Turquoise Monster

The Winter Depths (First published on Blue Monster)

The cold freezes the air to solid form, coating the branches of the trees, starting from the smallest twig which become heavy under the white crystals. The night draws on and the day seems murky and insincere and then sometimes to have happened not at all.

The winter is a depth into which most modern people do not delve, but as the ice inches its way onto the roads and into the water pipes, even the most sheltered cannot but notice the icy pall that covers the land.

Shivering on the way to work, shivering within the home, heating insufficient and the shops running out of radiators. The darkness of white covers the ground, rendering all sterile and forlorn.

The Landscape is fetid
Pastules rise from the ground
Pulsing with sickly green
I avoid them
Skipping on stockinged feet
Stripy and saggy
Toe elongate
A large witches hat
Looms as a cathedral
On the horizon before me
Purple velvet
The pile deep and luxuriant
The tip a spire
Reaching to a sky of pink transparency
A silver staircase twists its way up
I follow it
Dress skirts flapping with each step
At the top I stand on the tip
Balanced precariously and look
To the tangerine skyline
Where six white sales glide
Above yellow sulphur waves
Each the cresents of moons
Waiting for me
I fall and fly
Peak forgotten
I fly to them
But they are transient features
Fading before I can reach them
Leaving me fatigued above the tubulance
I fall an Icarras of this strange world
I fall and the waves reach up
Cradling me
I awake to a world – far stranger
And much more disturbing.

It wondered why the others stayed so far away
Why it was always it and itself and no-one else
Sitting at right angles to all the others
Their tentacles wafting and touching and dancing
Whilst it sat alone in the cold currents
Filled with the dregs they had left from feastings
And the shit they had shed and detritus from above
It wept for it’s solitude, did the lonely anemone?
What had it done wrong? Did it look wrong?
Eventually it’s gaze of sense turned to beyond
Out of the water and wall it tethered itself too
And there was a lens, a single eye
Staring and sharing and sad, an ache of the one
Alone and small in a tank to be peered at
Behind the lens were two eyes and brine jewels
Dripped, the anemone knew the empty ache
That recognition made the ache slow and dull
And as they parted creatures from different domains
Each knew the other and that they were not the only one

language:
an incomplete
version of mind reading
leading to great innovation
communal thinking
or big blundering miss understandings
across generations and peoples

Golden wings
Tipped with adamantian blades
Swift or lingering
It maybe death
Brought upon these wings
Sad eyes and splendour lips
Seek you
Betrayer
Self lamentor
Hunter of untruth
Your blade will splatter
Metallic wings
That you called into existence
Pulled from the ethos of ego
All they want is to swim in the dark sky
But you drew them to the light
Your own burning demise
Their hands are blunt claws
And they will use your heart
To sustain their’s
Stained in pain
They are beautiful

Dark stranded waves
Rushing the shore
Pummeling the within… without
Scouring with painful abrasion
On and on
Little bits of grit
Wearing you down
A fragment of life at a time

Things to which I cling
Stuff which I need
Too many lights
In the night
At Christmas
As colours drenched the home
Because when you have no reason for hope
Hope is all you have

These things to which I cling
Too much stodge
Cheap but at a cost
I’ve paid for it so I’ll eat it
And it’ll get me through
Along with late nights of games
And shouting at each other
For monotonies blanket
Means only extremes can be felt

Such things to which I cling
Not virtues nor vice
But survival for so long
That their absence hurts and
renders a panic

Things to which I cling
Instant coffee and multi buys
Tat and clutter
A net a web of safety
snared, entrapped – enshrined
imbibed

Do not judge
What you do not know
How junk TV
And binge console play
dim the hunger
And white lightning is cheaper
than ingredients for a sandwich
And the temptation
Not to stress – to not think
To laugh too hard
And pretend you are not a worn thing
By the daily grind
Like you don’t know the fear
Of industrial kills
Or the fact they never pay
And jobs where you don’t work late
or through your lunch
Are a dream of the aspired

Things to which I cling…
One day….
It wont be me…

And then – it’s the ingrained tendency
The coping mechanisms that lingers
Leaving a stain
Echos of strain
That left scars
And knotts
In me…

What of me?

I cling.

The silhouette black, a contrast to the white
Which luminesses, reaching almost blue…
or purple…
or green.

Ripples of soft grey, shadows that a low swept sun awakes
Even in sleep it has been an eternity
And the wind bites with a thousand icy shards

Column-row
Reflective contemplation
Elimination
Numbers caged
Relax

YES – an affirmation
Splashed across the wall
Red ochre
Burnt in the heat of summer

YES!

No one was quiet sure
What the yes was to
Or who in fact was giving such agreement
Kids with scrapped knees ignored it
Playing football in the still world
That sometimes soley belongs to them