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I
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With consciousness comes mental ringing
A dial up modem of whirring cogs, live wires
Rendering the recurring image of bald-worn routes
Scrambled pathways- inner trudge of daily burdens
Intimidating slopes of grinding gradient
Coiling upwards around themselves clutching
At diseased skies which quiver at their weight.
Here, the rocky stitch rubbles among nettles, thistles, skin snatchers.
Snagged already, I have little energy to breathe.
Leeched of life force- how should I begin?
Happy bottle, my solitary companion
Remove the glare from dagger thoughts
Dull their blades.
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These are my days.
Locked inside a brain cell.
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This voice I hear is not my own
Synapses whisper against me
Conspire against me, plotting in my skull.
They dictate notes in my tone,
Which they disguise as invitations
Sealed with my forged stamp
I recognise my voice,
Familiar but full of foreign phrase.
After little deliberation
My action against the coup:
Drown the deserters
Kill
them all.
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These are my days.
Locked inside a brain cell.
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Family and friends: blinding lights
To a thing which can’t help but take up too much space.
I’m sorry for it all, sorry for it all
I should have been a counterfeit bill
Worth nothing before or after inking
I wish I could dissolve from memory
So I could happily disappear.
A briefcase full of false notes, I sink.
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These are my days.
Locked inside a brain cell.
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I listen to the circling of my thinking,
Buzzards watching a fallen fawn,
I hide in my skull cave
Because no one else can see it.
No one else can feel.
Self medication
Drinking, drinking, drinking.
I am my only company.
A grounded child watching the summer pass the windows.
Untouched by sunlight.
Laughter distant as rain.
Fun and happiness are identical twins, poles apart
A brain can be a universe or a black hole.
Mine is a galaxy of exercises, pills, therapists
Spirals in an endless swirl.
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These are my days.
Why… I don’t know.
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II
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It doesn’t start how you might think
It’s minute and you watch your thoughts wander down
Never ventured alley ways.
You find yourself saying “Sure
That’s a perfectly reasonable thought…
But I wouldn’t usually think it”
And so it begins
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And is the light today particularly dazzling?
Such is the almost imperceptible sparkle of the fruit bowl
The table top, the cushions
You explore a thought for a long time
And realise how fickle your attention span is
Then you follow your mind up into the clouds
And out and out and out
And so it begins
Twin planets, shy to the resting place of stars,
Whose brightness, obstructed, reveals dim jewels which dutifully adorn in orbit, in joyful dance, in
delicate and dervish formations.
Element rich Petri dishes, carefree of the future,
Simply because they exist.
We look and they tell us little.
What can they answer for?
As much in wonder of themselves as we of them, as we of ourselves, as we of all.
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This is how the dead dream: in patterns old as fossilised light
In the shapes light saw as it split from matter
Everything equal, except the weight of significance.
Everything
The soil in which lime trees grow
The molecules which make the scent
Of straw, lichen, musk and mango
The stone of buildings and the fabric
Of a tube seat.
Atoms and planets equal
Knowing only their equal worth
Equal to, exactly and exactly the opposite of nothing, which is what we know till we know
everything
One lab slide home to millions
One giant home to gas particles
Two and one the same
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And then I’m full of unlearned laughter- it is all so simple.
With no more images of myself it is impossible to stifle
The laughter at the back of a classroom.
The laughter of a caveman.
The laughter of a spring emerging into sun rays, playfully basking, pirouetting over riverbed,
leaping towards what it is eternally part ofTowards
its life in the death of the seas.
And it trickles and I’m an ocean of laughter
The waves ripple into the universe, ripple past Pluto, gracing and penetrating Kepler’s surface,
warming all space
And I have every mothers love, those living or dead or to be
I am loved by everything
The birds call my name
The planets turn towards me in affection
And then all is silent in order to communicate
For the truth of the world is love
And it does not have a name.
Words refract its meaning.
It cannot be uttered without distortion.
There are only two ways to live your life:
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Everything one.
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III
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How is any of this possible?
Why is it necessary?
We’ve come too far…
A billion lights at night when we should be sleeping
Advertisement fantasies when we should be dreaming
Medicines prolonging lives when we should be dying
Intoxicants available on every corner when we should be breathing
Psychological disease because we never feel good enough
Building, building, building
So much light we forget we have shadows.
Propulsion
Progress
Faster.
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Follow me through these unfathomable doors
Nimble between the pendulum
We both know parts of the path
Our lights effective on different shadows
Your spotlight accustomed to terrain
Which is foreign and impenetrable to mine
Please illuminate the hills of thesis
So I might guide you down the snags of antithesis
Together we shall reach the rich lands of synthesis
Illusive as Atlantis, a lost city we once knew.
Put the scientists and philosophers into government
Void all currencies
Grade newspapers as class A, B or C relative to harmfulness
Enforce conscription for aid in other countries
Erase memories of religionIf
faith is found independently, it’s yours to keep
Encourage mobile and free thinking communities
Support the sensitive- they’re susceptible to addiction
Listen to what is true and act upon it
Help us help one another
Let us help one another
5000 years and we don’t know how.
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One exists for other people.
Imagine
Imagine the possibilities.
Seki Lynch
Illustration Nick Victor
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