'So, you've found a girl who thinks really deep
thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?'
Tori Amos
The World as I See It
The Whispering Wind
Sleepwalking:
Little Death:
Sapling
I remember
Mother
Buried Eden
Intoxication
Night
Process of Colonization
The Confessional
Emotional Chameleon
Pale Morning
Celebrity Messiah
Group Therapy
Freak Show
Birthday Song
Links
The
World as I See It
(And who gives a shit about
anyone else)
The entire world is dead
Captivated by my colloquial speech
Anguish on my face
As I surrender to that vast, blue ocean
Receiving is believing
Devoid of means to measure gain
Forward is backward
Bereft of everything but pain
Ignorance is knowledge
Mislaid, way down deep inside
Loss is discovery
When all around you nations divide
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Some nights
I whisper to the wind
That wanders through my house
For it is my only company
On long, dark winter evenings
Some nights
The wandering wind
Seems to respond
It whispers back to me
In a language I don't understand
Some nights
I wonder what message
The wind wandering through
Is trying to convey to me
Where does the answer lie?
Some nights
I wonder whether
The wind rushing through
Delights in whispering my story
When it mingles with the other three winds
Some nights
When the wind fails to visit
With half an eye on the black sky
I see it soaring with birds of prey
Then swooping down to startle cats and uproot trees
And I wonder if the wind
Is still whispering my story
To a captive audience in the sky.
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Voices in your head
Sick of Spring
Weary of Winter
And so you retreat
In to the darkness
Cold earth, tingling feet
Bare against frigid stone
A vast open sky above you
A dream and a nightmare
All at once
Mirages form before your eyes
Memories too delicate to touch
They disintegrate beneath your fingers
They are sandcastles that collapse
Or succumb to the whim of the tide
As soon as you leave the beach
You could spend eternity like this
As a phantom, untouched by life
The world is interesting enough
Deep, dark, light, bright enough
To remain in forever.
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Glorious Technicolor evaporates
And all is monochrome once again
In my world shades of grey collide
And all colour is banished
(In the dayroom
I press my cheek against
The cool window
The flowers beyond the glass
Are drained of colour too)
And I wonder
Before the medication,
Bursting through my brain and
Taking hold, like some bush fire
Did I really conjure up
Those sacred inner visions
That appeared to me
With so much clarity
All by myself?
My identity has been stripped away
Where am I now?
Are my tears contained
In some sealed vessel in my head?
Where has my inner kaleidoscope gone?
The one that whirled though my mind
The one that dazzled me
When I was an internal traveller
Through the long corridors inside me
Why am I so tightly curled?
Why am I not whirling
In the middle of the dance floor
In that pale cream castle in my head?
I no longer have access to
The coloured box
That contained my dreams
Someone has stolen that
From my inner kingdom too
I was once an angel
Who could soar
Through the sky
But no one sees that now
Instead they see a girl
In a hospital bed
With slit wrists
And junked out eyes
Forcibly caricatured
I am now a sorrowful angel
An angel of blood and dust
I have lost control
And there is a revolution
Raging in my head
The real me is gone
Trapped in a memory cloud
Deep inside my mind
Those voices that populate
My inner cities
The Youths on the streets
Once intrepid and wise,
Now unemployed, homeless,
Chanting down world leaders
They have consigned
Loving Gestures
To forgotten halls
Where my heart
Used to beat
They pump more magic potions
Into me. And the magic bullet
Roars to the centre of my soul
Where my dreams are cultivated.
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She stands in the garden
Where saplings grow,
Shooting up between paving stones
Against all odds
She turns away to face
The arid landscape of the city
A gawky teenager shuffling awkwardly
In a doorway
She bites down on her knuckles
They have seen her blood
Their eyes burn holes
Right through her
She has been exposed
A kind of primal fear emanates from her
She is wounded by the heat
Of their collective gaze
Her spirit resides
In a hot and dry wasteland
Arid and soulless amid burning sands
And parched rock
She feels the earth turn
Beneath her
She feels the sky twisting
In on itself
She watches her life dissolve
Her body is a cry for help
Bewitched by their lies
She is fragmenting
As the dust settles
On the years of her life
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I remember
My lips against her cold cheek
My hand resting on a dying face
My body, weak and trembling
As they lead me away
At night I walk upon water
At night an angelic being visits me
In the land between sleep and consciousness
She takes my hand, leads me out of my body
Through the air, across the land and into the sea
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Decades pass
And miraculously
She is still alive
By the grace of some
Benevolent God
She survives.
Ground down by the weight
of the enemy within
Year after year
They tore layers off her,
Peeling off the veneer
Revealing a face like cracked china
Ready to split in two
Ever stoical it regenerates,
Healing itself
But her eyes are sinking
Loose teeth clatter in her mouth
Time etches creases on the skin
Yet two men still fight over her
'Gentlemen, please',
The policeman cries
As they prepare
to rip one another to pieces
And she allows herself a secret smile.
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Talking to you is akin
To tiptoeing across a minefield
I leap over the cracks
In the starved and sun deprived
Fractured Earth
Your Eden lies buried
Never to be recovered
Shrouded in nostalgia.
I am fully grown now,
No longer so innocent
I have inhaled the aroma
Of apple blossom
I have bitten into the fruit
I have reached your poisonous core.
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Overdosed on red wine
In a back street hotel room
Frequented by hookers and vagrants
I drape myself across the bed
Aiming to drink myself to death
What keeps me here, I wonder
Trapped in my warped insecurities
And avoiding the ephemerality
Of the world beyond these walls,
Alien and terrifying
Intoxicated I can leap
From cloud to cloud
In an infinite sky
Content to go nowhere
Intoxicated, I am untouchable
My mind is cushioned
I am numbed
This is the only life I know
Fleeing from myself
And pursuing the oblivion
I have cast a thousand dreams
Into a dark and silent sea
My guardian angel
Falls to Earth
from burning skies
Another glass of red wine
And eternity beckons
Beyond the window
Night gathers
In my belly there is now
A kind of silken and liquid fire
The red wine is my nurse,
My companion
It holds my hand
And wipes my brow
It cools the flames
Raging in my head
It sings me a soft lullaby
As I fall asleep.
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I march through the darkness
Slipping through the shadows
I am reclaiming the night
And renouncing the day
I weave in and out
of the streetwalkers and drunks
Lurching along the pavement,
Languishing in doorways
This is my domain
I have transcended the walls
In which I was imprisoned
I have forgotten my place
I am bearing my neck to the vampire.
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I am the hunted,
Not the hunter
I am pursued
In my own country
A mythological landscape
Resided in my head
I have been invaded
By an occupying army
They march across
The surfaces of my psyche,
Sophisticated and debonair
Women fall at their feet
They offer trinkets for slaves
Glass baubles and cheap china
Beautiful but worthless
It is not a fair exchange
They bring with them
New and dangerous ideas
I turn my face away,
Refusing to succumb
They stalk the streets
the crowds part before them
As if God himself
Has demanded it.
They ply me with cigarettes
And caskets of red wine
They tempt me
With nylon stockings
I conceal myself
In some dark corner
Comforted by the thought
Of shaved heads after the war
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She enters the confessional
'Oh, father, I have sinned'
Outside the world has dimmed
A separate dimension exists
In this oak panelled box
A land where everything is forgiven
Sins obliterated, guilt banished
With a dozen half-hearted Hail Marys
She tells the priest,
Barely discernible beyond the grille
An insubstantial shadow
Yet still comforting
'Father, it has been so long -
Half a life-time
Since my last confession.'
This lapsed Catholic has returned
To be wrapped in a cloak
Of warm patriarchy
To be clasped in the hand of God
The fat controller of the universe
Enveloped in the Trinity:
God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit
And rocked to sleep.
She is fearful now
For it is time to leave
She doesn't want to live
In the world beyond the confessional
She could stay in this dark place forever
A perpetual religious apprentice
With the priest beyond the grille,
Her direct line to God
'Oh no, my dear,' the priest replies
'That is not our purpose
Our aim is to arm you
With faith and courage
And unleash you
On the outside world
And then stand back and watch
As they make a martyr of you.'
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She etches patterns on her skin
With a razor blade
She watches people pass her by
She needs to know
What is fake and what is real
She longs to rip off their masks,
To tear down their facades
Just as she is ripping open her own skin
To reveal the bones beneath.
She is an emotional chameleon
Always way off base:
too false, too hyper, too sarcastic,
too meek, too weak, too miserable
She is sick and full of blood
Kids gather round to watch her cut
'I hate myself,' she whispers
'But I hate you even more'.
She becomes the Queen of melodrama
A true artist as the watching crowd erupts
She performs in her cage
(People always said she should be locked up)
She reveals everything to them
But they do not reciprocate
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She stands
On the Parapet
Of the bridge
Staring down
At the sparkling blue
Of the water below
Her body slices
Through the stillness
Of the pale morning
At one with the air
Shimmering
And translucent
She descends
Greeting the dawn
She is ethereal
She is a ghost
Who slips through
The cracks of your consciousness
She bids you farewell
She no longer needs you
She exists now
Only in dreams
And in fragments
Of memory
And in the stories
You whisper to your children
On long, dark winter nights
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I watch you scream down from the pulpit
An anonymous speck in a vast congregation
You shake your fists at the sky
As the sun bursts from a cluster of clouds
Madmen shriek back at you.
I watch a devil being born.
One who believes he is the Messiah
God's sole ambassador on Earth
Never doubt my knowledge, you say
Never doubt my wisdom
Your tune is irresistible
You are rendered powerful
By the chanting crowd before you
They see Christ glimmering in your eyes
They hear Armageddon in your voice
They are intoxicated by you
They are bewitched and beguiled
As you depict blood and suffering
In glorious and beautiful detail
You describe every daemon they've ever envisaged
And some they haven't
They stand, they cheer and they beg for more
They are God's newly recruited army
They surround and sustains you
Some see you as a saviour
Others see you as a screaming psychopath
To your enemies you scream:
'Rot in purgatory'
You invoke the acrid odour
Of long dead heretics
And burning witches
You are captured in a camera flash
And all over the world people
Who never will meet you
Watch your flickering image
On their television screens
You are like God
Few can look upon you
Without something dying inside
Members of your congregation
Reach deep into their pockets
Purchasing immortality
I hear the crackling of notes
The clattering of coins
As they fall into the collection basket
I imagine a huge and greedy grin
Forming in your mind
I knew you when you were
A street corner Messiah
Just another obscure preacher
In a vast and lonely city
Lost in someone else's congregation
Amidst the neon lights and sky-scrapers
How high you have climbed
But I know that you will fall again.
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Energy concentrated on self destruction
Something keeps them here,
Trapped in their own twisted insecurities
They embrace all newcomers
Drawing them in, creating spaces
For them in the circle
They urge you to feel the camaraderie
That does not exist
Anywhere else on this fractured planet
Anywhere outside this group
We are the elite, they say, the chosen ones
We have a survivors tainted luck
All battered and worn like a battleship torn
Someday you will understand
But, for now, sit silently and listen
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I told her something
I've never told anyone else
I'd never divulge what I told
My new friend, hunched at a table
A Formica table, if my memory is right
She was an old woman
Her home was only a little bigger
Than the shoe of that other old woman
In that long forgotten nursery rhyme
I wanted to leave but she wouldn't let me
I rose and she grabbed my hand
Holding like a hawk would hold its prey
'What's the matter, dear. Tell me'.
So I told her, I told the old hag
With skin like a crocodile hand-bag:
'I don't love myself like I should
Other kids look at me as though
I am some sort of freak show
I go to mass, I go to confession.
No good. Perhaps I am the anti-Christ.
'Think of me as a friend', the old lady says
You're a young woman. Beautiful, vivacious
That is what you present to the world.
Smile and be happy . Don a mask.
If you cannot make it. Then you just fake it
I walked slowly back to college
Eating a cereal bar, her words in my mind
Then I took a trip to the bathroom
And returned with sour breath
And red rimmed eyes - to the classroom
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Dancing,
Performing pirouettes
Executing steps
Twirling and circling
Around the birthday girl
Even the birds seem to fly
In circles too
As the clouds descend
To pay homage to her.
Amid all this she sings,
Sonorously,
'People who despise me
Gesture lovingly
Studies in pure hypocrisy
But I am relishing it
Because today is my birthday
False friends have baked my ego
In a ceramic dish in a pre-heated oven
And then stood back to watch it rise
And rise and rise and rise.'
And willingly
She joins in the duplicity
Forgetting, just for today
That she had been born
In the aftermath of aerial bombardment
Forgetting she was her mother's mistake
Forgetting the tales she was told
Of mother giving birth alone
Her innards twisting in pain
As the bombs fell all around her.
Forgetting the days she spent
Weaving fantasies
Around a runaway father
Clutching instead
Her old teddy bear
Who now sits on a shelf
At the end of the bed
Staring at her reproachfully
As she tears wrapping paper
Off mountains of presents
Revealing gifts of gold and silver
He watches her
Marvelling at her capacity
For wilful superficiality
He observes the birthday guests
Dance around the birthday girl
Hypnotically, as she mislays
Her melancholia for a day
Forgetting that tomorrow
Will be shrouded in sorrow
As the clouds roll in again
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LINKS:
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