When the sun sets on the third day

If we could trace a thought from brain to mouth,

I wonder what form it would take?

Are the thoughts that get stuck in your throat

giant corks,

bottling your voice

until so much pressure builds up

it pops off and

everything comes gushing out at once?

What if they’re shaped like rare jewels

and are followed by a thief who disconnects the wires so your voice isn’t just held back,

but lost altogether?

Do you build up more walls,

or travel up the staircase

to reconnect the circuit

as many times as it takes?

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Dried paint

A heart beat encased,

protective snow-globe bubble.

Creative lock-down.

 

Crisp Pages

I open my journal, touch

the fibre rich pages with my pen      and pause.

How do I word the thoughts

in    my   head?

L e t t e r s  skip around, a merry jig

and I’m struck by how many writings

have come before this,

before me.

Surely those hands   did not falter   so?

Or perhaps they did,

and persevered anyway.

Anxiety

The paces quicken; Lori chatter

down the phone as time expands and collapses

in a moment of sirens and panic and onlookers who don’t know how to react.

Of course, it’s all in your head

as you raise your hands in surrender

to that great barrier:

the front door, the bus, the road, the airport.

Rubbing shoulders, no air, no space,

condensed further than canned milk

and becoming even more jelly-like,

melting against the heat and fear

until you

 

scream.

 

And then they look at you.

Crazy.

And walk away.

 

Lip Locked

Considering all the words I have in my head, all the thoughts, opinions, the attitudes that make me me, why, when I have chance to open my mouth, does the flow of my mind run dry?

Why can’t I be the one to argue a point and deliver a message succinctly? Why do I stutter and stare, fighting against my very self just to say something simple, or think in a straightforward way, before my answers stumble, scattered, from my lips?

Why? Why? Why do I need to justify myself to myself? Justify the way that I am? Why does it matter if I can’t verbalise my thoughts, when I can with paper and pen?

The Rubbish Sack

When you open the rubbish sack, what do you expect to see? The empty packets of last night’s tasteless dinner? A card from someone you once knew so well it was like having a twin? That unopened box of over-fragrant toiletries your cousin of a cousin of a cousin gifted you three Christmases ago?

Why are you looking in there anyway? In that black hole of discarded things? You’re searching for a key? Oh, what kind of key? …You don’t know? Then what good will it do even if you find one?

Don’t you try to drown me out with that bag of sprouting spuds.

Hey. Hey! HEY!