RETURN TO SENDER

Calling the petulant warmth of flame

With water to soothe in agitated currents

Dragging the air of justice from its depths

The depths of grounding earth

My breath upon your face, smoked

And blown softly over right hand

And uncurled fist

To return all that was given to me

No less

No more

Karma’s vacant stare is restored

To dormant state

The useless emotions leave my hands

From my heart and my mind

As passion turns to dust

As hopes are drowned

And dreams are buried in the frozen earth

Do not smile

Or shrug

Or sleep

Should the ashes float past your window

On a blizzards careless wind

Take care and think twice

It is a sad, sorrowful tale I send

A final gift.

Fire diminishes its flame as water recedes to painless tides

Air stills its breath and the earth warms once more

I feel the peace in quiet solitude

Knowing you have what you deserve.

~ Charlotte Sometimes (SRWB) 2010

Hung-over from a past early night

(somewhere)

and the deficient marrow aches

of too much nothingness

intuitively lived and lied and felt

in headaches and yawning and stiffness

Today’s fortune is read in the mud

            at the bottom of yesterdays coffee

Swallowed in bitterness (repentance for threepence?)

Tempered with the loss of sensation

            a circular doorway brings as a constant

It was like a spell for a four year old

Turning off the lights

And turning around and around

Widdershins; without an opening

Or a prayer

Laughter in darkness

How cute?

The motion of the sun

In a hidden exit

          became the story of a life yet to be fucked up

But only after that day…

I don’t think I ever

              found my way out

Be dumb Leccie

Be stupid

Be dull and easy and clockwise

You won’t frighten people away

~ Leccie 2010

Winter

i

She should be melting right now

Left only with armfuls of nothing

as the ice returns to liquid state

Twisted [sic] spelling; crumble, shatter

Frozen words; glistening

Never ignored

Too cold for the thaw

Frost still crisp and crackling

underfoot; under heart

Breathe; burned blue

Drifting, cover; vitreous vision still

Glacial movement; cold stasis

behind a favourite pair of shades

Exorcism of shivering, crystal excuses

and glacial lies; toothache

Make it quick

[sic]

[sic]

[sic]

of riddles

ii

A message

in glorious technicolour

She cried

didn't want it; go away

Don't look at me

Don't talk to me

Don't ask me

Don't love me

Stay the fuck away from me

The roller coaster looped

futility became normal

She's walking past the field

to a table she knows will hurt soon enough

a meeting; putting her hand on the hot stove again

except this one is cold

frozen enough to burn

the hot/cold pain is the same

Drunken misdeeds

Hedonistic lies

Trying to find a level that wasn't so high

or low

or cold

or hot

warm; slightly underneath the middle

She tried to love him

He didn't love himself

Failure

She throws it out

He slams the door

iii

She builds the wall again

with the love in her soul

If she didnt care

Would she cement the bricks 

so many times over?

She is desperate not to let anything through

ever; She cannot care again

Read: Lilith Panics

Read: Lilith is now an Island

DON'T read: "You and ya island need to float this way a bit"

The iceberg will melt and stop drifting

And warm sand will appear beneath her

punctuated with hard fossil and solid granite

that no one will ever penetrate again

iv

This is the last time she will cry; the last time she will think 

The last time that she will ever admire Winter's Frost in that way

She may embrace it again; but the tears are frozen forever

SRWB 2010

DREAM #68

The answer -  in glorious, manic Technicolor now resides in her head. Sold, bargained, pleaded; possessions for green rain. He sold her car. 

A white dress; why did he put her in that? A fucking kaftan? A mounded concept of what he needed, still pleaded. And the seasoning always made a meeting more appealing. What will she bring?

Fake friends; wise? They think so with a passing comment and a cat call. A nickname, a character, a jape and a phony. 

A lock comes away in her hands; rotten? It just slid right out with the key still attached and unable to turn. Oh! It does that all the time, apparently. 

Right.  Just fix it back on; to the scalp of ghosts. The ghosts of a past lived by someone who really doesn't want to leave them behind. Neurosurgery on dark street corners. I ask you?!

He is exactly who she thought he might be before he tried to change her view. I guess that is why he was so quiet - Being someone else all that time? It’s not easy to speak in another’s name and not give yourself away. 

That first message that made her panic and think 'Oh Goddess, not again, pleeeease!'

She got over him while he was still trying to make up his mind; whilst she slept; whilst he smoked and indulged his self-obsession and unworthiness.  

He wants to be alone and to that end, she knows she is not the right person for him; nor is he worthy of her love.  

She wishes that he would see deeper than he does. She wishes that he could see the person that she sees through clarified eyes. She doesn’t think he ever will; perpetuating the need for actions that alienate him from an enlightened world. 

He says enlightenment is not being attached to anything; she says it is a letting go and experiencing what they have right now. 

He uses it to alienate; she uses it to battle the cynicism of past years. 

He knew she existed and she knows he exists. 

She’ll find him again; but he will be entirely different on the eye. 

She walks away, a piece of her heart wrapped firmly around that misinformed lock, knowing that should he ever choose to find out who she really is – she will be waiting.

SRWB 2010

Silence

The imagined are unimaginable

The thought streams harsh and fear is cold

To love; to care; to focus; to want

yet be separate - be closed

for the greater good?

Recoil from pain - still open

Silent and unwanting - *door slam*

Silence ...

Silence ...

Silence ...

This silence is louder than I have ever known

and I cannot block it from my ears

Nor cease to wonder

Which of my sins was so awful

that it created this ...?

srwb 2010

I NEVER ASKED

I never asked…

I’m back in my seat

Watching from distant luna-tic shores

If you ask for my location

It will be unbelievable at best

There are so many shades of blue

I cannot decipher one from another

Contact is eaten - in detriment or release?

The situation has come around

With shocking unexpectedness

That I should miss you

And that is much worse

Than the stressful boundaries

We created in the sand

I never asked …

I’m sitting cross-legged

As the demons battle upon midnight edges

If you ask why I’m leaving

It will be understandable at most

You placed me here; amongst electric

Amongst chaos, within cyan blindness

Inside Azure - muddied to Prussian hues

A coffee cup rests against my cheek

As the noise of the air around me

Becomes too obvious to my ears

I have abandoned the memories

Of prismatic reflection

in asphyxiated limbo

Resist restraint and my rattling position

Precarious - a calm surface

And somewhere inside

I am quite distressed

Which is unbearable

A non-penetrable waste

“I’m lyin … I am afraid”

My lies are shown in truth

unrealised and denied

I didn't know

Never thought to ask

I woke from my false, insipid dream

and realised my human-ness

I'mhurtsorry

I never asked

I never asked

I never asked

Will showing distress reveal my weakness?

Will you hate me for cracking

in uncommon situations?

What is this? Really?

No control group exists

to appease your mind

Just a wash of surgical sapphire

Released in love, of course

I never even asked

Maybe stupid questions

should remain unspoken (asked?)

Ego and [alter] are merged now

I never asked

I should ask

Do I need to let go?

*I've let go

~ Leccie 2010

SRWB 2010

Nothingness and Arithmetic

For a moment, it is quiet. One of those moments that are few and far between but when they arrive it leaves her wondering what she should do with the time. She is leaning against her apartment door, breathing deeply and slowly. All that noise is overwhelming and she doesn't realise just how much until it stops.

"I'm not well" she thinks. The pounding of her heart and the long moments it takes to steady her breathing bring a fear into her soul. A fear that comes with that point in time when one realises they are not, in fact, invincible. She is sitting inside her own skull, viewing her surroundings and thoughts through her eye sockets. That is what has brought the quiet. The retreat inside herself. A place where the stillness and silence is heavy and loaded with conflict and despair. So much so, it brings stalemate and numbness.

She can physically out-run the strongest, fastest athlete. She can climb mountains, jump from the highest buildings and destroy anything in her path. But her mind cannot cope with people's conversations... the noise... the effort that goes into listening and wondering and the exhausting process of formulating replies. It is impossible to not become utterly drained listening to others when there is already a constant conversation going on inside her own mind.

Life has become a series of rooms with a different song playing in each and she can no longer pick out the familiar melodies.From an outsiders perspective there are no cracks in the woodwork. There is nothing to suggest that the foundations are crumbling. But a battle rages inside... a battle with a history of years that has recently become a silent struggle. Swords are locked in every direction and she can no longer make a move or a decision as she now does not know what she feels or which way to turn.

There is hate in there somewhere, and love and anguish. Resentment boils the pot steadily underneath. Is it the calm before the maelstrom rages once more? Or is it defeat? She cannot see that there has been a victory at all ... although she always thought that winning would bring a deadening of sound just like this one.

The moment becomes an hour, she cannot return to normality. Remaining inside her own head is the only option she now has. There are no controls, she can only watch as the details of the corridor in front of her become burned into her memories and she can no longer remember anything else. Layers, that's all she can see... like cardboard cutouts and pop up books... her world becomes a series of 2D images one behind the other. Her mind has taken control and she stands helpless against its will to shut down.

Counting the flaws in the thick, uneven gloss-paint on the door frame becomes an obsession, until she has enough numbers to start adding, subtracting and dividing. Carrying over hundreds, tens and units in her burnt-out brain becomes a need like no other. She loses her way and has to start over again and again. Retreating further into herself, she becomes a calculator of pointless details as her life slowly disappears from view.

Life becomes nothingness and arithmetic.

SRWB 2008

Duvet

A church roof leaks long awaited raindrops onto the lecturn

slow rot and which chapter next

make a sensation; feel something

pages float in the ether - not lost, just bored

keepers design blackout shutters to keep out anti-life

and banish a love that uses a ration-issued cloak to keep itself warm

it dies: over and over again

Stifling by its own intention/attention and that of its decaying environment

like Virginia's persistant cough and the planning involved in her untimely demise

Incessant; continuous in reanimation; necromancing the psyche

making paper stars to replace the shining death of those already lost

They hang on plastic leaves, with pin-point precision 

and logic; it can only arrive at a reapers door

Philandering with mean spirits and half-hearts brings new meaning

to words long forgotten; the gossips lean eagerly towards open doors

Catching a whisper of sometimes

of this downfall

To feel loved is essential; the largest part to fill my empty plate

Anything falling short is terminal

Breathing ether through synthetic fibres both agitates and calms fetid hearts

The hot, soapy water in the bucket starts to wash away the bloodied, cranial trophies

impaled, callously, along the white picket fence

I'm still alive

~ srwb 2010

Put down your tools in disgust

and pick up your soul again

Who you are today is quite enough

                                                        It's more

Consent always carries the hidden dangers

that's what we are signing for?

Twisted scales of measured lives gone by

                (slither from depths of a reticulated womb once more)

They're talking at us in percentages and probability

but it's just lip movements

and the sound of legal pressure 

whistling through rusted pipes

Strands of hair catch nostalgic leaves

and merge into the long flow; whispers

What's my name? It most certainly isn't Jane

and it ain't "Ho" but I might have wings on your death-bed

(it's true)

A mere second forward in time does not exist

only hangs in your diary - taunting, entangled

and wishing for the peaceful answers

that reading the question again may bring

I can anaesthetise numb arteries

it burns for just 0.7 seconds before darkness

and stops you counting backwards

(hopelessly) from 10

This old one is in tatters with plastic knots

wrapped around a stolen cart

The something and nothings of survival

occupy a rushed space, with a furrowed brow

No worries

Watch the road with eyes shut tight

There's a significant difference

between the consistency of wrinkle cream

and the shit that keeps you awake

Bargaining for an extra hour in bed is futile

It lasts a few non-existent seconds really

Illusory free time, wasted in an unconsciousness

that has the same pouring time as treacle

Sleep now

We'll make more syrup for others to wade through

and lie in un-owned beds; writing stories for over thinkers

Choose a direction; grab my hair and pull hard

Analyse nothing - fake/take it all …

IN 

Give nothing away

and occasionally change the sheets

~ Samantha Rae 2010

"You think when you wake up in the mornin’ yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin’ else." 

— Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)

srwb 2010

BOILING WINE

I exist/exit/loop in chaos, where nothing really gets done. Decisions and risks and trying are all that are left to be afraid of. Studying aeroplanes with flip-top heads brings no satisfaction to my need to fly away; I’ll never free-fall the way I used to. If equal forces oppose upon a narrow base, my need for shades in the dark will become green and clear as day (although squinting still). No grey resides here anymore. Monochrome stripes mark the walls in alternate two second flashes of wrong choices and the need to change everything I did today, tomorrow. Crawling through the surface area of such an abstract Hell will never add any weight to the other side. 

In a maelstroms eye nothing can change - Trigger - Click - Stasis: It’s the same old story with a different view. 

Poaching herbal tinctures and a damaged release enable me to crush pomegranates and fermented oranges for wine’s intent. I sneer as larvae-infested juice spills amidst chanted, half-assed blessings; infused and strengthened by default and surprise. A recipe for disaster is on the menu tonight; new, improved and nasty tasting like medicine taken with extra seasoning under themoon. 

Seasons balance don’t they? At this time of year, the scales must stop their incessant tipping to one side or the other and rest upon my aforementioned point in perfect precision. A corrugated file containing life’s inability to be organised and smooth  - the self-tensioner is constantly a hopeful problem solver, to pick up the slack. 

How am I supposed to know that? I make mistakes because I am not a keeper of all knowledge, right? I know my shit and they know theirs (apparently) - picking the seeds out to start a new grow is fucking tedious - I’ve done it constantly for 39 years and I’m always in trouble. I waste the time marvelling at people wasting time mostly - say your two penneth and then go back to the TV screen. Paying for hypnotism? We do it everyday unwillingly - making children walk through dark buildings after office hours fucks up their routine and makes them un-talkative. Try again next week doesn’t cut it I’m afraid - they’re not cash bundles to be locked up overnight are they?

Cash bundles = patients in neat beds along the wall. The chalk mark boundaries surrounding their disease-ridden predicaments are deepened unhealthily by the hour. Giving prescriptions in anxiously precise quantities does not lessen nor darken the lethal, penultimate dose. Death is part of the stock take, the relieved sigh of one less to pay for resounds through budget-frantic restaurants and the freshly cut flowers on waiting room tables. 

So, we are back to aeroplanes; the in-flight drink being pomegranate wine. The departure lounge is filled with silent crowds on a one way ticket to the ultimate freedom. The witching hour approaches as the gate numbers are invoked from blown speakers a hundred years old. And nothing brings on apprehension like an intravenous infusion of anti-anxiety medication.

srwb 2010

FOR FROSTY'S BLUE SHADES

Twelve men are smiling at me below the hang mans noose 

Disaster will strike when they are most relaxed - I might laugh or I might cry

If no time passes between entrance and exit wounds? - they will continue to breathe

Arrogance - I've seen invincible and shameless (in whores)

and it's not ingrained in your blood (or your bones) - but I am covered in it, by others, incessantly

Immortal souls have no knowledge of such things - I am educated and I think of other things

Dare to suppose that you are very much alive and you'll be dead in a snap

Formica shelves stocked with "shouldn'ts" do not always sigh gratefully

when relieved of their weight - cardio for red marrow is terrifying - scared is something to be shared

A lookalike - who? Familiarity perhaps or just the same old deja vous

If I have been here before, it is merely a snap shot of old memories

contained within the bricks and mortar that hold the lens - but this is a clearer view

If riding through Borderlands might take me back as an informant

Recycled people would see what I see right now; evidence in plastic tag bags

Framed as photographs from broadsheets at war - politicians lips move to convince you only of their lies

Money - it's sick and in ill health and brands all those it touched with fuck all

I've seen you all fawn and giggle for the want of an ultimate freebie

and disappear when it's no longer on the to-do-list for freeloading bastards

I meet people sometimes that shine from within

the dollar signs are absent from their eyes

and greed does not exist between the convolutions of their brain

I meet you

I love that - really love it

and I'd rather be home alone thinking about a true heart

than sitting with past enemies and the endless clickety clack

of fucked up values

These words are not thought

but felt, 

poured out unedited in warmth

Fuck cars, fuck houses, fuck bills

Fuck success, fuck greed, fuck stamping on some poor bastards head on the way up

Fuck holidays, fuck boats, fuck villas and fuck all those fucking boring occasions

Fuck expectation, fuck bankers/wankers, fuck presidents and prime ministers

fuck the pope, fuck religion, fuck everything they NEED you to be

fuck everything that tries to fuck with your soul

and FUCK pride

Fuck staring into space for 5 days a week for someone else's benefit

Fuck risking your life for some other bastards plentiful pocket

Fuck social expectations, fuck "I told you so's"

Fuck caviar, fuck salmon, fuck champagne

Fuck expensive shit that is cheap shit and breaks

Fuck the way it's all supposed to happen and live it your way

Fuck manipulation, fuck gambling your last quid on solutions that come from salesmen

Fuck believing any of it matters

Fuck thinking you're shit because the world has values that are fucked up

Fuck the measuring stick - it no longer applies

Your soul is beautiful 

fuck the rest

it doesnt exist... anymore

I love you

and I want you... for you

unexpectedly

but that's how it is.

srwb 2010