Empathy

I washed three times but still:
I smell the vile breath, and still
I see the sunken bloodshot eyes
a pain too deep and miserable to scream
from its open grave, vestige of human lies.

Tomorrow your vacant eyes will not remember this face
yet the fetid smell will not ever leave my head.
Again and again it plays,
the blurry vision of a heat induced hallucination
sneaking up, once again, to threaten my sanity.

I thought it was a child,
an innocent, ill-fated child on a bike,
perhaps still burning, perhaps still alive.
Yet all I could find was the shell of a human life
bruised by a world which is infinitely unkind.

As you blinked at me and slurred your dissent
I disentangled your legs from the wheels
tugged you out of your certain crematorium
dead weight to weak arms and shaky knees,
dead weight to all our cushioned lives.

My abandoned car blinked furiously
ignored by the lives that unblinkingly drove by
No longer human, no longer of use,

illegal smelly immigrant

I wretched violently on the way home
the smell of your skin on my clothes and hands
the unsettling disgust in humanity
steeped into my disillusioned plans.
Only one man stopped:

‘anche io sono straniero ma…’

His conscience dirtied by judgement over judgement
your rotten breath etched deep into his identity
an anchor of blame which has nowhere tangible to go
defensive and defenceless to this worldwide generalisation.
Anche io sono straniero ma.

Did I really save your life, did I choose to be this way?
To follow the trail in the grass
where the cheap boxed wine pulls drunkards off course.
To acted upon automation, like the Belding’s ground squirrel,
putting itself in danger in the name of evolution.

You asked god to bless me but did I really do you a kindness?
Or should I have let the heat put you to sleep, cease your pain?
Head nuzzled in the prickly grass, feet tangled in your rusty bike
barbed wire inches from your eye
invisible to the road, invisible to the world.

And as xenophobia prevails, as hatred and fear win the UK
and all these cars speed away, I feel lonely and wired incorrectly.

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Featured: Pink Man / Leviathan (Blu), to be found on  Oberbaum Brücke / Falckensteinstraße ( U Kottbusser Tor stop).

Nap Time

Finally, it is nap time and I wake up with my nose smashed into metal. At least the bodies aren’t here this time. Oh, it is happening again. Something weird is growing in here somewhere and I can feel it trying to scratch its way out. I’m not quite sure what will happen when it does, or if there’s anything I can or should be doing to stop it. I’m on autopilot again. This black tar-like feeling is spreading in me and I am constantly on edge, fear chewing away at me. I am so fucked. Everything is perfect right now and I’m paralysed by fear: I am slowly being forced to walk blindfolded off the plank and who knows what lurks beneath. Will she be there to steer the wheel this time? She know the rocky planes off the paths better than I do. Or will I be left powerless and lonely to keep myself awake while this dull sleep washes over me? My lips and fingers are so dry, shrivelled to perfection by sleepless nights. I feel slightly sick all the time and the pain behind my eyes pushes the lids shut. But I cannot sleep now, oh no. I cannot sleep ever, not with this fucking HD screen stuck on channel suffering 24/7. I have grown morbid again: guts and violence seem to temporarily lift me out off the torpor. Disgust is the most awake I’ve felt recently. Irreverence is my comfort blanket.

SHOCK

Sudden, sudden loss of control.
Your invisible blood sticks to my fingers,
The air that left you,
To my chest like alien tentacles.
Grey metal to join the blue and black,
Already nuzzled in the fields.
Who was here before me?

My pill-induced nightmare is shattered by your silent scream.

Sudden, sudden loss of control.
My biggest fear just rolled all over me:
From a distance I observed,
The war of paranoia and sedation –
The human-made virus
Spreading through the world.
Whose side am I on?

Grey streaked kind woman, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.

Sudden, sudden loss of control.
I cling desperately to the only scrapes you left me:
It works, but only just.
And only just always fills you
With horrors and questions and blame.
Only just pulls me out of Switzerland,
and right back into the rubble.

I’m at war.

 

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Featured Image: ‘The Art of Paranoia’ by Peter Schwartz. Check him out here:

http://www.artmajeur.com/en/artist/peterschwartz/portfolio

INCHES

Inches.
Inches of panic, life
and death.
Unclaimed disturbances.
We walk
down the same road
but you stopped
to tie your shoelace.
You didn’t see it coming.
And now:
our universes spin and spin
in webs of incomprehensions
as we try
to understand
what cannot be touched
by the other.
I’ve slithered around death –
maybe you haven’t been as lucky.
or maybe I’m the unlucky one
the haunted one.
I can feel them following me around:
GUILT FEAR POSSIBILITY.
An omen of what could happen,
a shadow of what never did.
A parallel outcome,
Pain beyond all I could imagine:
LOSS DISTRACTION BLAME
I killed  the old lady.
I can feel the crinkly skin
of her neck in my palms.
Impotence disguised as power
HATRED.
I killed you, I killed you
and you die every night
I was laughing
and I wasn’t quick enough.
I was happy
and I wasn’t quick enough.
And now cars are demons
Sirens deafen me
and lights blind me.
And people are evil
They kick dogs and live off arrogance
And I
live off bloodlust and compassion
I live off my own confusion.

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Featured image from CRASH by  J.G. Ballard. Panther Books 1975. Cover Art by Chris Foss.

Choke.

I can smell the lethargy in the air as the rain comes down.
Who told you you could write all over my skin?

Territorial disputes.

Casually manhandling death and the rain
don’t stop, the rain           don’t stop.
Biting breasts under neon colours.
Stuffing your face and drowning in the barrel-
Drowning in the rain of your pain.

Contempt for conformity. Body builders of human agony.
The vivid dreams stopped months ago.
Flashes of blood running down my neck.

This winding road is damned and this skin is too tight.
Grinning mouths with men hanging at the corners.
Unsteady flooring and gums aching.

I’m heady from the drinks, the want and the sweat.
This tube smells of metal, blood and piss.
There’s a nightmare pulsing in between my legs.
Laughing hyenas pull at my clothes.           I give in.

Vaccinate me for control.

Chapped lips in the cold. Stomach acid scratches at my soul.
Flashing streetlights, cars, dancing on my window.
Magnetic network of obligations and purpose.

Buzzing in the world and screeching in my ears.
Monotone high pitched frequencies and I’m going mad, I’m going       mad.

The itch, the itch the pulse           in the eye,

the everlasting night, the bite,

the blood.

I’m a mess of filaments,

my nerves are barbwire.

Your fingers feel like bombs.

Psychosis, migraines, want.           A hollowed out gut.

Out of body,

overlooking this city.

You stand next to me, naked and shivering.
My cigarette shakes at the lips.

It falls and I          let          myself                               fall.

Post # 5 Ghost in Raval

It was scabby
Ugly and terrified
With skin like red velvet.
It crawled, hung, stuck to the floor
the paws red and abused.

The phantom walked past quietly
calm, distant, confused…
It was too heavy
And he held it
He grabbed it

By the paws, the scabby paws
By it’s weakness.
Not a sound did it utter,
Not a wimper:
A silent submission.

And I don’t know what won,
Which remote song of humanity sung
Of emptiness more ghastly than fear,
Hanging limply and calmly,
Like a shrivelled christmas turkey.