I.
The cusp of a dark beyond
Sightless and afraid; the white, bulbous grubs from their safety snatched
And thrust into an air too rich to breathe,
Choking on the sweetness, dizzy from the buoyancy
Each twist and turn only pushes the boundaries further.
All around, our fears manifest,
Pulling at us with talons, ripping at our flesh with razored beaks,
Our thoughts untenable, threads of vapor to catch the air
Simply tremble and pray to our idols, mumble words held deep in the flesh
Retreat into ourselves
Resonate with unfelt pain until the pain brings blood,
We weep.
The darkness thickens.
It is weight, to push against, resistance, substance,
It brings unforeseen focus,
We are more, there is more,
there is something other than ourselves and the crippled thoughts we’ve woven.
Each step deeper is a lifetime, a moment,
a drawn out breath that aches in our lungs
and if only we hadn’t lived in the smokestacks, breathing in the embers
of the dead, the dying,
the dreams swarming thick like mites on a humid day
we might have stretched our ribs a little further.
This space, place
too grand for our simple minds to cope,
the threshold between one room and the next,
solid, carved with skill
and laid with care, love
to await the day when the one that is loved can be carried across
and the world within can be nurtured; to flourish.
II.
I called across the gulf and waited,
silence replied,
a sucking silence, drawing in the words
funneled into the core of the chasm,
compressed into little more than half utterances,
to be snuffed out and forgotten.
The fibers of my thoughts lifted,
shocked into being and enticed away,
with promises of flight, of a corporeal form within which to nestle,
to become part of,
to sing within and be listened to, respected.
I stood,
no more than a sentinel to a dying age,
buying at the vapid threads that floated across my retina
feeling the thrill of wholeness for moments grander than fleeting
clutching at them again once the feelings were robbed from me
by self centered, sanctimonious, arseholes on soapboxes
desperate to hear their own voices
as they claimed the world was sick
the sickness was us
and the cure was happiness.
I’ll give you happiness,
can’t you see my brands?
III.
From well back it can’t be seen
more a notion in a careless mind,
a thought erupting, a thin skin pressing against the surface
of a gray pool of hot mud
until pulled too tight and rupturing,
leaving the hollow of its life.
A fiction told and retold
losing shape and wearing thin
patched from stray bark used to shore up the lives
of those with grand ideas
until the notion is a warped and fetid thing,
sold and resold,
patched and re-patched,
by limpid minds globbing onto some semblance of a higher cause.
And from this view we see the world and proclaim it new
we look beyond to the potentiality of our accumulated breaths
start to measure ours against yours, yours against mine
until the self is an overriding cause
put before, placed above, worth more;
after all, the breath I breathe is sweater.
Prove me wrong.
IV.
I danced in the shadow of a single star
all the more bright in a blanket of black,
I found its name and called out
waiting impatiently for a reply.
When nothing came I turned away.
I lamented the skies of my youth,
counting satellites as I lay in the grass,
I tilted to be in unison with the slanted milky way
and held my breath between sudden streaks of ancient deaths.
One day I awoke with the sun,
and set one foot in front of the other.
Each step saw a pin prick of light disappear,
until all that was left was this single star
which continues to ignore my imploring calls.
It was me that turned off, closed my eyes, stopped shining,
it was me that no longer sought more,
the shadows deepened, grew heavy, weighed me down,
until my feet were as high as I could see.
Each expectation was for the countenance of death,
however old, however long misplaced,
to appear for the briefest of moments
as it bled its way across the sky.
V.
I saw it for a curtain,
I took it for a wall,
undulating and impenetrable, heavy with the weight of time.
It trembled as I stepped nearer, I took it for fear,
I laughed and felt bold, I reached out.
It were as if a sea of leaves had settled
slumbered and begun to stir,
my footsteps the cause of their rousing.
Indecision, I froze,
They pulsed, wings beating,
agitation folding in on itself.
My laughter a ripple in its ocean of memories,
my footsteps the beating of a single, tiny heart.
I would be lost, swallowed,
gone for all certainty…
…it stopped; sudden and complete.
I felt it listen to my footsteps in retreat.
VI.
why you, why us, why sad, why harried,
why lost when you are always somewhere,
why born when you are always gone.
VII.
The wind took me up,
embraced me,
carried me over a lattice work of lives.
Woven within each eddy were fragments, echoes, remembrances,
keepsakes for a lonely heart.
It wanted me, I knew it almost at once,
a consort, companion, a plaything,
my definition lost within its boundless embrace.
It sang,
an amalgam of sweet/sour,
hard/soft,
forged/gifted/bestowed.
Prisoner/archangel.
I rose and fell with giant breaths,
carried with the scent of blossoms into my pores,
suffused with the stench of rot.
I drank from the insides of clouds
feasting on the threads that bound daylight to the earth.
Then in the long rays of a dying sun,
as it consumed the horizon with sharp intent,
I lost the final hints of form, was burnt up and ceased to care.
VIII.
It is a thousand eyes, perhaps more
dark and full of hate,
it doesn’t want us here,
we must go back.
We have trodden ground proven strong,
we have grown crops, raised children,
we are part of the land, it is ours, our sweat has given us liberties.
We have made bargains.
It is the demon of our dreams,
set to tear our flesh, devour our souls, turn us on one another,
it doesn’t want us here,
we must turn back.
We were happy once,
we can be so again,
we just have to find it,
somewhere back there in the past,
where we tamed the world, crafted it, molded it into manageable, harmless quotations.
We have made bargains.
It is the clawing in the darkness,
the scratching at the walls,
the whispers full of menace only we can hear.
It lurks there, bloated and full of envy
for what we’ve made, for what we have.
We cannot go, we mustn’t go,
those who dare are in league,
sent to lure us toward our end.
We should strike first.
It is the only way to protect ourselves.
We’ve made bargains.
IX.
There was a clock on the mantle of the house we lived in
when I was old enough to remember,
though not tall enough to reach.
It was white washed brick hidden behind layers of soot
that left my fingertips black.
As I lay in bed some mornings
I would hear the scraping of the small iron shovel
as it collected the ashes,
depositing them into a steel bucket.
I’ve tried replicating that sound but its never the same,
when you’re the one doing the scraping.
The sound of metal on stone brings me comfort,
but I could never get used to the sound of the ticks of the clock
amplified through the mantel,
until they reverberated though the emptiness of my dreams.
X.
Now I ain’t no dandy but I likes to look presentable
so I’m in the mirror checking things out when the taxi arrives.
I get to the bar just on 2am
and I sit myself down and order a few drinks
then wonder why the sun’s out when it’s still 2am.
Sure enough the world starts to spin and I feel like I might chuck
so I hold on, focusing on the green square of the pool table
until everything rights and i’m ready for another round.
It’s still 2 am and there’s a game on,
I buy a few more rounds, cheer and throw insults
but by the end i’m sitting pretty because my team’s come out on top
and I buy the bar a round and make a few more friends (can never have too many at 2am)
so when I get up to go they call me back down
saying it’s their turn to buy.
I can’t pass up an offer like that so they slide on over
and we toast to our team and a few hours later, just on 2am, we are still at it,
though a few have tapped out, jobs and wives and more shit excuses.
When I look up i’m alone, the clock reads 2am
how the time flies.
Some joker tries switching on the news
but I let him know in no uncertain terms that we’ll not be having that,
not when there’s glasses to be emptied and times to be had.
He starts getting lippy,
so I clock him one and before I know it i’m sitting on the curb
and take it as my cue to leave.
When I wake up I have fragments of the night before
and figure I did myself proud
and then I have one of them spells,
like planets aligning or some such shit,
seeing it a clear as day what my tombstone will read,
2am closing on a hell of a night.
XI.
There was silence when I woke and in it there were currents,
flows of air, of mists, of moods and insurrections out of keeping with the norm.
I stood and pulled the curtains wide,
heeding not my state.
There, baked in the fledgling rays of a newly birthed day,
were fossilized sighs from the distant past,
were tears turned gold as they fell,
were looks, expressions frozen forever in horror, shock, sadness, resignation.
Floating like tissue, fighting against the will to fall.
Given claws they would have shed the membrane that keeps other worlds at bay
summoning waterfalls of broken lives to pool beneath my window,
a rising tide, an ocean of deceit, a wave-crested master of erosion.
XII.
Poor me, poor me
I’ve broken my knee,
There’s blood, oh the pain
Just there, can’t you see?
Poor me, poor me,
I’ve not been given enough
This life is unfair,
The treatment too rough,
My pillows aren’t soft,
My blanket’s too think,
And last night’s foie gras
I’m sure made me sick.
Poor me, poor me,
I have it tough, can’t you see.
The champagne has warmed,
The coffee is cold
And despite the many face lifts,
There are signs that i’m old.
Poor me, poor me,
This wound on my knee
It’s a chasm, a vacuum,
Just there, can’t you see?
XIII.
I have hope,
it might be a strange thing to say
in this day and age,
but I have hope.
I was rummaging through old things, as you do
and found this speck, unsure what it was
or why I might have kept it.
Seeing no point in throwing it away
I rewrapped it in the pages of a faded newspaper
with advertisements for nylons
and those beautiful, green refrigerators
with the handles that angled out
when you pulled on them.
I’d fancy one of those if they still made them
but anyway, as I was saying,
I have hope,
it may be a speck
but I have hope none-the-less.
XIV.
At my fingertips worlds turn and yearn to be set free,
to wander the winds of whim to the furthest reaches of thought.
Touching on the realms of gods, gestated in the vacuum of knowledge
where the dizziness of our boundaries had us grasping at straws
with the hopes of finding stability, feeding us a sense of control
building the egos that rule like gods, filled with hate and distrust.
XV.
The stories my mama told me
as I burrowed into the crook of her arm
were of faraway places
with faces not unlike ours
but the places, the cities, the towns
were magical lattice-works of beauty.
Those people, they smiled
inner smiles that made their faces glow
and were happy to show their inner glows
to those they passed
even if they didn’t know them.
It all seemed so magical
those faraway places
with a story for every man, woman and child.
Some stories were easy,
of laughter and love,
some stories were hard
but somehow there was always a hand,
a stranger or a friend,
a grandmother or a teacher
that offered words of tangible advice.
Nothing cryptic but solid and sincere.
There was something all those stories,
all those faraway places, had in common
although I didn’t notice at the time.
All those faraway places,
no matter how big, teeming, gleaming cities,
or small, clutches of timid farmsteads,
they all lived close to, within sight of,
or right on the edge of
a threshold where all those people
dared not go.
XVI.
We walked,
Took what we could carry
Looking deep into the horizon
We walked.
We bedded rough
But we were tough,
Foraged on the way,
Laughed on the way,
Died on the way,
We walked.
We were driven.
Felt the need,
To stretch our worlds
Seek out the new
We walked.
The land, the sun, the air
Had forged us.
Had been our mother
Our savior,
Our all,
We still walked.
Strong was the need.
We were of the same flesh,
Our burning, beating hearts
Knew the tongue and the whispers
Of skin, of kin,
Of the dirt in our veins,
We still walked.
We walked,
Toward setting sun and rising moon,
Toward northern mountains
And eastern seas,
We followed rivers and ranges
And migrating fowl,
We followed the stars
And a scent in the air.
We walked,
Looking for home.
We stopped.
We settled
Beside rivers, lakes, oceans,
Where food was thick
Where living was hard,
Where nothing grew
But we felt safe.
We settled.
We grew, we changed, we adapted,
The sun couldn’t find us,
So we changed,
Food sang with different tunes,
So we changed.
Experiences, soils, set of the wind,
Needed new tongues, new ways of being,
So we changed.
We changed,
But in us,
Deep where the heart bled,
In the beats and the songs
That had made us so very long ago,
We were the same.
We might call ourselves by different names,
Letting the arrogance of difference fill our sails.
We might sing different tunes and make different choices,
Walk different roads and are shaped by our differences
But deep where the heart song bleeds
We will always and forever
Be the same.
And there,
On the other side,
Beyond the reach of your stupidity,
The heart songs sing.
But here,
Where notions of foreign,
And skin and words filled with hate and difference,
Still chart your path,
Sending you backward with each step,
The other side will remain out of reach.
The recent past has taught us,
Borders are manufactured restraint,
To limit the world so our egos might flourish.
Borders on thinking, borders on action,
Borders on where we set our feet,
All serve to give us places in which we can feel strong, important,
Giving us some semblance of control, order,
Giving us a platform on which we can preach
The greatness of our chosen path.
So we preach and we howl and we kill,
Babies burnt alive to show the world that we are better,
We claw, we grab, we destroy,
Taking the breath from another’s lungs
The innocence from another’s heart,
All the things we have no right to,
All because our egos have married our ignorance.
The price for a single beating heart
and a mind that wills the body to move,
capable of all, limitless, exciting, unpredictable,
is more money than all the gods combined every made.
Craig McGeady is from Greymouth, New Zealand and lives with his wife and two daughters in Xuzhou, China. His writing runs the gamut of length and form thanks to a homeroom teacher with a penchant for Michael Moorcock. He has poems published or forthcoming in The Garfield Lake Review, The Wild Word, The Cicada’s Cry, The Remembered Arts Journal and Genre: Urban Arts.