Voices

The first part of me I’d recognised went hungry
while my bowels grew fat and soft
and legs and shoulders stiffened towards dust
as I committed fantasies, expecting different outcomes
by recycling inputs through unaltered settings…

But no matter what the physical becomes
I have embraced those siren voices in my head
and called them “me” or “mine” or “self”:
the raging storms of character – insistent, never still –
howling auguries at volumes not wholly safe for work
or much of anywhere, but which would not be denied…

Was it any wonder you were startled by their full array?
A dawn barrage (and unopposed) of solitary comments
scathing on and from the wreckage of my life
that I have not quite admitted yet, as I go on
squeezing out identity along life’s muddy cut…

the worm

As the teredo tunnels in, destroying for its life,
its warm and fertile purpose ending in itself;
so the worm of doubt lives in my ear and burrows through:
my intimate.

The worm has been fine-tuned by open source,
placed expertly as if by one who knew the weakness
to exploit, and how;  to feed its fill on friendship’s tap
to sow its seed in passing, that slithers into life
to parasite poor words that cannot be unheard, still less unsaid
and to distort the silence of dissent, so meaning is replaced by any sound;

Meanwhile outside, its hackles raised, the world turns upside down…

As doubt racks up its toll of days, its mire of debt
that cannot be repaid, becoming part of us,
its tinder never dried in drought or fire-burned to renew;
so iron anchors rust, transformed into dead-weights
our ballast shifts, the keel lies skew, the compass falsifies
and shock absorbers serve to amplify what anyone can hear:

Immunity has turned, there is no truth, no-one is true
once trust has been denied –
and we are all displaced, to undermine, to hollow out;
still self-obsessed.

the reverse

I have found a simple malady
which, when handled expertly,
will turn a system on itself,
to poison every breath, to flinch from any touch;

Ingested, even as immunity betrays me
to trace its patterns on my skin
with symbols of dismay, absent contagion –
but who could ever tell?

Breathe

In for five, out for seven: Slow down!
in for five, out for seven: slower
in for five, out for seven: deeply, empty
in for five, out for seven: empty, reflex
in for five, out for seven:
as one by one the shutters fall, the diodes dim,
conductors cool and gateways haze together;
as my fears and empathies alike relax
and consciousness lies quiet,
suspended in the moment of repair…