So goodbye Hanoi

This time we can't ignore the flack

I'm going home

And I ain't ever coming back

My wife is waiting

To mend me back in one piece

We've had that awful feeling

Since it all became so fierce

I want to head home so bad

Now they've invaded our embassy

When they don't want our help for a truce

And it doesn't bring the change

That the westerners wanted to produce

So just leave it in the hands of ones own chosen destiny.

They watch my lavish fall
Hungrily
Lips gnashing together
Grinding teeth in anticipation
Its the only sound I hear
As I slip through the abyss

I blame them
partly
With their eyes scanning upwards
Fixated on the throne
Waiting for the day
They’ll look down on the rest of us

Now today has arrived
And they marvel in what I’ve become
What I've lost
Who am I now
Surely not this creature
Cracked mask on a sunken ship

Blood streams from my temples
Tormenting thoughts cannot be contained
In the mere encompass of my mind
They hug the curve of my cheekbones
And slip on my lower lip

Inviting me to speak them
Inviting me to scream them

All while the parasite keeps digging
Tunnelling deeper and deeper
Up the underbelly of my wrist

Just the upper torso
of dunes waving back to us
where we walk
all hymn: the sea, 7ish, and ourselves
the sun;
going slow
echoes of sea birds
tunnelling
above the sea
always
near home.

From the warren I view the world;
From the warren I venture timidly,
Ready to rush back to its relative security.
It's not my warren, but I'm comfortable -
Well, not exactly comfortable, but secure.
Made not for me, although it has a familiar scent;
A temporary sanctuary - a base from which to venture forth.
And from within its warm depths
I've furthered an internal warren,
Full of rooms connected by labyrinths
Of hallways still tunnelling unheeded
Into a myriad mysterious locations:
Twisting, turning, looping, surprising,  revealing.
Both the warren I inhabit and the warren I've developed
Help to cement this reality; Help to appease;
Allow me a freedom to explore my environs;
Explore local watering holes and those further afield;
Explore inner landscapes, disconnected and relevant.

I leave the comfort of the school,
I drift down to Dun Laoghaire pier,
And pass the lovers holding hands,
Or sneaking sips of bargain beer,
And I approach my destined ship -
The station always holds the key,
To get a train so I can start
The journey home to Delgany.

It soon creeps forward from the dark -
A worm emerging from a peach,
Gliding past the moonlit sea
Stroking the shores of Killiney beach.
It misses the seals in Sandycove,
Tunnelling through the Dalkey hill,
Approaching Greystones but not before
Bray, Killiney and Shankill.

It chunders through the tunnels vast,
The sea breeze freezing up the carriage.
The light shines brightest when I leave -
The moon and grass make quite a marriage,
And the stars do wonders to the trees,
Who stand bare, posing, just for me,
While I crunch through their pile of leaves
On my way home to Delgany.

You know what?
One of my biggest fears is…
Drowning.
Suffocating from all the
Pain and suffering.
Struggling to breathe.
Struggling to move.
Struggling to stay alive.

You know that moment
When you hold that weapon
In your hand, and you just
Think to yourself,
No one would even know
That you’re gone.
No one will ever understand
How much it hurts.

My vision is tunnelling
My mind is echoing
My body is collapsing

I isolate myself from friends
I have no motivation to go to school
I can barely get out of bed,
Let alone go to sleep.

In a deep soil
Microbrial work

Mining holes
Tunnelling
Tunnelling

All churning
Turning

******* in
Wet
Dripping
Sky

I’ll pour this vial of pills
to fall through my neck
to push out my navel
so I can grow up and out

I’ll watch it all dissolve in my hands
watch my world dissolve in my hands
so it can finally be mine
something entirely mine

And as I’m standing on the big blue planet
eyes tunnelling into the moon
I will drape the reticulum
over some other creature
and no more burden shall I be
lying deep in the milky sea

Tunnelling through the debris, and humbled by the degree...
I stumble into the Truth and the greed crumbled to the decree.
Reach out and touch somebody’s hand for serendipity?
Teach now or get ****** into someone’s quicksand for showing
sympathy."It comes with the territory", the words of a loner…
"It comes with telling a story", the words of a Lodestar!

I am female

I keep boys under my skin

they think they think

they’re

right deep under my skin

but my skin is deeper than

the fault lines

that carry love waves

and I like it that way

-

You know me, you love me

you care for me

sometimes

-

I do too, humouring

those that are lost in my flesh now

swimming in my blood stream

tunnelling through my veins

when really I just want to

rip apart yours

Above was a canvas, splashed with more stars than anyone could count, except Lorence. Stars shined atop the lavender and cobalt backdrop and encircled the warm glow of the Moon, with hundreds of thousands of eager eyes watching on as a blissful light danced across the sky. Most witnessed this display through their bedroom windows in the early hours of the morning, but some had different ideas. Some had bigger ideas.

The loud creaking was quickly subdued as Lorence, shuffling up the stairs on all fours, held a thick blanket against the aged wood and mouthed a quiet shush to the ground beneath him, as loud footsteps approached from above.  
“What are you doing awake?” Mumbled a lofty bearded man, still dreaming.
Lorence froze, like a prisoner caught tunnelling to freedom.
“It’s a full moon tonight!” He replied, far too energetically for this early hour.
“Alright. Well, get to bed.” His dad smiled. “And get that thing off of your back,” he gestured towards the bulky telescope.

After his dad left, Lorence’s mission continued as he waddled towards the balcony with his blanket around him and telescope clutched by both hands. The magnifying light from above entranced Lorence as he stood outside the balcony door, his eyes reflected the unspeakably stunning gig in the sky. A white light suddenly appearing in a nearby house broke the spell causing Lorence to rub his eyes dry and set the telescope down. He fiddled with it for a moment before peering through the fogged eyepiece. Navigating the instrument towards the window of the lit red-brick house, he spotted a white-haired lady comfortably lounging on the patio, fitted with a smile. Lorence then knew his mission wasn't yet over.

The friendly aged face grinned at the boy from her solitude, as she looked to the heavens, basking in the glory of Orion’s Belt as it wrapped around the sky like a bandage on a wound. She squinted, adjusting her eyes to the pits of black between the pearls of the night, and the eternal unease they brought on – the emptiness of her home a reminder of her perpetual loneliness. She dealt with these lingering thoughts through rhythmically snapping her fingers to some imagined tune in her head, her favourite at the time was Bobby McFerrin's 'Don't Worry Be Happy', which was always bound to inspire glee.

With a large yawn, Lorence darted his eyes around the woman’s house, observing the unkempt lawn resulting in excess shrubbery, the flickering lights almost mirroring her compulsive clicks and the unusually shaded mould growing on the side of her house like a festering wound. The lady, still smiling, still clicking, raised her left hand and signalled to the boy to join her in her stargazing. Getting to his feet, Lorence slung the telescope over his shoulder as he quietly navigated the dim hallway and tiptoed downstairs one step at a time.

Now outside, Lorence raised his hand to lock the door behind him, clumsily dropping the keys on the porch decking and freezing him in place. Realising the house remained asleep, he collected the keys and continued his mission.  As he approached the neighbour’s house, he followed the sound of the rhythmic clicking. Peering over the side gate, he saw the woman, still staring at the stars.

“There’s a better view from here!” She proclaimed, without turning towards him.
Lorence fiddled with the latch on the gate and moved to stand beside her.
“I didn’t realize I had a fellow stargazer living so close,” she grinned, with her eyes still to the skies.
“My dad bought me a telescope for my birthday last year. I try to use it every night, but he doesn't let me stay up late.”

Lorence, noticing the woman’s unbroken gaze, mirrored her as he looked up. The pair now stood, entranced by the astronomical splendour above them. For the first time in a long time, having someone to share in her love of the skies, the old woman shed a tear.  

The boy glanced and noticed the reflection of the bright display on the woman’s cheek.

In their moment of pure bliss, taking in the wonders above them, the world around them stood still, until a loud noise penetrated the moment, startling Lorence.

“Did you hear that?” His attention diverted from the sky.

Before she could respond, the noise intensified until it became deafening. The once picturesque sky lit up to a blinding white. And darkness followed.

The walls are
Closing in
The silence
Is unbearable
My breaths
Come faster
Chest heaving
Wild eyes
Unfocused
Nails
Digging into my skin
Trying
To ground me
Tunnelling vision
Scattered
Afraid
Help
Losing strength
I can’t breathe
Panic
Deafening silence
Desperately grasping
For anything
To ground me
Pain
Nails digging into skin
Teeth
Biting my lip
Grounded
Focused
Breathing

Lost

-jt

a two tonne viking frying taco shells thinking he’s Louis Zamperini

a cracked slate roof leaking acid rain onto photo books of artists who have
dark minds and
black eyes and
lips made of pewter and are
brilliant,
because they are
troubled.

tiny Mexican rabbits
******* on fresh bedding and
snowboarding with packs of salted butter on the new
screed
floor.

The Spider.
mushrooming her web around every crack on your hands
spitting marmite
drinking bitter bitter tea and ******* on The Vikings’ **** like it were a
Tarocco
orange.

bank loans
RSJ’s
a plague of aphids and
diesel, so much diesel but
jellied.
no glow.

the lime between the bricks bearing this system are
oppressed,
and mouldering.

the foundations are screaming, yet RIGHT THERE
at ground zero
The Bonsai Tomato.
tunnelling.

a green Yuri Gagarin set out before the final frost and
robbed,
of his wings.
stripped and proffered scuzz by a society run on
injustice and
pelf.

yet, somehow. still sure.
surrounded by the web but not tangled in it
haunted at night by the blood orange but not jaundiced by it

sea salt from a yellow grit bin.

another Oxfam jacket for a funeral.

six million blackouts painted by builders but The Bonsai Tomato is
STILL.
THERE.

eyes set on the next bend.
unshakeable.
holding his own.

a two tonne viking frying taco shells thinking he's Louis Zamperini

a cracked slate roof leaking acid rain onto photo books of artists who have
dark minds and
black eyes and
lips made of pewter and are
brilliant,
because they are
troubled.

tiny Mexican rabbits
******* on fresh bedding and
snowboarding with packs of salted butter on the new
screed
floor.

The Spider.
mushrooming her web around every crack on your hands
spitting marmite
drinking bitter bitter tea and ******* on The Vikings' **** like it were a
Tarocco
orange.

bank loans
RSJ's
a plague of aphids and 
diesel, so much diesel but
jellied.
no glow.

the lime between the bricks bearing this system are 
oppressed,
and mouldering.

the foundations are screaming, yet RIGHT THERE
at ground zero
The Bonsai Tomato.
tunnelling.

a green Yuri Gargarin set out before the final frost and
robbed,
of his wings.
stripped and proffered scuzz by a society run on 
injustice and 
pelf.

yet, somehow. still sure.

surrounded by the web but not tangled in it
haunted at night by the blood orange but not jaundiced by it

sea salt from a yellow grit bin.

another Oxfam jacket for a funeral.

six million blackouts painted by builders but The Bonsai Tomato is
STILL.
THERE.

eyes set on the next bend.
unshakeable.
holding his own.

NOW THE WORLD HAS COME BETWEEN US

She lay still
(perfectly still)  

eyes wide open
like a doll’s.

Her husband
lay beside her

“eyes wide shut”
(the phrase came to her) .

She smiled secretly
to her self

imagining he (Tom
her husband)  

was “the” Tom
Cruise.

“Mmmmm! ”
she relished the thought.

“Mmmmmm! ”
she cried aloud.

“Australia! ”
she said as if answering

a question
in a quiz.

The stain growing
from his head

resembled
(for all the world)  

“Australia! ”

There was no need
to phone a friend

or go for
50/50.

“Australia! ”
she said decisively
(so sure of her self) .

“Hey...it’s ok! ”
the stranger bending over her

told her.

She believed
in the voice

in what the voice
told her.

It was warm
and husky ‘round the edges

like her Daddy
when she was little.

Her knee
pained her.

“God...” how it
pained her.

“What’s your name...love? ”
the voice cajoled her.

She had to re-focus
to make the voice visible..

...lights...coloured...
...flashing lights...

dancing
like a chat up

in a disco
under a glittering ball.

“Oh you are handsome! ”
she told him.

“I am indeed! ”
the ambulance man agreed.

“Alan Handsome...how
did you guess? ”

She felt herself
blush to her roots.

She turned her head
looking at her husband’s head

the stain that was
Australia

had imperceptibly become
South America

then a badly blurred
early map of the world.

Then she closed her eyes
and the world went away.

*

Both my friends survived this you will be pleased to know. This was related to me over tea and biscuits when she was dandling her new baby on her knee on a particularly sunny morning that was all innocence and sunshine. I didn't write at the time but the story sunk inside me and fought its way out into this telling after tunnelling through the years and years to reach the proper brain cell that would put it into words...and a synapse later that horrible night found itself trapped in my words.

The title comes from Hank Cochran's MAKE THE WORLD GO AWAY...she used always sing her own words to it and this is what was going 'round and 'round in her mind as they were having a row before the crash. It was the Jim Reeves version she liked best.