again

I keep watching the video. he’s reaching out for help from inside the building. today they’ve shared stories about him and his family; apparently they survived another massacre just last week. he was recording videos about the genocide since his displacement. in the footage he is still in his hospital bed. I watch over and over as his body is claimed by the flames again and again. there is screaming and weeping and nothing anybody can do.

I have the choice to watch or look away. at school they taught us about the man made horrors. we read about mushroom clouds and atom bombs and death camps and showers that sprayed poison on already starved bodies for burning. we learnt about the evil that massacred millions,   once justified by the masses on the basis of fear and hate. afterwards, we were taught, we looked at what had happened and swore never again. I saw again on my phone today. no doubt I’ll see it tomorrow. again is normal now. we watch or look away and nobody flinches. business as usual. I learn languages and codes that mean nothing for another day of pay and every second is tax for another cent for another weapon for another massacre my country will fund.

in the park the police remove posters for demonstrations from the street lamp. on the phone there are severed limbs and morning runs and lifeless children and new haircuts and burning schools and golden hour and politicians saying nothing. this is a nightmare and I don’t know how to want to wake up.

the planes are still flying

the bombs hit schools and hospitals. I watch them all go up in flames on my phone. there are figures inside and I can make out hands reaching out for help if I force myself to focus. the rain pours like it hasn’t in weeks. I hear the storm and see it on my window: never forced to feel a single drop against my skin. inside the house I am safe. I am never left wanting and it is a choice to care that children are burning alive while I’m paid to press keys and shut out the rest of the world. the child once believed in the dream of a fairer world. he doesn’t know what to believe in anymore.

the planes are still flying despite all the rain. I boil the kettle, return to my desk and try to do the same.

on the wires

I live in the inbetween

before and after everything

where nothing really happens

and we take down all the lights

sometimes there’s talk of movement

whispers carried on the wires

fuelling dreams for the believers

on the platform on the screen

we think of colours and tomorrow

talk of change and maybe hope

something more than respiration

or another day to work

and whilst we wait

because we wait

collecting dust until we’re grey

we count the cobwebs

til we can’t see

and there is nothing left to say

all we can do

is think and think

and so we think until we can’t

and leave the dreams for someone else

nesting in the husks

of the shadows of ourselves

we fold into empty skulls

devoid of thought

forever dull

forever safe from hopes and dreams

forever in the inbetween.

there are days devoid of energy. the body moves slowly, heavy with the tired heart it cradles. I walk to the store to keep myself awake. the lights and sounds sober me to my surrounds and I take part in the game we all play so well. there is so much for me to want and claim and I indulge. at home I make a salad because I know it is good for me and my body. I think about the choice I can make to feed myself with food that keeps me well and energised. every morning I scan images of children starving in the streets of crumbling cities. I look in the mirror and I am disgusted by the pathetic game between my body and mind in a world of millions lacking the food I don’t want to eat. poisoned thinking stalks my every choice: I sit and watch it cloud over sense and the heart it suffocates. I pray for change and fall asleep into a chance to see your face again.

I plead for possession

my brother and I leave his house for some time to be together and breathe. at the portrait gallery we’re caught off guard by the work of an artist reimagining the stolen land on which we’ve grown. past collage and paintings and plastic printed sculptures we walk through a wasteland of greed in which the skies and waters run a toxic neon green. in this world, the colonial project is a masquerade of headless birds and beauty products. the visitors use laser beams and poison to brand the land their own. the people parade the treeless plains with flowers they have stolen. nets are vacuums of exotic fish and butterflies. they give their own names to everything they see: a new language spoils the harmony curated by those that lived here first. we read the titles of the paintings. there’s mention of dreams and possession and we start to talk about what it means to really own something.

I board the bus back home and think about the fallacy of ownership in a world where everything returns to dust. the ones that stole and claimed these seas and mountains for themselves assume possession of a land that is not and never has been theirs. on my own I colonise every breath between dreams with the diseased urge to assume possession of control of who I am and where I’m going. in the face of the fact that all I will ever be and see amounts to no more sense than sandcastles, I plead for possession of what I will never understand.

last night I saw your face again. you came to see me perform but I don’t remember what. after the show and in the morning we walked down streets I walk alone to the store or the station to take me someplace else. you held my hand once but that was all. we couldn’t say what we wanted, though you knew how I felt. the morning you were leaving I had to go to work. on the train I nearly missed I cried into my screen knowing I’d never see your face again.

my brother asks me what I think about love. I tell him I lack faith in everything I used to think I knew about anything. we talk about time and investing in what should matter when nothing really lasts. I think about you and what I can do to try to forget. maybe we can choose what we love, but not what we dream. in the day I can try to control where and how I lose my time: if only I could say the same at night. on a land that isn’t mine I am possessed by dreams and everything I can’t control.

stop looking

with every breath my blood runs but never leaves: every cell contained in hidden channels of my veins. every drop is safe inside no matter how I lose my time. somewhere in a nightmare streets run red with the blood of martyrs. mothers wash the shells of children with their tears and I am watching on my phone. I wonder how much of this is enough to make us wake up and pull our heads out of the mirror. does my anger mean anything more than a projection of my guilty intoxication on the privilege that cradles me softly to sleep? 

there is static where there should be thought and feeling. I never know how much of me is the medicine I take to stop looking so close. there are cracks that the flowers cover over. I pick them from the ground and spoil every fresco with fuel and a flame.

offstage

the next train does not stop at this platform. I watch it slow and admire the silhouettes of strangers through the windows as the carriage passes. every shape I make out of the shadows is a vessel of breath and bones and veins pulsing dreams and disappointments. a blur to me is someone else’s world. through the window I am a stranger waiting for the next train. for a moment I relish the thought of life on the sidelines of someone else’s story, relieved of the reigns of attachment and feeling for anything at all.

in the mid afternoon sun on the platform I can try to read through the masks of my nameless companions. we breathe the same air and find communion in our waiting to be taken somewhere else. every face is a history of hurt and hope, some more worn than others, some better at hiding who and how they are offstage. I wonder where they’re going and if it’s where they want to be. I will never know more than the faces they wear.

there are hours filled with nothing that matters. I lose myself in the rhythm of letters and numbers and there is peace until I think of where I am and the fortune I ignore. on my phone there is footage of cities in flames and graveyards of children they killed. I close my screen and listen to the silence of a world turned away from the screaming. 

mosaics

on the phone I see apathy and everything I want to be in people I will never know. the irony crowns me diseased and I am disgusted by my reflection in the pathetic pleas for validation that stab the remains of the hope that was. without my glasses I let my eyes linger on the screen until they blur. coloured shards of light make mosaics in the dark and everything is beautiful. if only I could stay this way. to tread lightly and brush over the day, no need to cry or look closely: quick glances and sunshine forever. anger toys with every thought. I envy the believers still drunk on the illusion that we mean more than how we feel and everything happens for a reason.

the skies are grey today and the trains run late. at my desk I seek refuge from the quiet and my thoughts in the spreadsheet. the words mean nothing and this is a gift in the face of the growing space and time between dreams devoid of consequence. the waves lap at the window and I don’t want to go outside where the faces and feelings won’t fit in the cells on the screen. I think about the flood and what it took to start again.