What now?

I can feel the scratches unravelling something of saddening depth, as I try to claw my way out of things I have exits for. What am I doing? I’m being loud, so you can listen, I’m being silent, and so you can taste the outlines of fine print when you search for prayers, and answers here without repetitive interruptions.

I’ve pressed my chest against the hallway, and there are the blaring sounds bouncing off the walls, straight into my ears, and it seems to hurt. They’re only and always echoes. I start to fiend for the source, I push my shoulders towards the wall and my abdomen forward, I raise myself and walk freely towards the door. I walk free. As if there is no magnet in my mind that’s attracting the metallic stiffness of fucked-up daydreams, which have been washing in to make a brain beach, which I can’t touch or reach, and don’t have the courage to explore or imagine. But in the end the source, a goddamn thought, seems pointless, and dishonest, so I settle down on the floor, I lean into the air and bow my forehead to the ground, I urge my blood to recede off my fingers, to make them numb as I cradle my nostrils, and fiddle with my shoelaces. The receding blood rushes intimately through my body, there’s a focus region, its large, and it hits me from angles, that I’m too attached to envision and I……..

“I pray to catch you whispering, I pray you catch me listening”

It’s a first-class, second-hand word to live by. And I do get high off the sound, and I mingle tears and soda, and I combine some informational spit into the medley as I began to stomach it. Sometimes I think I’m an addict of my prison, maybe because I built it, and my fascination towards its design is my self-absorption. It’s strange what I’m doing right now.

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Watt

It's all a matter of rust and shine, to serve a distinction between to have and to have not.

64 thoughts on “What now?”

  3. You are a conundrum, an enigma. I am always fascinated and intrigued. One of the rare people, who have no box. Where do I put you in this world of allocation, do I need to? 😉

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    1. I hope there is a place for me! 😹
      It means a lot that I could fascinate you, and to call me rare is extremely kind of you. I’m very grateful to you for reading this. 🙂

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      2. Thank you so much!! I would love to write a book, Quite attracted to the prospect of expanding my ideas. And you are experienced, so your enthusiasm is a testament to its rewarding virtue.

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      3. Go for it Watt. Set out some guidelines for ideas first. Build your story around a few characters. You have enough quality to do it!

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  6. If this is not a personification of ‘celluloid trances’, I don’t know what is. I love it. It has an off-kilter, psychedelic or dream-like feel. The bass like a dull echo in my ears, myself in a hallway, immersing myself in sound and feeling, allowing it to take me wherever. Wanting it to. Love your concluding lines, about the prison, and the ones about first class and second hand words.

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    1. I love that you attached your own imagination to these words, and wanted to be immersed in it. That is just the greatest praise. I think there might be some moments that encourage flinching, but bad and good, right?

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    2. Distilled wisdom is in the last few lines in which the poet says that sometimes he thinks he is addicted to the prison in which he lives, which he designed and built himself and which fascinates him.

      That is for all of us. Flinch time: with sadness and with the tears part of the tears-and-soda drink.

      Watt is used to my carrying on about this and may roll his eyes: but is it, or isn’t it one of the purposes we can give our lives to break out of that prison, permanently. After we have recognized how we have built its bars, turrets, crenellations and fortresses.

      It is a vast and glorious world. Not enough time in my life to get to it all. Not, that is, in my current human form. Perhaps I will be reborn as a Covid. Ride around the whole gorgeous world. Sarah

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      1. The magical realism of “If I was a…” Fascinating.
        And I agree 100%. It is our purpose to break out and away from the caging bars of our own prison. The epiphanies that linger transparently around our vision as if eye floaters, require us to have a newer perspective, a less smeared one, to see, clearly, the way out.

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      2. With one little emphasis. Well not so little: the ways out exist all the time.

        So I am agreeing with you that we have to see them clearly.

        It seems, then, that seeing is one step.

        Being ready is a different step because things (we) break in the passage. Have to be ready – I am not sure but my back is hurting today – to break open and not break into shattered pieces. They might take a lifetime to glue together and then our passage may be into another life form, perhaps, incapable of much more than a basic virus DNA transformation. Open, open……

        A very expert piece of writing, Watt. Expert equally of insight.

        Rachel, are you sleeping now? Is it night with you? I have taken over your response space………..Sorry. Kind of sorry.

        Sarah

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      3. I could not be more in agreement and understanding with your insightful details on this road of life. Very well explained from you. Thank you for sharing your mind.
        Thank you also for appreciating this piece.

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      6. Sarah, you put things in such beautiful ways, and with so much depth. Yes, I agree, that moment is a flinch time, the realisation that we are the maker of our own destinies. It’s crunch time too – do we have what it takes to break free, or do we become tired and passive and resigned.

        I hope you get to ride around the whole gorgeous world, but my dream for you would not entail rebirth as a covid – I’d want you to be welcomed with open arms, not shunned with masks and distance! Rachel

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      7. Rachel, Optimistic and kind sentiments!…

        My young ones – 35 and younger – have moved me away little by little, upon a review year by year of their lives of the belief that we can make our own destinies. To a varying extent only given the basic attributes of our lives which can not be changed. 2 economic catastrophes in 12 years for example. Your actual DNA.

        I understand what you say about Covid 19. But it is a very successful organism. It is a great teacher and I don’t want to pass through this intense grief without drawing every last lesson in the manner of our own species!

        For this, I rely also on you two, poets both, with acute insights, balancing optimism with shattered glass! Be well.
        Sarah

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      8. Corona is indeed a reservoir of lessons, that I think all os us are trying to extract most out of. Despite the great boundaries that inhibit the grand colors of the earth from being places at the front of our vision. But with the spare ones, I do believe we can grow in a vivid flourish.

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      9. I love this Sarah “I don’t want to pass through this intense grief without drawing every last lesson in the manner of our own species!” What a way of looking at it. I think about this in terms of how much less air pollution there has been too. Balancing optimism with shattered glass is delicate work, dear Sarah. I guess we all do our best!

        All the best 🙂

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  8. This is brilliant. It is so out of this world that I am afraid I can’t say anything. It’s too brilliant to be touched. I don’t even know if it makes any difference if I say something. You will still walk out of that door, self-absorb as usually, convinced you are crazy – which actually makes you sane – addicted to your prison, yes, I agree with that and perhaps misunderstood (perhaps only). Brilliant Watt. Brilliant.

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    1. Your speechlessness humbles me deeply. I think it’s not so brilliant for you to not reach, I think you have the capacity to sketch a picture on the toughest of mysteries. But thank you extremely.

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  10. Okay…. Let me buy you two shots of bourbon and a beer. Then tell me what the hell is going on here. This piece is so beautiful, mysterious, and sad. What prompts this level writing? Whatever it is, it’s genuine. I feel a kinship with it.

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  11. I can’t say as I know how you feel…. but maybe just a bit.
    In my Covid prison, I create and design and am happy (more or less). But I did not design Covid to even need a prison for.
    You think you are addicted to your prison, because you built it, and are fascinated by your creation.
    So we are both in a prison, and I can commiserate thus far.
    Be well!

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    1. “But I did not design Covid to even need a prison for.” That rings in my head for some reason, resonates across.
      Yes, I think, with artistic expressions, come shades of mental experiences. And that is as good as it is bad,

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  12. “Sometimes I think I’m an addict of my prison, maybe because I built it, and my fascination towards its design is my self-absorption.”
    Absolute perfection in its insight and poignancy. This line is so darkly beautiful that it stirs the darkness in my soul, which may sound bad, but it’s a compliment. To some degree, we each need the prisons that we build, for they in part make us feel safe, make us feel that we have some control, keep us from spinning until dizzy – even when said prisons are the very definition of insanity and calamity. The key is to know what our prisons involve, and then to find the inspiration within ourselves to venture out and away, sometimes. We may have a goal of leaving them forever, but perhaps it is enough to know that they exist, and to appreciate ourselves for getting out, even if we are only able to leave for brief periods of time? Anyway, as my first read of your work, since slowly getting back on here, this was a gorgeous, awesome read. Truly.

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    1. Thank you so much! The key indeed is to know what our prisons involve and what we have chosen as our “escape” and what situation pushes you to emergency and what haunts you, if as a cell-mate or a prison guard, so you have to face helplessness, even if it is just a false sense.

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