Echoes Below

My agitated state. The sadness beckons me. Depleted resources. Depleted existence. In my lifetime, a shadow mirrors me. I might've seen a new life but with a renewed vigour. A vigour that eludes me. Perhaps I could've felt young again. Towards the end game. A bombardment of thought. What was echoed has been lost in the derailment of the noise of children screaming outside the window. It was always built this way, you see. I could be deranged and forgetful but I have my view. Every fevered thought. Comes back again. To hold me responsible for things I've long forgotten. And things that you invented. I believe it's common courtesy to acquiesce as long as the other reciprocates. Lines we've rehearsed a thousand times with every other actor who has lived. What only could've been.  To have lived, to have loved. To have died in someone else's arms. To have been a cipher for another person's life. It's all dust in the ether now. We remember and we remember ...

Brief fantasies betray a forlorn hope and so does the body. Break it down into several different pieces. A dormancy that springs forth into new life if only for a short while knowing that you're not the lustful teenager you once were and she could be old enough to be your daughter. All legal but the feelings betray a certain unease. You made your bed twisting the sheets out of every proportion. You sleep 'til all hours where a brief fantasy begets the teenage lust and the quarrels that you leave behind. Practices make dreams believe. But all you can do is deceive yourself for that brief moment to tantalise another life, another careful manipulation of what if, if only and so on. Try to tell yourself age is nothing but a number but the feeling lingers of guilt and shame, especially in the landscape we've provided for ourselves. But it becomes a weapon - a double edged sword for you to fall on. Empty promises become a toxic component - and then there is your increasing impedi...

The waste becomes a way to synthesise disillusion. Wondering what scars will heal and which will not. A verifiable token of esteem. Wittered away easily when complaints are done with the advent of mercies. A killing is in the offing. But we orchestrate to demonstrate and what use are we to argue? Twisting words decide what lies we can break with underneath. The small whisperings amid the low lying noise filters. The tarantulas working their way out of perspex ovens. What are we to do but accept the living fate of lives lost underneath. The traps used to ensnare and the little cost to look at illicit photos decry the path of an idiot's errand. A poor fool who wants to retreat into invisibility. Boundaries forged and crossed. The contents left unsaid. A matter for reflection but rejection is the final sum. A horrible context but somehow unsurprising. The theatrical appeal of being good running hollow. It's all so desperate and disparate to be dispiriting. If I only survive tomorr...

  In the moment that the word was said, twist the knife in me. The fact she's not around makes it that much harder. You've moved on from me and to her dying day liked me for who I am. She went to the ends of town to get the right food that keeps me somewhat healthy. I couldn't repay her enough with my gratitude. I'll miss her. I'll miss you. What you saw as hatred was merely fury and frustration at your stubborn refusal. Goading and belittling a genuine interest in things you didn't see as a problem. You never did, the sounds of "see how good I am, see how I'm helping you" just felt like a self-knowing Mother Theresa mocking me even if it seemed genuinely good intentioned. I wish things turned out differently and my anger never showed. You'd still complain about things I never do to you and bring up old complaints again because you just want to lash out. You'd cut me to pieces and expect me to run like a big old dumb machine. But a moment o...

It seems blackly comical that I persist in loving you even after the time has long since past. You misreading situations from the past like time immemorial. You wanted to be queen, you wanted to have the same feeling that destroyed me as a teenager. Petty jealousies run rife with you. Now you've got someone who has the same petty jealousies you once had. I'm just the enemy who gets in the way. The feelings I believed in but was always too muted for your liking - too timid, no grandstanding acts of love and devotion. You pinpoint the negatives without looking at the reasons why. And if you did you'd twist them to suit your agenda. But then again, this time isn't your fault. You got ambushed when your guard was low and I would've worn you out with my medical provisions. It just hurts when I'm the one who gets in the way. My bitterness has always been a part of me. I've said we'll still be friends but I sometimes wonder if that's the right decision. The...

The morning raids my feelings. And we're left behind at the beginning. Did it ever matter that you ransacked me? That we occasionally still share a flat from time to time. I play getting by. But the loss is hitting me in ways I couldn't foresee. If you felt happy at being the one who brought me out of my shell, watch now and see me retreat into my lowly shell. I know who you see and I'm in an exercise group being the token bloke. The fascination stops there given I'm at the midway point among all else. I kept pushing and pushing but my body has given out. It's nice of you to say you feel guilty but it doesn't do much for me. I still live with the pain. There's not a whole lot from which I can gain. If I could retreat further, if I could all but disappear, maybe I could feel something again. Both of us will move out, another chapter in our lives gone. You just had to needle your way and blame past history on me. You never took account of your actions until yo...

It's weird to hear myself being talked of as the enemy. I'm the one that steals his time with you. "What did he want?" I never thought I'd see the day. I never thought I'd be talked about like a pirate that hoards the bounty. I guess it must've always been this way. Down the lines of guilt entrapment, the recognition flows into seeing what we have here. Of what was and what is now. I guess I know my place in all this. I guess you enjoy one man's paranoia and lust and another's defeat. Go ahead and play the guilt, it doesn't change the mess I'm in. Yesterday's heroes are tomorrow's problems. There's nothing here that will change our lives. Closing the chapter. I wore you out with everything I had to deal with. I wish I had your energy now. I just feel you misread me on certain levels but it's not like I helped myself with my actions. I just wish I wasn't around to know of myself as the enemy.

It's here where we part with differences. It's here where I yearn not to see all the paraphenalia that you possess. It's here where I yearn not to hear you crow about your new heros of political vantage point. I'm not enamoured with your lust in identity politics. It's here where you will enjoy someone who has the same outlook as you. The one that doesn't go on about every new war in the world.  The coded smears for those you despise, the newfound lust in evangelical preaching of hatred. Dehumanising the enemy. It just isn't right. But then I do it too with politicians and their actions I object to. So it makes the point moot. But the point still stands in your dogma. In your language. I'll never understand your evangelicism when reading things that preach to your sensibility. "Then what does that make me?" Biological "Then what does that make me?" Pathological We're all the same in the end, it's just you want to intensely foc...

Dedicated time, an absence of logic - all to say the dream is over. 

  Swimming against the tide, I dreamt of another world. Where else can I lie for a day and weep in silence as the pain ratchets up its tally. I find the cushioning decline in time over what was once a man skittering on the edge of health. I saw your dead body in the blink of an eye. Only makes me wonder what is going on in my mind. Can I lay here in silence in this room? Will the lights be too bright? Will it become my tomb? It won't do me any good to be here with all your memories that cut me up like glass. To say goodbye in the hallway. To listen to the rain drown out my thoughts. I would've done the same if I could but I don't have the confidence. Our neural pathways no longer connect.

Inelegant design, perhaps the stage will think it's mine. I wish to be rid of the physical and psychological exhaustion I put on myself. Love withers away, the pain is circumspect.  Inelegant design, what future did we pine for in our youthful days of abandon. Someone can tell me when I'm not overcome with emotion. Inelegant design, what of these presents we got each other. Do they carry much meaning outside of festive occasions? The wonder of life doesn't feel so special anymore. The dreams we had lost in our own respective conditions.  

  I am the source for your misery. The pathways of resentment slowly rising over when I lashed out. In a way I knew I was slowly being edged out of the equation. My frustrations built up and I had nowhere else to place them. But now we've made our peace. Brokered a deal which suits you best even if it pains me greatly that it came to this. I'm not the one for grand sweeping statements or sentiments. You've often criticised me for not doing things you want me to. I cannot physically make it happen and when it does, inwardly I'm given hell for it. Considerations must go both ways. The more you criticised, the more I felt I wasn't good enough. I guess you were hoping for the opposite effect. I am the source for your misery. The pain being involuntary. The more times the same bad memories brought up to shame had their desired effect. Words twisted beyond lives can mask. And all I ask is forgiveness. I live with a haunted past, things that I want to bury but come back to...