Ode to Mr Thomas

 Who is there, left to be angry at?  I have never been good at this stage ...

Rage, Dylan whispers ... rage against.

Rage against the dying.

... For what?  I've always loved the dark.  Fog, mist, corners, enclosed spaces.  Places to hide from your manipulation - for that's what it is you know.

The odd desire to love in polygons - explain away the multi-coloured treachery, drawing lines around your sacred spaces.  At the end of the day, who do you share them with?  Those holy other thoughts?  Whom do you tune the radio of your soul towards?

Are you one of the "wild men"?  Who "learn too late"?  Thus now, aggrieved at the sounds of silence, which she (you?) asked for ... 

You longed for more, I gave more.  You beg and plead for mercy from the one you drew the fence around; then you are surprised when the shadows swallow up the boundaries.  

Winter flurries, sandals in the snow, ice crystals, sheer cliffs and fires on the frozen sand.  These places don't exist anymore.  This is the world, arms wrapped around my middle (to hold you in?  to keep you out?  to stop the haemorrhaging?).  This is how it is forged.  Fire to Fire.  We marry Earth to stop the flames then wonder at the chill of embers. 

What is anger?  Misplaced passion?  Indignation?  Impatience?  Or, simply a dance in a storm, uncontrollable, that one makes for oneself.

"Burn", he says.

Should I be angry at a memory?  Incite my wrath against a metaphor?  There is no anniversary to hold as a burden ... no vows said we may compel ourselves to keep ... This is the deep unspoken.  This is the space beyond time, a dream of things that never came to be.  I have no rage with which to rage.

But you.  You have birse ... enough to fill all of Khan's caverns.  Despair that the women you crave are at one.  Locked in the pyxis of times before - you cannot see beyond your ken.  Your rage builds, the upstart will, the boast felt in despair, resentment in the shape of Autumn leaves and March rains.  

Irreconcilable my love; do not twist and break the fingertips that extinguish.  Sometimes the tombstone tells a story with both her names.

Denial: Superscript - “The Gag Order”

 …and yet we are set to live apart from one another.

Isn’t that a form of death?

Denial.

What is that?

As if I could legitimately refuse to accept your silence or your absence.

Denial of my part in this? Denial of your choice? More likely the denial of the things I really want… Living in a city by the sea, mountains in the distance, mist covering the waters and a thousand shades of brown. Adding patches to my rucksack, travelling through distant countries, trying not to be jealous of those who visit the ancient landscapes I’ve never been to. We send troops to places I’d love to live in. Longing to run my fingers along hand-sewn embroidery on chadors, drink wine from vessels buried in clay to age, haggle over hand-carved treasures, get lost in a maze of souks, humbly place my hand on my heart having received such hospitality…

I wonder when or if my Father will lead me to a country with no map.

Returning to this dilemma. You asked.

… and I always acquiesce to your requests.  If I die in the process - well - I have always been good at the resemblance of the day to day. I wrote the footnotes on survival mode.

She walks in darkness, like the night. Dark soul. Raise a glass to the “gift of letting go”… The forced relinquishment of all the things I love on the altar of the greater good/ the capital Truth/ the hearts of others.

Deny yourself.  Crucify it.  Kill it. 

Nevermind the zombies.

SCA

How often must we be reminded of our fragility? How corrupting breakability? As Ingrid sings, "To stop the muscle that makes us confess ... it's fairly simple." 

 My heart stopped last year - three times.

 Tachycardic wrestling, a race to the pharmacist, necessitating unawareness, confusion, fear and then nothing. A sense, as it were, of an ending. 

 Sadly, as stubborn as this will is, arrhythmia is not my ticket. No answers, just symptomatic blips on the screen of my life. Wires and plugs, contrast magnetism, consultations, appointments, saltwater triage at thirty thousand feet, expert opinions yet no conclusion. 

 Is this just the season of autumnal uncoupling? The moment where I end and then I begin again? Each beat leading to, not less, but simply different, existences? 

 After all, this is not the first time that I have died... I'm good at it now. 

 These eventualities lead to existential review ... So each defibrillation, each misfire, each stop and false start takes me back to the five and seven stages of grief. This journey I seem to need to traverse on repeat.  

I am not alone in this - it is the way of the pilgrim - we all walk/limp/crawl this valley of shadow and silence. Perhaps, after all this, I was not meant to walk with you.