I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them-- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

-Sylvia Plath

If You're Not Pretty, You're Nothing, Darling.

If the starlight doesn’t dazzle your suitors,

You’ve got no suitors left to dazzle.

If the sun doesn’t shine on your slender face,

They’ll be no sunshine in your brown eyes.

If you don’t carry the grace of those before you,

Then you needn’t worry about these attentions,

If burden is too heavy, lay it down here on the floor,

If your spirit is dying of inattention, nobody cares.

Men won’t sympathise with ugly women,

You need aesthetics to deliver the human connection.

Women feel naught but pity for an ugly man,

Humorous, but far-reaching ; a joke upon himself.

You needn’t be pretty, then you needn’t be lustful,

You needn’t carry nor hopes nor dreams,

Those are meant for the camera friendly faces,

This is the only way to ignore an entire population.

It is not that it is bitter, to be treated as misfitting,

It is only a matter of preference, of subconscious choice.

How biology has made us to prefer that which we need,

However manipulated that thought; synthetic evolution.

Don’t be absurd, the case isn’t that you’re devoid of skill,

It’s just that someone else can execute it with more appeal,

Why bother with the unpleasant notion of unpleasantry,

When you can cool your eyes with beauty so innate?

If you’re not pretty, you’re nothing darling.

You’re but coal in the dirt, among diamonds & dust.

And burn as you might, bright as you could,

The diamond will only shine brighter by your light.

The Pretense of Being Who You Ought to Be.

The distance between my mind and these rhymes,
Is the distance between my eyes and my sight.
Is fades with the fading of my  dimming vision,
It burns with all the majesty of free thought.

Oceans and continents, don't plague in miles,
They plague me in latent the souls they inhabit,
They house the nations of worthy, unworthy and naught;
They carry a verisimilitude of the human kaleidoscope.

How do I live up to the standards of fantasy,
How do I be beautiful, in the way that I ought?
How do I begin to throw my passion to hearth,
And burn in the flames I need to keep me warm?

An embarrassed shuffle not be accused of pretension,
To enthrall the peers, and impress the majestic,
To prove to some diffident stranger of perseverance,
That ought not to be on the pallet of the canvas of life.

Reality does not evade me, nor I flee from it,
I only seek refuge like insomniacs seek sleep.
So keen on finding that shade that is salvation,
That the water in my body has run to drought.

To hold up to the light a shiny fragment of your soul,
To hold up to the world yourself, as transparent as glass.

Pale September

I'll wait in the pale light of september,
yearning for the day to set me free.
I'll paint the light deep into existence,
And bury my love beneath it.

I'll send her off with a kiss on the cheek,
Should my pale September pass me by.
I'll mix my calm into the waters of the lake,
And watch it spread into clear placidity.

I'll touch the cool breeze with my brow,
I'll greet the time with a gentle embrace,
In these few seconds I have the silence,
In these few minutes I have life.

Tell my pale September all is forgotten,
The ticking doesn't escalate into arias,
It simply melts into the stillness, breathing
Soft thoughts into the the living room.

I'll find love when there is room for it,
I'll touch city ground when I have shoes,
I'll see the planet piece by pretty piece,
Until I have rendered the map foreseen.

Till then pale September, keep me steady,
Keep me covered in a thin blanket of quiet.
While I sleep in the pale light that filters in,
From a world that is secretly aging with me.

Summer Skin

I wish I could dive right into your Summer Skin,
I’d never have to come up for air, or light.
Just knowing I exist in the twilight glow of your body,
Is sustenance enough to nourish me.

Battles fought with time have lain hours to waste,
The heaving of your chest is calm euphoria,
I cannot contain joy as it attempts to contain me still,
Summer afternoons were our personal mornings.

Sleep came and went while I rubbed my eyes and adjusted,
To the light that embezzled some kind of dream,
Like we were the perpetrators of some idle fantasy,
That had found its way into sentient reality.

The rain fell and the thunderstorms only brought us closer,
I diminished in size with every breath I breathed,
I coloured differently with every touch,
My body found what my mind only had sought.

It's hard not to be distracted by your skin, your grip,

Harder still to not freeze for your eyes.
Holding on to the world seemed frail, so I let it slip,
And hid in the shadow of your frame on mine.

Your shadow bends light, it even bends time.
I'm a puppet in your hands, that aches.
I'm far too fond of breaking your silence sublime,
When you claim even necessary words are unnecessary.


While the rain kept coming we lay there in the stillness waiting,
For the silence to break into some kind of song,
I waited for you tell me that we’re leaving together,
You waited to tell me you were already gone.

Now and again, I still feel your summer skin against mine,
And I lose myself in the wave of phantom affection,
Till I’m driven back to the empty bed,
Where I used to dive into your summer skin.

Endlessly.

Lovers, movers, shovers. Liquors, stickers, and smoke.
Once what beat like a drum on a roll, is now comatose.
I could fill up these lines, like wine that  fills romance,
I could tap my feet senselessly, and pretend to dance.

That wouldn't mean much now darling, would it?
Though it would be pretty hard to not make it pretty.
With the stokes of a brush that happens perchance,
A picture of a coincidence on the canvas of a fluke.

I'm alive, but I haven't been living, or so I'm told.
If one could only explain to me, what I'm missing?
Perhaps the vain lingering of thought after thought,
Could dismiss the void that breeds on the inside.

Appalled by how easy it is, to sever these bonds,
The kind that had held me close, rattled my soul.
This unkind winter has turned from a testy season,
Into the perpetual setting of an already cold mind.

I repeat, I am not plagued, I am only pensive.
I keep a toll of the trinkets I find on the street.
They're not very many and they don't relate,
But form a chain that rants on endlessly.

Endlessly.

Images.

There’s so much of a void to fill out.

There are epiphanies to be sought.

Enlightenment is to be gained;

Loves to be lost, lovers to be made.

Why does everything cry when I touch it?

There are so many shiny trinkets to soothe me.

They fill me with sparkle that is borrowed shine.

Yet I cannot lift my feet off ground;

Questions to be given, answers foretold,

Why does sister-solace elude me still?

There are images to be played in the screen of my head.

White boys with shaven heads, cracking their mother open.

An expression of confused innocence,

Rites to be performed, not felt or understood;

Why does sorrow wrinkle such a happy face?

There are so many tensed breaths to be exhaled in a year.

They do not diffuse the tension, neither the conviction of relief.

Instead I will inhale thirty different intoxicants,

That will addle my brain, but not my experiences.

Why does memory defiantly scratch itself into the heart?

 There are so many songs to put me at ease or regret.

There is literature that makes me forget if only for a while,

Until logic crashes open, both the past and future.

Everything is connected, but not complementary.

Why does resilience play so subtly in my constitution?

There are so many wretched, kind people in the city.

They are wretched for they are kind in not knowing.

Spending on morals, flaming their highs,

There is no dignity in good, and good is un-glorified.

Why does a lingering eye see more than it means to?

There is so much wisdom to grow old in, to die into.

Up until the breach, loneliness is a single companion.

It lingers on when everyone is around.

It does not let live, but will not let die.

Why does a limbo feel so cathartic?

I could chase this mist forever.