Shadowplay

I decide a line has been drawn, I decide I'll turn and walk away, no love lost.
In the background the appropriate bass drum of Warsaw.

But whenever I decide, whenever I put my foot down, the lines around my mouth feel like I trace them on my mother's face.

My curse might have been that she forgot.
But looking at some video's of her last months, to her sweeping was business, and forgetting was release.
In the background Piaf sings she gives rat's ass about the past.

Goodnight, mom

Been a while, hasn't it.

Things came to a close, faster than light it feels.
She started losing the way home, and now not only me saw that things had to change.

So she moved to the home, where she unraveled faster than how faster than light feels.

She was lost for words, but also lost the sharp edges. Spent hours coloring away, humming along to music. Nurses said she had a will of her own, but was a really sweet lady. With me, she kept that shadow of muttering darkness and hissing curses, but then, I was fully attuned to the people in the ceiling.

But it was true, for long periods at a time, their malignant voices would be quiet.

Sometimes I thought maybe she lost the voices.

She searched for what she lost.

She put needles in her chocolate paste poking about, jammed colored pencils in a tube of hand cream, would peek in every cup, bottle or vase, behind every curtain or door. Not a cap was safe of being unscrewed and put somewhere else, while she was searching, searching.

And then she got ill, but better.
The second time around, I was wise enough to understand the people in the ceiling acted as harbingers.

The doctors started searching, but how do you ask someone who's been losing words and meanings where it hurts.

In the end (the third time around) one runs out of options, and somebody has to make the call.

I silenced the people in the ceiling.

And from time to time my body hungers. My ears want to hear her voice. My eyes want to see her laugh out loud at some joke. My arms want to squeeze her tight in a goodbye.

And as if that neuromuscular memory isn't torture enough, I keep remembering telling her: It's okay, you can go now. We'll be all right.

All the invisible people

Humans have the capacity to get used to anything.

When we moved from a relatively quiet neighborhood to a house on a major national road, with a bus stop practically at our doorstep, light sleeper that I was, I had a lot of difficulties of getting a decent night sleep. Two years on, I started waking up every Sunday morning before sunrise, the kind of waking one does when the cat swipes something from the table during the night, the sort of waking one does when something is wrong. Turned out the bus schedule changed and the first bus on Sunday morning was abolished. Five to ten minutes after that bus would have passed, my brain jerked me awake. Danger danger!

Shit rains down every day, it becomes normal.
I read somewhere Syrian children don't even cry when there's explosions and dead people everywhere. All part of normal everyday shit.

I've come to terms with the people living in the ceiling and the walls. The ones that through invisible electric lightning beams torture my mom with a little pain in her big toe, or elbow. Like a woman in labor I breathe through it, trying to listen if the people in the ceiling or the walls aren't hiding something important. Does her big toe hurt, or is it just a spasm? Is she tired, or did she forget to eat? Maybe I should simply ask them, the people that live in the ceiling or the wall, then the circle would be complete.

She worries, she does, about what the invisible people do when she's not home and she can't keep an eye on them.

I nod, and I breathe in, breathe out.

There are ups. And sometimes, there are downs, into the pit of hell.

Only yesterday I was Alice in Wonderland.

The Imposter, invited to a meeting where none like me would ever get.
But by their own blood, sweat and tears.
Skin of their teeth.
The slaying of their firstborns in name of his Majesty of the Be-tentacled Face.

Like a secret council meeting where the destiny of the kingdom is decided.



(sigh) I'm telling this wrong.

It is the secret council meeting where the destiny of the kingdom is decided.
The kingdom which has been poisoning my soul, my dreams.
The kingdom I've protected blood and nails, at the neglect of my own health.
That stupid place which I used to love so dearly, and which has been killing me softly.

Up until recently, that is. You see, the mayors of the country, the bourgeoisie who think they rule the land, decided they had to teach me a lesson. I had to learn my place, or some commonplace drudgery those imagination impaired see as their lofty goals.

Me, the only one booking results against the wildebeests and wildermen infesting the land.
I ravaged at my finance just for those!
My health.
Everything.
Including my own love for the kingdom.

So. I went Chernobyl, tssssssssssssssssss.

Strange how people hearing those words imagine blinding flash, mushroom cloud explosion, heat wave turning everything into ash. Even you, dearest digipblip, even you saw those iconic images.
Did you not pay attention when it happened? Did you not read up on history?

Chernobyl was: no flash, no mushroom cloud, no heat wave.
Like a pit of gravitational vengeance it burned (still burns) itself into the earth.

It changed the course of evolution.
If malformed frogs don't scare you: it halted decay in the forest.
There is no Roman or Greek god who ever claimed that power: the trees died, and time stopped.

(whisper) it keeps things from dying, mommy.

Oh no, it's not so much the explosion or heat one must fear, around Chernobyl.

But Oh! Its cold dismay for time.

And, Ach! Its utter neglect of the force for light and warmth it used to be.



And oy vey, its never-ending power for destruction.

Time flexing like a whore

Too little of it, need more to look at a picture of black and white fur. Nights are desolate places in my mind, no one watching, no one purring.

And too much of it. How much longer obliging this hobby-turned-into-job-and-hating-the-hobby. I had so many dreams, had so many break throughs.

Can I go back over twelve years, when the deadline was tomorrow and I wasn't even 30? Where I'd work a full day, come home and tend the flowers and weeds, and still find energy and time to spend with my friends who now sometimes keep me awake anight with their urgent questions. Always the same questions, as it is. Where will we go? How will we end? Tell us, write it all down...

Is that you, CowWatcher?
What was the name you called me? (wind - called - crow - lift head - lonely)

Head like hole

Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Nobody gives a fuck.

It sucks

like mud covered up by a fine layer of dust and a tangle of flowers.

There you are, all  ladeedaying about in the busy busy life and then some little synaps suddenly decides to make your skin and muscles remember how it felt, the weight of him on one arm and all spread out over your lap, the very gentle swell of his breathing, the little rumble with which he'd start purring, the total abandon after a deep sigh of content. An infinite universe of memory compressed into a little black hole that pulls an alien croak from your throat.

And you stumble along through a day suddenly broken, one feet naked, boot still stuck in the mud.