Poison Pen Letters to Myself (2 page)

If I fight hard enough

I don’t need to fight

And if I learn enough

I don’t need an opinion

If I shout loud enough

I don’t need to be right

And if I fake an identity

I don’t need to be anyone

I would bleed myself to sleep

and still never know

I would drown myself in books

and still never know

I would pick apart my scabs

and still never know

I would lose myself in smoke

and still never know

If I work hard enough

I don’t need to work

And if I search everywhere

I don’t need to seek

If I suffer for everyone

I don’t need to suffer

But if I am just human

I am weak

I would stuff myself with food

and still never know

I would make myself so sick

and still never know

I would sink a bottle

and still not know

I would scream at the voices

and they still won’t go…

…If I…

They sit like little zombies

Eyes glazed with TV death

Their digitized heart beats

Their microwave breath

A wasted muscle flutters

Caught and woven into the web

A brief mental struggle

From one not assimilated yet

Technology spreads like fever

Children born with the bug

Unholy world wide communion

The new never new enough

Tomorrow’s world yesterday

Armageddon come and gone

The living dead in unsocial society

This is our millennium

On the outside looking in again

Smiling through my secret pain

What am I doing here

But wearing masks and facing fears

Longing for the past

Times that never last

Understanding more

Learning less

Never feeling of the rest

Smiling again…

Reaction learnt

No reason why

Only realised on goodbye

Smiling again…

On days like these

I can only see

Green upon black

Hatred turns my cheek

So that I can’t see

Behind me

The past at my back

I look ahead

To a future dead

I wish I were too

Though I am linked to this life

My blood in you

Peel my eyes from your beating heart

Feel the sharpness there

Pluck my fingers from your eyes

See my self abuse

I’m too tired to hate

Too fired up to be calm

Too angry to die

Too self piteous to harm

Too twisted up in emotion to see

Too trapped in my mind to ever be free

Too much

Too little

Too soon

Too late

I want to curl

In the womb of depression

I want to tear

My way out and destroy

But I

I

I am

So

So tired

So tired

Motherhood and mayhem

Please find the words to tell them

Desert on my tongue

Rain in my eyes

Brotherhood and bitches

Turning rags from riches

Dying for my truth

Living their lies

Simply biding my time

Riding out my crimes

Holding it all in, running blind

Howling at the night

Hiding from the white light

Keep calm

Carry on

Tow the line

Bleeding hands

Hold shattered dreams

Watching all the fractions gleam

Knowing they are pieces of my life

Now I wonder how long I can

Hold this nightmare in my hands

Without the effort weeping me dry

No, just leave me alone

It’s been so long

I’m just sitting by

Watching him watch me

As he damages my life

I’ve tried to cope

Leaving him to rage and cry

Knowing that the truth to me

To him is an elaborate lie

I wonder why

He acts like the moth to my flame

The world is crashing down

Tumbling years

So loud I cannot hear my screams

Torn from old dreams

Ripped from my very soul

Left as a gaping whole

Even though the end is near

I have no heart

Lost all my fears

The sea storms by me

A cesspool of tears

Boiling far and rushing near

The waves are red with blood

Hands dance towards the sky

I watch my life of destruction

With pure fascination

Now the end of my world is nigh

I have a little problem

An infernal love

Torn me wide open

Under the biblical sun

Down you took me

Sad and lonely

Into your confused and confusing heart

Where you accepted

Smiled and respected

Talked, trusted and laughed

As wrong as this may be

I feel you have stolen a part of me

And even though we both feel sad and guilty

I don’t think I want it back

Kiss me through your tears and mine

Kiss me through your pain

Kiss me heart, body and mind

Kiss me once again

Wasted days and sleepless nights

Trapped a lonely soul in mid-flight

Joining peace with the holy slave

Whispering softly from the grave

Careless dreams, used illusions

Can’t help drowning in such confusion

Frightened years, hopeless tears

Lost child moaning quiet fears

Abandoned hopes, unloved heart

Empty eyes facing unwanted dark

Harmless mind, sedated soul

Sinking in oceans black and cold

Broken mind, unlived dreams

Scars aren’t always seen

Fractured life, unnoticed death

Always waiting for the dying breath

Needing love, never enough

Suffer the smooth, rejoice the rough

Unfeeling pain, pouring rain

Spinning around and around again

All set me free, leaving me

To feel feelings that I’ll never be…

Unable to shout, no way out

Left facing a black shadow of doubt…

What does my life really mean to me?

Occupying the same space as a previous self, unwilling to receive the words and wants of others. Intentionally or unintentionally returning all that is no longer wanted, needed or useful. Send it back where it belongs, wherever that is. Somewhere, out there, bouncing back and forth between recipients who refuse to recognise or take ownership. Somewhere, out there, its journey will stall in dusty store rooms, on overloaded shelves, or end its life rotting in a pile of discarded dreams.

This is not for you, not now, not ever again. Return it all with disinterest, spare it no thought, let it drift away like dust upon the breeze. Return it with indignation, with spit and scribble, with a swift crumple and crush in angry fist. Return it with understanding. Understand that once, maybe, this was something you needed, wanted, requested, desired, or asked for. Understand that it is not for you any longer. Understand that by sending it back you are saying more than no, you are saying I no longer recognise this need or the person that needed it.

Take as much or as little time as you need to gaze or glance at these windows of the past. Let your fingers run over the names and places. Let your mind wander down the avenues of nostalgia and reminiscence. Turn them over in your hands and take note of the return address. Maybe this too has changed, maybe they too have moved along. Perhaps they send this to you from a place you no longer recognise, somewhere out there, unfamiliar and uncomforting. Swiftly or slowly make that judgement call. This is not for you, not anymore, not ever again. With lightened heart and heavy pen, make that acknowledgment to the world. Send it back from whence it came.

Ever abide the law of three, for what ye gives out comes back to thee.

I see you watching

Digging

For dirt

I know where you are coming from

I can see your future path clearer than you

A sense of superiority in my words

But why not

I worked hard for my vantage point

I climbed high

With bruised lips

Battered hips

Cracked joints

Bloodied knees

Scratched and scratching fingers

And eyes blurred with tears

And still I pushed

Pulled

Clambered

Climbed

You slither on your belly

What can you see from there?

You nip at everyone’s ankles

A thorn in the Achilles

A stone in the shoe

But the pain that we have felt because of you

Is nothing in comparison to the bright white light of true rebirth

There is no price tag to learning the lessons of life

You cannot hold a hand in false support and sympathy

Whilst writing a bill with the other

You can be worth it -

But not in this incarnation

What are you doing?

You are talking of killing

Murdering

Innocent people

Women and children

Sisters and daughters

Mothers

Lovers

Brothers

Fathers, husbands and wives

Children yet to live their lives

What are you doing?

Filling hearts and minds

With truth and lies

Of enemies

We cannot see

Those who would take my freedom from me

For taking freedoms from you

And yet I lift a hand to no one

Not to attack

Nor to defend

Not even to be counted amongst good men

What are you doing?

Raising hands

And sights

In long days and dark nights

What are you doing?

Creating a nation

Of militant self righteous rage

Of fear

Of hate

Of impossibility to relate

Of belief

Of morality, mortality

Of religious superiority

What are you doing?

Do you speak for me

Even when I raise a voice against you?

Do you represent the people

When the people march against you?

What are you doing?

Creating

Perpetuating

A battle of sacred rage

Are we really the people, the power and the change?

Or simply another moral masquerade?

Sometimes it feels like I cannot win

I understand that this is not a competition

But if it is not,

Why does it always feel like a battle?

I stood under the not quite Moon

And looked up at the slightly obscured stars

I felt like I had been going nowhere

But I knew that I had come far

My feet were sore and my heart heavy

But the pulling still tugged at my belly

I followed my umbilical cord

Back to the beginning of never

I wondered if I would be reborn

Or would I be pulled forever

It occurred to me then

That I was

Paused

Maybe this is what they mean by choice

There’s nothing quite like

The sounds of primal torture

The tear of flesh

The eternal blood rush

Pushing

Just a little further

Into the unknown

Nothing feels as right

As the pain of primal torture

The slightly sexual thrill

The sight of ink and blood spill

Aching

Itching

For just a little more

Of what the flesh has yet to know

The boundaries breached

The heights reached

Of Shaking

Quaking

Rushing

Buzzing

Ecstasy

The dizzy spinning feeling

Achieved with every piercing

And every splash of colour

The tribal markings

Of our time at war

And those who don’t believe

In that bitter sweet release

In the pride of our colour

In flesh fading never

In the blood let

The rush

The thrill

Then they are not of our clan

And they never will

Adore those screams of primal torture

It scared me

When I first saw him

Dishevelled and desperate

I could not console him

But then why should I?

I didn’t really know him

But I would mother his children

And I think he knows it

They were such long nights

Of strumming on the guitar

Sipping brandy with Brian

On the living room floor

And I fell so deep

That I still can’t believe

Winter’s chasing off those late summer evenings

I have felt myself fall apart

And I have bled wept back together

I have felt and I have hurt

And I have known it was not forever

So strange to think you blind

To the scars I thought so clear

Can’t take my easy smile

Just hear what you want to hear

I can’t take this anymore

My eyes are dry

My throat is sore

This time I won’t fall apart

My stitches hold when I laugh so hard

I guess you never knew me at all

You watch me in confusion

She watches me in anger

Still I smile at you

When you think that I should hate her

So strange to think you blind

In worry

Or in fear

When to me it is so clear

If she makes you so happy, who cares?

I can’t take this bullshit anymore

See my eyes are dry

My throat red raw

For you I will not fall apart

When I watch you watch me I laugh so hard

It hurts

Inside

Didn’t you take the time to know me at all?