Your breaths have gone heavy now
I lay there wondering
Why I can't understand
We have an age difference
That I know
You have gone through more
So much more
That I know
But you expect me to help
You forget I'm younger
I don't know heartbreak
All I know
Are the lies I tell myself
Just to get through the day
You make it seem
Like your problems are bigger
i would be eight people and then the difficulties vanish
only as one i contain the complications
in a warm house roofed with the rib-cage of an elephant
i pass my grey mornings re-running the reels
and the images are the same but the emphasis shifts
the actors bow gently to me and i envy them
their repeated parts, their constant presence in that world
i would be eight people each inhabiting the other's dreams
walking through corridors of glass framed pages
telling each other the final lines of letters
picking fruit in one dream and storing it in another
only as one i contain the complications
and the images are the same, their constant presence in that
world
My name?
My name?!
That's not it!
You're wrong,
That's wrong!
I'm telling you, that's really not it!
Don't you listen?
You won't listen!!
I'm telling you please,
Please just listen,
My name is Ronan
Here lies someone who we once loved dearly.
She was too kind and bubbly for us to handle
She gave light to the world and people would dim it.
They hated it,
Despised her cheeriness.
They wondered how she did it,
Perhaps it was all an act.
But as she grew older she grew colder
The people that once despised her missed her,
Said she was now too closed off and stale.
And how she answered to that was with a cold glare,
It said more than she bothered to voice.
So.. r.i.p to the old me,
'cause she was too kind and naive,
Trying to give others what was hers
And in return all she got was a broken soul and a lost mind.
Yes, I can go. I can leave right now.
An aeroplane or train ticket
for 10 or 15 pounds of flesh and bones,
including some clothes
and some necessary domestic things,
and .... goodbye.
However, I’m not gone,
as my memories and feelings
are disobedient. They never leave,
and I can’t dictate anything to them.
So, when you see me leaving
don’t even think I’m gone.
It’s not me.
It’s just a heft of myself
escaping from fighting with me.
A little perfect owl, size of a sparrow
But an owl by manner of intention
I discerned in a flash on a wee branch
As a seat in a vehicle bore me by.
It had no doubts about being an owl
I repeat, quite certain and casual.
To be what you are with no intention
Or concept of being otherwise,
With only the dimmest thoughts about that
Is something of which I won't philosophize;
There being too much made about that stuff:
So much hyperbole about small truth:
Lies shielded by poor refugees from bluff.
you are real
but this world is made up
this world is real
but you are made up
you are made up
of opposing forces
united
like a symphony orchestra
being orchestrated
by the band leader
except the band leader doesn’t really exist
only the band is real
I am not a catamaran.
I am not a peach.
It does not therefore follow
That I am out of reach.
In answer to your question
Posed so long ago,
I can definitely say Maybe,
Tentatively No.
You must be you for you to be.
I know: to be the only you
is difficult. You must repeat
the same old strengths and flaws, ensure
quirks and habits stay organized,
a regiment of personhood.
You cannot disappear from you.
When you're asleep, you're sleeping you;
your altered consciousness is altered
you, but you-never-the-less.
It could be worse. I know you can
supply examples of just how.
But still—how strange to have just one
attempt at consciousness in all
of Time, to have to spend it on
one incarnationality—
Disappeared into his shadow.
The man without a shadow.
The shadow had a person.
Don't let your shadow find another person.
Escorting our shadows we take them
where they want to go.
Folding his shadow on his arm he went.
She told me to sign the form
but the name just wouldn’t
come out. From the tip of my pen
my own name simply refused
to be written. I kept wondering
what the hell was wrong with me,
asked for more paper, tried
again and again, but the letters
wouldn’t form the correct structure.
I wrote JOHN
instead of JOSHUA.
John is my dad’s name.
My dad’s. Not mine.
She gave me new paper.
Said I still had time.
Yellow chrysanthemum, white chrysanthemum
Why, the other names for me
Are of no use.